imomus | Aki in Berlin (and on WFMU)

Aki Sasamoto was in Berlin yesterday, and Hisae and I spent the day showing her "our" Berlin. On the only sunny day in weeks, we had lunch at Monsieur Vuong, where we ran into novelist Julian Gough, then coffee at Bonanza Coffee Heroes, some wild swinging on the swings at Mauerpark, a visit to the atmospheric toilets at Wohnzimmer, some chocolate purchases at In't Veld, a trip to Friedrichshain and finally a 2am appearance on the WFMU (New Jersey) show Sound and Safe hosted by Trent Wolbe, on which I sang live versions of Scottish Lips and Widow Twanky, and did an interview with Aki. You can hear an mp3 of the appearance here, 36 minutes in.

(By the way, I have to correct my statement about the artist Arp, who supplied the title for Scottish Lips: I said on the show that I "always get Hans and Jean Arp mixed up". In fact, they were the same person.)

The WFMU show came live from a converted stable in Kreuzberg now used by the artist team AIDS-3D (Daniel Keller and Nik Kosmas), whose OMG obelisk is one of the star pieces in the Generational show currently showing at the New Museum in New York (you can see more of their work here). That obelisk is what gave my piece about the show its title. Trent's show is pretty interesting -- last week he was in Barcelona interviewing Carlos Carbonell from Internet2.

Another guest on the show last night (it went out live between 9pm and 11 EST, which meant 2am and 5am Berlin time) was the legendary Hanayo, the trainee geisha who appeared on the cover of The Face magazine in 1992 and has been Berlin's most famous Japanese resident since the turn of the century. Hanayo is a photographer, performance artist and singer. Her section of the show begins about one hour and 18 minutes in and her website is called Hanayo's Mystery Farthouse. She sings a lovely France Gall song at about 1 hour 24, stranged out with tons of digital delay.

Hanayo's latest musical project is called Wooden Veil:

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The Wooden Veil project -- a brilliantly spooky krautrock-Shinto drone orchestra -- seems to involve Berlin scenesters like Marcel Turkowsky, Mario Campos and Brent Wadden, a friend of Joe Howe and Emma (you can see Brent's paintings here and his LiveJournal here). Hanayo plays out with this track by J-rap star Coma-chi:

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By this time Aki and I had melted away into the night: dawn was blueing the Berlin sky and the birds were beginning to sing.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Thanks Momus. I'm just typing to test if one can add a comment without having a livejournal acount. From an erstwhile Berliner, missing Berlin.

You're David Bowie, aren't you? You should come back sometime.

Tee-hee. Betimes I wish I were as handsome a devil as he once were! He and I might have a pair of lacking adrenal glands in common by this stage, but that's about it.
You're very kind to have replied so promptly. I type to you as somebody interested in your blog, though poorly acquainted with your music. It has been the enthusings of two good friends, both of whom know your music well, and one of whom lives in Berlin, that has made me consult your blog from time to time. My girlfriend says that your blog has a certain fertility that is uncommon and isn't it true? We live in Paris and would certainly appreciate your advertising in advance on imomus any concerts you give here. And bear in mind we'd be delighted to accommodate you for a night or two at any time. Sincerely.

uao, the photo of the girl on the swing is seriously pretty!

Are you doing any performance with Aki Sasamoto in Berlin?

No, she was just here for two days. She had a college reunion in Wales, and the British Airways ticket was (weirdly enough) cheaper if you came to Berlin too than just NY - LON.

My next Berlin show is with Joe Howe on June 24th at West Germany (http://www.last.fm/venue/8794471). Not quite sure what we're doing yet -- we're having a meeting later this week to decide.

Hi Nick,
talking about radio, i was wondering if you meanwhile got a recording of "700 Minuten beim Flaneur", the Momus documentary that was aired by Deutschlandfunk in February. Unfortunately I missed it...
Hope to see you one of these days.
eRiC

I have a copy on CD, but the producer wanted me to wait awhile before putting up an mp3, just to give them time to sell it to other territories.

The perfect day with an array of Bohemias.

Aki needs someone to shoot a twelve gatsu calendar
of her sprawling around the world galleries and playgrounds.

Save me one!

so how did the Synesso Cyncra turn out to be?

We all had different coffees -- an expresso for Aki, a capuccino for Hisae and an iced coffee for me. They all tasted pretty good. I'm no expert, though, and the ice cream took the edge off the pure coffeeness of mine.

small scenester world. last week i met carlos right before he went to get interviewed for that radio show, i arrived to berlin on sunday and was tempted to go that last night but was too tired, and hanayo is pretty mad at me for not doing some updates on the mystery farthouse i crafted for her. Bunch of coincidences.
Me and Brent are only tangentially involved with wooden veil tho, you should mention Peach Noe and Chris Kline who are actually in the band alongside Hanayo and Marcel
Seems like I only show up on your blog lately to brag about the people i know when you are bragging about the people you know :p

You're Mario, but not logged in (http://slime-slime-sly.livejournal.com/), right? Welcome back to Berlin!

trying to reclaim the anonimousness of the internet before facebook convinces obama to illegalize it.
Yes im back and i count on you for knowing about interesting art and music events!Anything on this week?Marcel has a thing later today which ill try to drop by to in landsberger allee

You managed to touch upon quite a lot of very different things there, Nick- Interesting how the conversation progressed in a sort of non-linear way!

However, that feedback and drop out in 'widow twanky' really spoiled my enjoyment of the track - I liked hearing your ad-hoc version without the autotune etc. on the album cut.

In fact, it sounded like technically they didn't have a clue - connecting things up incorrectly, no mike for Aki (you could barely hear her in the background, which was a shame as I was looking forward to hearing what she had to say). The whole time in fact, you can hear this sort of looming 'threat' of feedback just below the surface......Perhaps that actually added a special air to the thing!

whats this...joemus may be your last album ever?Ludicrous why would you stop making music?just because you dont sell as much as coldplay and the likes is no reason to stop.also you seemed dismissive re your retrospective music show saying it was only to fund your trip.no no no no no no momus dont get all disenchanted with music .your conceptual shows ,books etc are all very well but wont pay the rent.you are a musician first and foremost dont forget your roots.your albums are getting better each time in fact joemus may even be the best album of all time.fact.
incidentally why did you not sing in flaseto on widow twanky?oh and on the album what was that weird vocal thing that sounded as if you had a sore throat(on twanky

The "falsetto" is electronic processing, a bit hard to reproduce live!

oh really it sounds authentic .i just thought it was your natural voice.truth be told i think the way you sang it on the radio show was as good (with no flasetto)anyway.cheers .of to watch the "momus story"

Aki in Berlin (and on WFMU)

Enjoying Berlin.

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and the birds were beginning to sing.

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end of music? bombshell announced on air.!!

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