I haven't seen much of this guy's live performances before. I did have one *.avi file from one of his other shows, and to be honest, I was intrigued by how he would take on an interactive live performance in a concert hall. This DVD did not fit into every expectation I had, but instead it went in all sorts of different directions, and even though it is so much of a smaller scale than I thought, the intimacy and the amount of technology used in such basic manners gave it a naive charm; something the Japanese are masterful at. This DVD is his most celebrated release. In 2001, at the 5th Media Art Festival by the Agency for Cultural Affairs, he received the Special Jury Award for this concert. He also received the Ministry of Economy and Industry Award and Best Entertainment Award at the Digital Contents Grand Prix 2001. With many other shows released on DVD currently, the accolades are what drew me to make the bank-denting $75 import purchase for it. |
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The performer and his audience | Get out of the way!! | Susumu's got hot fangirls. |
Susumu Hirasawa
Susumu Hirasawa is without a doubt the most innovative musician I've ever heard or seen. The albums highlighted in this concert areTechnique of Relief andPhilosopher's Propeller. Normally, they have are concepts of their own, but for this show they are combined and given a plot. What makes this a truly interactive show is that the audience decides on what happens during the show. The stage setup is also genius in its execution. A transparent screen rests between the audience and the performers. This video includes animations, live feed from cameras positioned next to Susumu, and live feed from a computer hooked onto the internet. In fact, during one song, a website is scrolled from Internet Explorer. Nothing is edited in post-production of what happens on screen, it's all from the live show, and most of it is in realtime. |
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Call and vote on the prettiest ringtone. | Dude, can we get Strongbad up in this show? | Choose your destiny. |
A strength of the DVD is the use of their cameras. It's shot mostly at an upturned angle, which can be a little nauseating after a while, but the editing is top notch. Within no time, you're lost in this world Susumu has presented you. I can not go too much into detail as to what happens in that world, but it is obvious that the interactive live show is meant to be like an RPG with a killer soundtrack and FMVs provided by Hirasawa. And a word about that soundtrack, he picked the best songs fromTechnique andPropeller for this show. Classic tracks like "Rotation" which also appeared on theMillennium Actress soundtrack, "Gardener King" and the special encore performance of "Town-0 Phase-5" are among the best performances on the entire DVD. Susumu's voice is a dynamic force in his music, and it helps especially when much of the music isn't played live on stage. |
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Components: Susumu (realtime), visualizations (realtime from computer backstage), and Susumu on stage behind screen. | The propeller spins behind him! | Components: "Phonon Grabber" capturing video of Susumu's hand, him on stage (lower left), and stage lights on screen. |
To test out the system in the beginning, a stylized meter shows up on screen and the simple instructions, "SHOUT!!" appear. All of a sudden a huge response comes from the audience, and as the microphones pick up the noise the meter lights up until it is full, and Hirasawa appears in the spotlight going into the first song. From then on, between lyrics, narrative is given and it becomes clear that you're in the maze of the "Gardener King." In that maze there are split paths so it is up to the audience to decide where to go. The meter helps here. Unfortunately, the audience that was recorded for the DVD was not too creative and kept going left, but even so, this gave the show a very well-balanced setlist. |
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The opening to the "Gardener King's" maze. | The meter that was used to judge audience volume. | The Gardener King's entrance. |
It is important to note that much of the music is pre-recorded, and the only thing that is performed live is Susumu's vocal (even the challenging operatic tones he seems to belt out effortlessly) or his shredding/distorted electric guitar. During "Albedo" he plays with cell phones (pictured below), picking up one after another and putting them to the microphone, the melodies on the phones matching the overall melody of the song creating interesting harmonies. Midway through the show one of his bandmates from P-Model, Kenji Konishi, appears to play a track with a live instrument of his own. This one being a portable turntable which is featured in the instrumental "Install World." He stays for the rest of the show, and is an extra visual element in parts. |
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Presenting, Kenji! This is actually projected on screen. Kenji rising on stage is in the bottom right of the screen, in front of the acid pattern. | Susumu playing with his phones. The antennas even had flickering lights. | Kenji playing his portable turntable. The guy can scratch. |
Even without knowing what exactly is going on, there are moments that are just breathtaking. The most intriguing of these moments is when he is confronted with this giant dial. Using a bodysuit he has used in previous shows, he turns the wheel gradually, and the word "calling..." appears on screen. Within miliseconds, a cell phone ring goes off... IN THE AUDIENCE. He continually does this, calling people in the audience, and the video will quickly cut to a phone being held up by a proud audience member. An amazing level of interactivity here. |
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He spins... | It dials... | You answer! |
The actual live show is filled with beautiful shots and composites on the big screen. The camera crews caught every gorgeous moment, including a cell phone vigil that even tops the response given to AbsoluteDestiny's Lain video at our AWA panel. |
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That's... | love... |
Susumu very rarely leaves a song without some kind of visual flare or audience participation. The only song, really, that sadly falls into the 'boring' category is his performance of "Robedo." Though it's more enjoyable counterpart is theMillennium Actresssoundtrack's "Run," it is rather disappointing to see just red smoke on stage as filler for an otherwise beautiful song. Also a bit of caution, the video is not perfectly encoded, and a lot of digital video noise rears its nasty head a couple of times. Also, there are a couple times where the Amiga loves to sputter out on him. During the giant dial moment, it sputters and actually resets on Susumu. In true performer style, he patiently waits until it's fixed and keeps going. Also, you can see the mouse pointer. The most low-grade technology used to stunning effect. |
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From the "Philosopher's Propeller 1" music video. | Susumu, of course, has his profile shots. | The dramatic closer. |
The extras on the DVD are a perfect compliment to the show. They include a video introduction by Susumu himself, blueprints of the computer and stage setup (which are absolutely fascinating and give plenty of insight as to how everything was constructed), screenshots from the interactive website, the original music video for "Philosopher's Propeller 1", and a map of the actual performance, the paths chosen by the audience on this DVD are the ones highlighted in pink. Unfortunately, Dai Sato, the man in charge of creating Susumu's 3d animation, didn't render out any video with anti--aliasing on, so these horrid jagged lines are all over the music video. It's also way oversaturated. The video is still enjoyable, but depending on your tolerance of such details, this may be a hard thing to sit through. |
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What happen. | We get signal. | Main screen turn on. |
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"How are you Gentlemen." | "All your base are belong to us." | "You have no chance to survive, make your time." |
The map itself is interactive and you can choose to see exactly what would have happened if the audience had chosen differently at any point in the show. It's great as its own seperate map, but you also get the choose where to go during the live show as well. If you choose differently from the audience, however, you're taken out of the live show and instead into a "script mode" of sorts. Here, background audio is played without Susumu's vocal while a description appears as to what would happen onstage. This is great interactivity for home viewers, but is inconvenient because it breaks the flow of the live show. Still, hearing karaoke versions of songs from the two albums are quite nice, just make sure you watch the entire live show first before doing this (pick LEFT at each stop). |
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This is how you choose where to go. | ||
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If you had chosen right, left, left, left... | Or if you chose right... | Or right and then left... |
So, for the final tallies:
Again, it's not the most interactive DVD ever created, but the concept alone is worth its accolades. The maze is an intriguing idea, plus the results are, in fact, rewarding. Aside from the obviously cheaply encoded video, the DVD comes ready for all-region viewing, and is easy enough to navigate without having to know any Japanese. I fear, however, that I'm still missing a ton because I can't read the kanji. However, I'm sure it's tied to Buddhist philosophies as that shows up in Susumu's work many times. If you weren't crazy about his solo albums before, this is a great way to get introduced to the music of Susumu Hirasawa without needing an anime counterpart. As an added bonus for reading all this, I have encoded an xvid of the encore to the live show, "Town-0 Phase-5" fromTechnique of Relief. Enjoy!If you really enjoyed it, please make the $75 investment and buy the DVD. I know it sounds like a PBS thing to do, but I would love to see more concerts as innovative as this, and they could really use a better guy to author their DVDs. ^^; |
