On July 14th, Cody and I attended Kaminarigumo's & Yoshiaki Manabe's "Scrappy Travelling for Miles Tour 2023" at Koenji HIGH. This was a particularly special show, because it featured the very first live performance of Yoshiaki Manabe's (from the pillows) "NINE MILES" solo project.
For this new incarnation of NINE MILES, Keiji Ueno from Kaminarigumo takes charge of the vocals. Ghoma (also Kaminarigumo) provides keyboard.
To start off, I'll write about how the return of NINE MILES and the album "Into the light again" came to be.
The revival of NINE MILES started in early 2023 when Yoshiaki Manabe was asked to join Kaminarigumo's summer tour as the support guitarist. Manabe thought it would be an interesting idea to play as NINE MILES as an opening act, and asked the other members if they'd like to do it. He thought it would be nice to have a tour t-shirt for the occasion, so he asked his bandmate from the pillows Sawao Yamanaka to design one for him.
Sawao suggested that creating a CD would be even better, so around the end of ARABAKI ROCK FES. 2023, Manabe started working on the new album. Also, due to the fact of NINE MILES' music being in English and Keiji having excellent English pronunciation, Sawao thought it would be a good combination.
Manabe was worried about how much work he would be able to accomplish in such a short period of time (ARABAKI ROCK FES. happened at the end of April and the album was scheduled for release in July). It started with Manabe transposing existing NINE MILES' songs into the key in which Keiji sings. NINE MILES was never intended to be performed live, as the songs had a more ambient direction, so he changed the arrangements to ones that would suit a live performance.
Manabe recorded everything on the album by himself (guitar, drums, bass, etc.), sans vocals. When it came time to mix everything, he put a lot of energy into the first song, but since it was a one-man job, he started to wonder if it was a good idea after starting song number two. Each time he completed a song, he would have the office and the head of the back office listen to them. When the head of the back office heard the second song, "Division Three", he sent an emailing saying, "it's very good". This convinced Manabe that he was heading in the right direction and re-energized him to complete the album. He saved the email as a keepsake. He was still at a loss with the new song "Free to move", and he had to do "Word of mouth" over and over again because he couldn't make the guitar sound the way he wanted it, but in the end, he put love into every note on the album.
By the way, Sawao was in attendance to watch the show and emerged from the back greeting the audience with a "yay!" before going to the bar.
The NINE MILES track "Return of the polar bear" started to play just before the three came on stage, and they opened the show with the song "HEART IS THERE". Keiji sang on "hand mic" while Yoshiaki played guitar and Ghoma played keyboard. Other instruments like drum and bass were pre-recorded.
The original NINE MILES' songs have heavily vocoded vocals that masked most of the lyrics, but without them, Keiji's English skills were immediately noticable. One such example was his corrected pronunciation of the word "clothes" in HEART IS THERE (in the original, Yoshiaki sings "clotheses"; a common mistake for Japanese). Keiji told me that because many parts of NINE MILES' lyrics are incorrect and unnatural, he was kind of afraid about how native English speakers like myself would feel about the music. Personally, I don't think it's a big deal for the small minority of English speaking fans.
Immediately following HEART IS THERE was the song "Division Three". Up until now, the lyrics of Division Three have never been published, and I could make out only a few words. It was a nice bonus to have them finally revealed in the album booklet.
Included in the setlist was a new NINE MILES' song titled "Free to move". Keiji described it as "reggae, but a little bit of alternative".
By the way, I'll leave small details to a minimum, but the train we took to get to the venue was an experience in itself. Most of the train services were canceled due to "personal injury" (which likely means that someone jumped in front of a train), so the few trains that remained running were absolutely packed. Everyone pushed so much that it became a single mass of humanity. It was the most cramped train that I have ever been on.
After the show ended, we didn't feel like dealing with any more trains, so we attempted to walk from Koenji to Yotsuya (about 2 hours on foot). I think it was around Okubo that we decided to take the subway and get back to our hotel in Yotsuya, which only took like ten minutes.
Anyway, 10/10 night.
Comments
Post a Comment