Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on February 2012
As strange as it sounds, the idea of blending Afrobeat with emo rock has already been tried—with pretty insipid results—by Vampire Weekend.
Tokyo’s Africaemo are so much more fun and energetic. “Just to do Afrobeat would be boring, so we thought to bring in a completely different genre like emo rock would be an interesting clash of concepts,” explains keyboardist Yuki Abe at a café, ahead of a Shimokitazawa gig. “Our songs are poppy and catchy, but the music has a rhythmic, arty quality.”
Later on at Club Que, the gig lives up to the promise of its deliciously danceable “City Boy, City Girl” from last year’s album Power Of The City. A couple hundred hipsters are bopping around as frontman “George” unleashes his shouty raps and Abe and guitarist Tetsuro Imanaka trade up-tempo riffs.
But Africaemo wasn’t always this much fun. When it started out in 2007, George was still inflicting his depressive nature on audiences, and their sound was more along geeky, post-rock lines.
“I used to see everything in negative terms,” he says. “Our very first song ‘Bird’ is about striving for satisfaction but falling short. History is made up of ego piled upon ego, which to me is a bummer. The track is fun for people to sing along to, but really the meaning is not fun to me. Still, I’m happy with however people interpret it.”
Several years of hard touring led the trio—which fleshes out its live performance with a rhythm section—to transform its approach. “At first we were pretty introverted, but after our first tour we became more of a party band,” remembers guitarist Imanaka. “Sometimes there were full houses, sometimes empty. We wanted a lively set that would be fun to play even when there weren’t many customers in the house.”
“The worst show was Niigata,” chips in Abe from across the table. “There were only one or two people in the audience. But it was a learning experience. When you have a full house it’s easy to get the crowd going, but you have to be able to work a small crowd too.”
Despite having played the Fuji Rock Festival, the three members of Africaemo, who cite everything from Drake to DFA to Yura Yura Teikoku as influences, aver that their peak moment so far was hosting their own event at Nakano dive Heavy Sick.
“We’d played Fuji Rock’s Rookie stage the year before and thought that by doing our own event we could get a better sense of what we want to do ourselves,” says Abe. “We’ve learned a lot about creating a good atmosphere. Recently we’ve been doing it at Womb.”
Africaemo prides itself on having both a live set and a mobile DJ set, for the clubs. “The interesting thing about the Tokyo music scene,” Abe states, “is being able to work with so many track makers and remixers—that’s something that we could only do in a scene as big as Tokyo’s.”
And with that, it’s off to prepare for tonight’s show. “One bottle of wine per performance is my golden rule,” says George with an evil grin. “It puts me in the right frame of mind. Our music is made for drinking, and we like to get in the mood with our audience.”
Shimokitazawa Reg, Feb 11 (listing). www.africaemo.com
