>>PREVIEW
ASOBI SEKSU
Wednesday, September 26
Hifi Club
Thursday, September 27
Canmore Hotel
When you think of atmospheric dream pop you might think of haunting feedback, walls of sound and delicate, ethereal vocals. You don’t, however, usually think of classically trained musicians. In the case of New York’s Asobi Seksu, you wouldn’t have the former without the latter.
Much has been made of the fact that the band’s keyboard player and vocalist, Yuki Chikudate, sings in both Japanese and English. While it certainly adds an otherworldly quality to the band’s material, it’s the swelling melodies that seal the deal for these shoegazers. And those melodies are a direct result of the time Chikudate spent at the Manhattan School of Music with band mate James Hanna. However, like many frustrated students, Chikudate wasn’t sure that her enrolment was going to have any tangible rewards.
"I felt very tied to being a classical musician," she says. "Yet at the same time I was very stunted by that and I felt I was trapped. I didn’t know where I was going to go and yet I knew I wanted to make music. I was really unhappy."
"Classically speaking, I don’t think I really learned that much as a music student, either. It was a good way to meet people and other musicians, but it is still a school and when music becomes institutionalized, there’s really no room for growth."
And growth is what Chikudate was looking for. Having played piano since she was a child, her connection to the instrument was going to be a life-long affair. One listen to Asobi Seksu’s latest album Citrus will have most audiences enraptured with Chikudate’s vocals, but she admits she is not nearly as comfortable singing as she is playing. Since she has no plans to put out a solo piano album any time soon, her chance meeting at the Manhattan School of Music is even more fortuitous.
"Obviously (school) makes you very disciplined, although I can’t say that I was a very disciplined student," she says. "But the one good thing that came out of that was that I met James and we had the opportunity to make music together. He opened up a whole new world of music making to me that I had no conception of."
It’s hard to imagine music instructors teaching the kind of swooning, string-bending Brit-pop jangle and wash of white noise that is layered throughout Citrus. Songs such as "Goodbye" are just too much fun to be tied to the stuffy institutionalism that Chikudate felt constrained by. And songs like "Pink Cloud Tracing Paper" owe much more to My Bloody Valentine than they do to Mozart.
"I think that some people come expecting a pop band with a pop sound, because you can’t really get the full scope of our sound on our record," she says. "I think people are often shocked by how loud and forceful we can be live."
Opening up to new ideas does sometimes mean letting go of the past, and for Chikudate, that meant trading in her piano for a synthesizer, not a vertical move in her estimation.
"Some people will probably argue that you can make a synthesizer sing," she says. "I don’t get any physical pleasure from it. I really love the fact that the piano is a very physical instrument. I feel very, very connected to it, whereas I can’t really feel connected to a synthesizer." It doesn’t help that Chikudate feels like she is hiding behind the synth when she takes it onstage.
"I miss that physical connection you have as a performer if you play the piano," she says. When it’s suggested she try playing one of those synths that you can strap on like a guitar, her reply comes with a chuckle. "I don’t think I will be getting a keytar any time soon."
You can take the girl out of classical training, but you can’t take the classical training out of the girl. |
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