Ichiko Aoba’s virtuosic guitar playing proved the main draw for a night of deeply beautiful experimental folk pieces from Japan, prefaced by one of the most extraordinary support acts I’ve ever witnessed.
It’s a blowy Friday night on the cusp of spring in Gateshead, and looking down towards the Millenium Bridge from my beloved Glasshouse, spying a dance troupe recording a video in front of the old Baltic flour mills and smartly dressed couples arriving for drinks at the glassy bars across the water. It’s no surprise I’m not the only lone figure wistfully looking out over the city ahead of celebrated Japanese songstress Ichiko Aoba’s performance – Aoba is the ultimate introverts’ artist. She makes gossamer experimental folk decorated with shimmering guitars and dream-like pianos and propelled by breathtaking vocals that flutter and dance with all the grace of a kite in flight. The staging on the Glasshouse’s second, more intimate stage was suitably homely and minimalist – a large silk lampshade, an elegant mahogany chair, an upright piano sitting patiently to one side. It seemed a blissful evening of music was ahead.
But first, a shock. I don’t usually mention support acts on this blog, but Julien Desprez’s performance of his 2020 work Agora was simply too extraordinary to omit. It started innocuously enough, Desprez somewhat awkwardly walking onto stage in silence and meekly introducing himself. An opening section on keyboard, with Desprez singing sombrely in French, was pleasant enough, although the ever-present dentists’ drill-style synthesiser in the background provided an undercurrent of unease. Soon that undercurrent became a raging torrent, Desprez picking up his guitar and launching into Agora’s punishing passages of bowel-rupturing electronics, flashes of intricate slap guitar interspersed throughout an assault of apocalyptic screeches. His feet moved furiously the whole time, rhythmically mashing away at his extensive pedalboard, a technique which the programme rather romantically links to the French-Canadian folk tradition of podorythmie. Only 20 minutes later did Desprez’s wall of sound finally let up. Just sitting through it required perseverance. To Desprez’s great credit, I’ve never experienced art so profoundly awful.
Much of the unease I felt during Desprez’s fearless performance wasn’t just to do with the music, but the fact that I was sat in a room full of fans of a famously quiet and delicate Japanese singer-songwriter. It would be hard to think of a support act more diametrically opposed to Aoba’s style. Predictably, Desprez soon had people clambering out of their seats and for the exits despite the minimal legroom. A woman on the row across from me was in such a hurry to leave she loudly dropped her phone on the floor. Others put their heads in their hands. On one particularly gruesome sonic explosion the man next to me threw his head back, either in awe or disgust. I was half-worried there might be boos at the end of the performance, but instead the Aoba fans politely clapped, then slowly filed out for the interval in a stunned hush.
Remarkably, Desprez had been chosen by Aoba herself. During one break in her set she teased a knowing chuckle from the crowd by struggling to define what sort of art Desprez made. Was it even music? “I really love Julien’s… dancing,” she settled on, before briefly giving her own version of Desprez-style noise-making by pulling at some random strings on her guitar. Desprez’s selection is a testament to Aoba’s unique eclecticism. A first listen to her catchier tunes may recall Phoebe Bridgers or Lizzy McAlpine, but this is by no means your standard-fare indie folk singer. Instead, Aoba pushes the limits of musical serenity with patient, drawn-out pieces and evocative field recordings from her home on the Ryukyu archipelago of southern Japan. Her artistry culminated in 2020’s magnificent Windswept Adan, a concept album that described a mythical, isolated tropical island by way of meditative guitars and rich orchestral instrumentation.
Of course, there’s only so much Aoba can do sat there alone on the Glasshouse stage – and as a result tonight’s rendition of Windswept Adan’s majestic highlight Dawn In the Adan feels sadly diminished in potency – but by and large Aoba’s compositions are strong enough to stand up to the scrutiny of a bare guitar-and-vocals set up. It helps that Aoba is an exceptional guitarist; Sagu Palm’s Song’s layered guitar plucking had Aoba’s right hand moving in a blur, but the resulting music sounded effortless. Murmurs of smooth jazz came and went throughout her set, particularly on opener Kokoro no Sekai, the sort of dignified waltz you might expect to overhear walking along the banks of the Seine on a summer’s evening.
Aoba’s technique was almost as virtuosic on keyboards, too, drifting gracefully across the keys during the atmospheric Coloratura, a song which winningly ends with Aoba evoking a far-flung seashore with soft whooshing sounds into the microphone. Sonar’s sturdier piano chords and lullaby-like melody was so trance-like it seemed to warp time. I could have sat there listening to it happily for hours.
Aoba, largely expressionless under a low fringe of thick black hair, might initially strike an overly serious, contemplative figure, but this performance proved that musical beauty need not be as stuffy and rigid as the formal Dvořák concert happening across the hallway in the Glasshouse’s main venue. In the silences as she switched instruments Aoba took to humming merrily and skipping across the stage like a fairy. When a persistent phone ringtone interrupted a particularly peaceful moment, she simply mimicked the melody on the piano Jacob Collier-style, causing some of the loudest audience cheers of the night. And then there was the adorable encore number Sayonara Penguin, which featured Aoba singing in a squeaky voice from the perspective of her feathered friend. It was gloriously stupid, and I was left wanting more.