"Noconico is a tiny cafe near Nokonoshima Port in Hakata Bay. The audience sit in the road avoiding traffic, while the performers teeter on the lip of the cafe itself, facing outwards.
I caught the ferry over with the band, who I had met a month or so earlier in Tokyo. The venue was so small that a sound system was barely necessary, so they plugged a couple of mics in, checked to see if they could be heard from the edge of the pavement, then went off for a dip in the ocean. An audience of about 30 gathered over the following hour. Someone handed out slices of fresh watermelon.
The band came back around 6pm and the gig started in the lo-fi, casual way that fans of Nika and Saya expect. Takashi Ueno, Saya's partner in Tenniscoats, stuck a microphone down the mouth of a toy frog and attempted to make music with it. Without decent sound, the frog's croak was silent - probably for the best.
Nika and Saya stuck to the contents of their first album, knocking out beautiful renditions of 'Ceremonian' and 'Ipiya', not to mention a heart-rendering run through of 'Answer from the Shooting Star' that seemed almost to silence the chorus of cicadas that had sprung up in the early evening. The performance culminated in a mad bash at 'Smoke Gets in Your Eyes', performed by all three musicians from various positions on the roof of the cafe - if you can't beat the sound system, you might as well just rise above it.
Gig over, they settled amongst the audience and guitars were handed around. The last I recall is Takashi Ueno and I hammering out versions of 'Pinball Wizard' and 'Start Me Up', this master of Japanese avant guard apparently at his most relaxed with Keef's chord configurations at his fingertips. Aren't we all?"
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