{"id":123328,"date":"2024-08-12T08:38:36","date_gmt":"2024-08-12T12:38:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/?post_type=dossiers&p=123328"},"modified":"2024-08-12T10:41:04","modified_gmt":"2024-08-12T14:41:04","slug":"tokyo-callling-neko-hacker","status":"publish","type":"dossiers","link":"https:\/\/panm360.com\/en\/dossiers-360\/tokyo-callling-neko-hacker\/","title":{"rendered":"Tokyo Callling | Neko Hacker @ O-East, Shibuya"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

One of the world\u2019s most populous cities and certainly among the most interesting, Tokyo is a place where there is never a lack of worthwhile things to do, and that includes musical options in the countless \u201clive houses,\u201d or concert bars, peppered across the municipal map. Japanese musicians and fans have long demonstrated a thirst for sounds from abroad, and an informed respect as well, so quality rock, reggae, jazz, and much more can be found easily enough. For the foreign visitor, the distinctively domestic creations and interpretations are the most interesting. While tickets aren\u2019t cheap, the online reservation system is practical (and honourably devoid of treacherous supplementary fees), sound quality is taken seriously, early start times much appreciated, and the sheer energy of the local audiences astounding. Below are a quartet of musical events from early spring that PAN M 360 is pleased to report back on. Stories by Rupert Bottenberg and Alain Brunet who were in Japan last spring.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Neko Hacker @ O-East, Shibuya, March 23, 2024<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

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One of several venues under the O banner in the eternally busy Shibuya district, all owned by sleazy streaming giant Spotify, O-East<\/strong><\/a> nonetheless can\u2019t be faulted for cleanliness, excellent sound and sight lines, and a spaciousness that\u2019s at a premium in such a dizzyingly dense megalopolis. The room\u2019s 1,300-person capacity was nonetheless entirely accounted for by the enthusiastic (bordering on frenzied) audience, few of whom were much past the national minimum drinking age of 20. Granted, it was a free show (with a request for donations upon the concert\u2019s conclusion), but there was no denying the ferocious reverence the audience held for Neko Hacker<\/strong><\/a>, a duo plus friends who are hardly known outside of Japan.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That should change, because the core pair, guitarist\/producer Sera and lyricist\/songwriter Kassan, have since 2018 assumed a mandate to \u201cspread Japanese music to the world.\u201d What they\u2019re doing it with is an almost perfect amalgam of the country\u2019s contemporary pop-culture sounds. They\u2019ve christened it \u201ckawaii future rock,\u201d formulated as \u201ckawaii X EDM X rock.\u201d The first part, Japanese for \u201ccute,\u201d is represented by ubiquitous shoujo anime fan art (the duo\u2019s avatars, appearing on their record covers and in the image above, are a pair of techno-coquettes, one with peach-coloured hair, the other turquoise \u00e0 la Hatsune Miku), and by young women serving as guest singers, rolling on stage just when Kassan\u2019s prefabricated vocaloid tracks won\u2019t quite cut it anymore. The second two ingredients manifest as video-game jams undergirded by trance grooves and complemented by barnstorming guitar riffs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That rock element was augmented in the final stretch of the concert by the sudden appearance of a full heavy-metal trio (bass, drums, and a second guitar)\u2014entirely unnecessary, thoroughly funny and enjoyable. The whole was supplemented by a video barrage on the backdrop screen, a chaotic soup of 8-bit graphics and chibi cyberpunk cartoon girly-girls.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

What\u2019s undeniable in the accelerated, gleefully overstated music of Neko Hacker, reflecting a tendency that\u2019s ubiquitous in Japanese indie rock, is the pronounced spirit of ganbatte, a Japanese cheer that could be explained as something like \u201cdo your best, we believe in you.\u201d Beset by demographic decline, economic downturn, and environmental anxiety, the Japanese are at pains to summon up optimism these days, but despite, or perhaps because of that, the kids are snatching it of thin air and making delicious noise out of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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