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| Info | Setlist | ||||||||||
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01. Intro - Brennið Þið Vitar 02. Earth Intruders 03. Hunter 04. Aurora 05. All Is Full Of Love 06. Pagan Poetry 07. Unravel 08. Vertebrae By Vertebrae 09. Jóga 10. Desired Constellation 11. Army Of Me 12. I Miss You 13. Five Years 14. Vökuró 15. Wanderlust 16. Hyperballad 17. Pluto encore 18. Oceania 19. Declare Independence |
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| Pictures (email) Observe that there usually is a NO camera policy at these concerts. | |||||||||||
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| Reviews |
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| http://smashingmag.com/tour/08tr/080219bjork_seb.html Diva in Town It's Thursday night in Tokyo, unusually; I leave the office at exactly 6pm. Not even one minute of extra time for me today. "osakini shitsurei shimasu!" In the subway, as usual the school kids and salary man are mixing together in a homogenous way. Most of them are going back home. But getting off at Kudanshita station it's the chaos where eclectic youngsters are meeting each other with cheerfulness gathering next to the Imperial Palace Park. I'm racing with them for a quick beer and yaki soba fix on my way to the Nippon Budokan. I'm a good 20 minutes early so I think that I might have little time to stop by and have a look at the promotional T-shirt stands before to get inside. But it's Japan, the lines are already endless and I can't even get close to see what the goods look like. Never mind I keep my money and get directly inside the famous concert hall where once the Beatle performed for the first time in Japan. Tonight, for the fifth leg of her Volta tour, Björk is in town. Once within the arena, I'm welcomed with some gentle Okinawa style traditional music setting a pleasant mood to wait the charming Icelandic singer. In addition to some laptops, a set of drums, speakers and other music equipments, the stage is already occupied by three giant plasma screens and topped by large and colorful banners with animal prints. Notorious for her eccentric costumes and fashion, when Björk finally appears, she is wearing very chic and colorful hippie dress with matching headband. A pianist, a drummer, two electronic music artists and an all female brass section accompany her. The brass girls are equally from Iceland and amusingly named the Wonderbrass. They are dressed in outfits echoing the lead singer's rainbow dress and some black lights and neon stage lighting enhance their colored costumes. I can identify one of the laptop guys as Mark Bell, a British electronic musician known as LFO and a long time collaborator on many albums of Björk. For the first part of the performance, the rhythm and intensity of the show is rather calm and hypnotic. Long time fans have the chance to hear plenty of good old songs such as Hunter, Aurora, All Is Full of Love or Joga mixed with some new tracks from the last album Volta like Earth Intruders, Vertebrae By Vertebrae and Wanderlust. Between each song, Björk says little but frequently takes time to thank the audience alternating between "thank you" and "arigato" for the pleasure of everyone. But knowing the expressive vocals singer's passion and interest for many kinds of music, I know that it's a simple matter of time before this quiet introduction leave place to some more frenetic beats... As the songs follow each other, we can observe the work of the 2 electronic artists on the plasma screens. Their hands are moving along some fancy Daft Punk style Lemure interactive touch screens and a sonar-like Reactable. These are some of the finest cutting edge electronic instruments and sure enough, the beats is now getting stronger and, true signal that it's party time, a green laser beam join the visual in choreography of abstract drawings. While Björk and the Wonderbrass are dancing frenetically on Hyper-Ballad (mixed to my pleasure with a bit of LFO's excellent track Freak) and Pluto the show culminate in an orgy of confetti that slowly fill-up the entire Budokan. Amazing experience, everyone is standing-up to praise the artists now leaving the stage. After few minutes of rest, the diva is back on stage with the support girls around her. She starts the anchor with Oceania, the opening song of the 2004 Summer Olympics Games in Athens. Finally she says good-bye and dedicates the last song, Declare Independence, to the people of Kosovo who declare their own independence only 3 days ago. /seb - 3766 |
| Bjork was in town last night, playing at the Nippon Budokan in Tokyo. I took a taxi there after work and got together with a couple of friends to watch her. The Budokan, with a maximum capacity of 15,000 people, was sold out. Security was not particularly strict going it (I was politely asked if I had a camera), but very high strung once inside (We had the misfortune of sitting right where a security guard was posted, and had to put up with his half-panicked skittering and jitterbugging around for the whole concert as if he'd been put in charge of a busload of football fans.) Bjork was a powerhouse of vocal passion, and her band was an impressive mix of the old and the new, ranging from what looked like a clavichord played by a man who could have been your banker uncle to electronic gadgets that appeared more like Star Trek weaponry (and sounded like it too!) than musical instruments - and manipulated by a guy that looked like a Miami surfer. Bjork was, of course, a massive hit with the crowd. The strong shamanistic element of her music and performance, although universal in appeal, strikes a particularly deep chord in Japan where that tradition is still very strong. The last song, especially, when the brass backing band (all female) came down on stage all doing a mad jerky dance while Bjork whipped the house up to a furious finale had distinct similarities to the kind of street dancing you often see in Japan. /Soccerphile - 3765 |
| It was very exciting live. Bjork's performance was very cute. she was brandishing her shoulder bag round and round. It was especially lovely. When she sang Declare Independence, it was a little different from the usual lyrics. She sang "Kosovo!Kosovo!Kosovo!…" Of course it is from a timely news "Kosovo declared independence" Doumo Arigatou Bjork! for a wonderful night. /marb - 3733 |
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