DAMO SUZUKI and KAWABATA MAKOTO

Event information

Damo Suzuki

Suzuki Kenji, born January 16, 1950, in Japan, popularly nicknamed Damo Suzuki, is a singer probably best known for his membership in German krautrock group CAN.

Suzuki spent the late 1960s wandering around Europe, often busking, during which time he would only have been a teenager.

When Malcolm Mooney left Can after recording their first album Monster Movie, Holger Czukay and Jaki Liebezeit encountered Suzuki singing on a street in Munich, Germany whilst the two were sitting outside at a street café. They invited him to join the group, and he did, performing with them that evening.

Suzuki was with Can from 1970 to 1973, recording a number of well-regarded albums such as Tago Mago and Ege Bamyasi. His freeform, often improvised lyrics, sung in no one particular language gelled with Can's rolling, psychedelic sound.

Suzuki converted to the Jehovah's Witness faith when he married his German girlfriend, who was also a Jehovah's Witness, after the release of the album Future Days, and retired from music in 1974.

He returned to music in 1983, and currently leads what is known as Damo Suzuki's Network- as he tours, he performs live improvisational music with various local musicians (so-called "Sound Carriers") from around the world, thus building up a 'network' of musicians that he has and can collaborate with.



Kawabata Makoto
Guitarist, performer on numerous traditional instruments, composer, improviser, mixing engineer, producer, leader of the Acid Mothers Temple, speed guru.

"Music, for me, is neither something that I create, nor a form of self-expression. All kinds of sounds exist everywhere around us, and my performances solely consist of picking up these sounds, like a radio tuner, and playing them so that people can hear them. However, maybe because my reception is somewhat off, I am unable to perfectly reproduce these sounds. That is why I spend my days rehearsing.
Where do these sounds come from? Who is sending them out? That is not something for me to know, and neither is there any way that I could find out. I simply believe that they come from the 'cosmos'. (Maybe other people would call God the source). Since I was a small child I have been prone to hearing ringing sounds in my ears and other sound phantasms. At the time, I believed that these were messages aimed directly at me from a UFO, and so I would gaze up at the sky. But once I started playing music myself, I came to feel that these noises were a kind of pure sound. And I promised myself that one day I would be able to play those sounds myself. It is only recently that I have begun to feel that I have been able to come close to reproducing these sounds in my solo guitar work, and in my INUI project.
However, in June of 1999, I finally discovered my own 'cosmos' and I experienced an instant of total union with it!! That 'cosmos' is still tiny in size - although any cosmos can, by its very nature, be infinitely huge or infinitely small. The energy and vibrations contained within that it far exceeded my imagination in scope and beauty. I can only describe the miraculous instant when my 'cosmos' accepted my consciousness as MAGIC."
(Kawabata Makoto. July 8th 2000)







Doors: 7pm

Entry: £7



http://www.damosuzuki.de/http://www.myspace.com/kawabatamakoto