Damo Suzuki
Divan
Oh, I dunno. Call it art rock. Space-punk. Psych-trance. Acid-funk. Noise jazz. Whaddaya want from me, kiddies? Terms and titles and incessant cross-genre-ing won’t do you one whit of good in the face of musical genius. You won’t see the forest for the trees, or the sweetly swaying, sweaty Japanese gentleman for the rhythmic-referencing you insist on doing while the beat goes on. And on. And on. Like, for fifteen minutes. Twenty or more when Suzuki’s really jiving with his chosen “Sound Carriers.” TTTTTTTT(times infinity)’s barrage made Spector’s “wall of sound” whisper-creak like an old baby gate. Ghostlimbs’ trippy vibe made me want to run off and join an intergalactic ashram. Les Enfants Sauvage had enough desperate keys, obsequious strings and ratted-up wigs to let us all atone for our many indie sins. God, I hate that word. “Indie.” Can we cross it out of our lexicon? Can we burn it into the mullets of the Jonny-come-latelys who popularized it? A pox on that word.
But don’t lynch me if I use it again.
Damo Suzuki is about as unpretentious as a legend gets. The (ex-front) man from CAN began each set with a dry, new t-shirt and the antithesis of hype; in fact, Agent Fashion Victim and I had to keep an ear to the stage and an eye to the audience’s migration patterns just to make sure it wasn’t a yet another soundcheck.
Suzuki koan # 634: “All creative things begin with Zero. Situation of no information. “
And so we do, we start from nothing, the musicians and the audience, not quite knowing what to expect, our minds wiped clean by Suzuki’s wet mop of hair, his unearthly voices (yes, “voices”), his Mestopholiptic coercion into a mass hypno-state. A tsunami of sound crashes down upon our heads. It pummels us from the sides. It rises up from the boards and shakes our innards and asks if we mind being taken from behind.
Then everything stops.
Damo takes a small bow.
He steps off the dais and scissor-splits the crowd.
Everyone folds back in, clapping in reverence.
The night swallows him up like a hungry maw.
And we are left reeling, crowded around the absence.