Last Monday Michel and I were invited by Artem, the Canadian whose name I couldn’t remember before , to come and see his band, Igrushka, perform at HEAVEN’s door located in Sangenjaya. Not really knowing, but kinda suspecting, what kind of music we would be seeing, we went to the place. Artem picked us up at the station, so we wouldn’t get lost. When we arrived he got a call from his band members telling him to hurry, because they’d have to play in about 20 minutes. So we hurried to the place and got there as quickly as we could, only to find out we couldn’t go in for free, but we’re groupies!

The guy at the door wasn’t impressed, so we ended up simply paying the entrance fee (a whooping 2500 Yen), and entered the place. Which turned out to be a very small “underground” venue. The best kind of place for starting bands to put the songs they’d written in their basement to the test. For the in crowd: it felt a little bit like N201, only smaller.

So Artem’s band was up first, but luckily we had a little time to meet his band members Naohiro (guitar),　Naofumi (bass) and Yuji (song) first. They are very nice guys, and were happy we came to see them. After the introductions, we had to wait a little while, during which we played around with my camera’s settings, to try and find a suitable setting for “cool band pictures”. Then Igrushka started to play.

The first thing I noticed was, that the sound restrictions we have in Holland, don’t apply here. How I needed earplugs, but didn’t have any. Second thing was, that they were actually pretty good for band that just started. I’ve seen a lot worse back in Holland anyway. It was only their 7th show, and they were rocking it!

Though of course, there’s always room for improvement. Although the energy they put out there is very nice, Yuki should try to control his voice a little better while moving around. Sometimes his voice seems to jump around a bit too much. However, I heard that with a lot of Japanese bands, so maybe that’s how it’s supposed to be done. In that case, sorry I mentioned . Aside from that, they were clearly the best band of the evening.

Anyway, without further ado, Igrushka:

Tags: Igrushka, Sangenjaya

This entry was posted on Friday, January 25th, 2008 at 3:34 am and is filed under Japan. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.