Agyou

Originally published on metropolis.co.jp on April 2010

Courtesy of Kumaru/BounDEE

Take two half-assed musicians, get them drunk, turn on the multitrack recorder and see what happens. Such were the inauspicious beginnings of Agyou, a new duo from Kansai comprising leftfield trackmaker/rapper Shabushabu and Usamu Okamoto, whose instruments include percussion and “toys.” Techno, Latin, dub, rock and Afrobeat provide vague reference points, but as soon as Agyou develop a discernable musical direction, they delight in tearing it down with goofy musical antics and tweaky samples. “Cosmic Sake” (references to booze abound) begins with a seemingly standard dub beat before entropy has its way with the song and it breaks apart into a mess of oddball Orientalesque melodies, bloops and buzzings. There’s little in the way of method to the madness, but as an exercise in pure free association, Agyou has its charms.