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On the south border of Amsterdam lies the city of Amstelveen. Originally this
is where middle class people who worked in Amsterdam went to live when they
wanted a house with a garden and a garage, but because of Amsterdam's
metropolitan crime levels, traffic congestion, lack of parking places and
real estate prices, Amstelveen has become somewhat of a business centre
itself. Especially Japanese companies favour Amstelveen for their Dutch or
even European headquarters.
What is the use of these socio-economic data in a concert review? Well it
means that Amstelveen 1. is stinking rich, 2. has a large Japanese community,
3. has one hell of a minority complex towards Amsterdam, that poor city with
its army of unemployed, corruption scandals and lunatic cab drivers which is
still the favourite place of Amstelveners to go out or shopping to. To turn
Amstelveen into an exciting place the city council has poured lots of its
excess money into a complete redesign of downtown Amstelveen. One of the
results is the P60 venue. A nice piece of almost old-fashioned modernist
architecture, without the ugly po-mo kitschy sixties frills that are hip
these days, but not too cold or minimalist either. The PA and airco are state
of the art and the toilets are (still) clean and in working order, which
makes that the 700 people capacity P60 beats everything in Amsterdam. The one
thing that stays behind is the programming, which consists mainly of Dutch
middle-of-the-road or slightly left thereof rock bands.
An exception is the 'Sushi Sounds' evening which aims at both the usual
concertgoers and Amstelveen's Japanese community. The question is whether the
show was advertised correctly to the latter audience, because there are a lot
of parents with small children and that's what not what you expect for a show
by eX-Girl, a band that once opened for infamous noisemongers Fantômas. But
maybe they all came to support local heroes Momiji. The most remarkable thing
about these Japanese Amstelveen kids is that they have two girl keyboard
players who take turns playing that instrument.
The only other thing to say
about them is that they are crap. Sloppy as hell and with an awful singer.
eX-Girl are anything but sloppy. From the moment the 3 girls enter in
extravagant fluorescent outfits you know nothing can go wrong. Kirilo, Keiko
and Fuzuki make what is best described as "avant-garde pop". Take some
extremely challenging vocal harmonies like you might find in the music of a
contemporary composer. Add some synthipop. And then some metal-riffs played
as if they were written by Kurt Weil. Finish it all off with some typical
Japanese excentricity and Man Or Astro-Man?/Devo robot-style instrument
playing (the band's timing is also robot precision). The end result is unlike
anything you've ever heard, a futuristic melting pot of music that could well
be how rock 'n' roll will sound in the 22nd century. It's fucking brilliant!
There are other bands that mix the same amount of styles, but they always end
up with a result that might very well be interesting, but is also hard to
digest. Not so eX-Girl: with the exception of those small kids and their
parents everyone is ecstatic about the band. And chances are it was just
bedtime for the kids. The trick is that the music is highly unusual, but also
quite simple. The real complexity lies in the vocal harmonies where they are
always easier to digest than in the instrumentation. It's 'Pop Muzik' (the
band cover that song) Kero! Kero! style (the band claim to be aliens from
that planet, another resemblance with Man Or Astro-Man?).
After their show the band prove not only to be forerunners musically, but
also in the era of merchandise concepts. The band offers a range of CDs, LPs,
t-shirts, buttons, underwear(!) and other must-have goodies Gene Simmons
would be proud of.
And everyone is pushed to fill in a survey for even more
customer satisfaction and to be updated about future eX-Girl events. And yes,
we want that. Amstelveen has experienced the future of rock 'n' roll. Take
that, Amsterdam.
http://www.kindamuzik.net/live/ex-girl/ex-girl-these-sushi-sounds-are-the-future-of-rock-n-roll
Meer eX-Girl op KindaMuzik: http://www.kindamuzik.net/artiest/ex-girl
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