San Francisco Adventure + Show Journal (Ryosuke Kiyasu, Heckdorlan, The Escape Agency)

August 30th, 2019. My Mom and I went into SF to go see Ryosuke Kiyasu and some other folks play. We were going for Kiyasu and I didn't know of the other people playing which made for a nice surprise. I saw Kiyasu perform before in Sete Star Sept in Japan, I'll post about that another day.

Anyways, the venue was at the faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar away side of San Francisco. SF is on a little peninsula, one side is The Bay and where everything else is. The bay side of the city is where all the big buildings and stuff are. The farther you go to the ocean-coast side the more residential it gets. BART (our subway), doesn't go into a whole outer corner of the city, leading us to have to take a Muni. Muni trains are cool af but I don't think I had ridden one prior to this. So, we go to Bart, get off Bart, walk around the city a bit and get matcha from a coffee place then back down into Bart for the Muni. The Muni quickly arrived and it looked to be an older model, the trains looked really cool from both the outside and inside. 電車でGO!

The train was full of people and a nice old man moved over so I could sit with my Mom. I would've taken a photo inside but with people everywhere I decided not too. The Muni was a lot of fun, its almost like a tour bus as it goes in weird areas and is far more scenic than Bart is. The Muni goes underground like a subway train (which was loud and very cool, the train had really nice older subway lighting); but then it also goes on the street and becomes a cable car bus thing. We had to go really far so we rode the Muni for quite awhile as it took us deeper and deeper into the residential side of San Francisco. The Muni has a million of very odd stops, many of the stops aren't marked anywhere and it will just stop in the street and let someone out. We accidentally got off a few blocks early but it was a nice day and a nice walk the rest of the way.

We quickly located the venue and I admired the wasps on the building. I keep pet wasps (will explain in another post), so I thought this was very cool.

We were super early and only a few blocks away from the beach so we decided to head over there to kill some time and explore a bit. The beach was super close by, and at the end of the street was where the Muni trains go in a big curve to turn around and go back on their way.

We get to the beach which runs along a highway that goes down the coast. Right at where we were was a massive sand hill which I of course immediately ran up. The view from the sand hill was amazing, I have a lot of photos from this that will be released in time, but here are some photos.

  

I helped my Mom up a less-steep part of the sand hill and we stayed up there awhile. We then went down and to the shore, the sand by the shore was like more stable ground. I played around with the water running at it when it receded then going backwards when it came pouring in. Also used chuuni powers to stop the water before it reached me. We had been having a nice time and I was taking photos and field recordings the whole time (ever since we reached SF I was doing recordings and taking photos). The beach had some stuff of interest, dead sea life that washed ashore. There was a rotting seagull carcass but I wont post that photo, but here are some others.

  

So, it was finally time to head back to the venue. We went to the venue and were still early. Then, one of the bands playing was extremely late so we ended up chilling in the venue for a long time before it got started. Finally, everyone was there, the equipment set up, and the show began! Sadly I didn't think to take any photos of the bands and artists performing.

  

The first band that played was Heckdorlan, this band was insanely good. It was two people, a bassist and a drummer, and both were on vocals. They were doing noisecore with some elements of powerviolence and hardcore punk. Their tracks were much longer than the usual noisecore but it was insanely good. The songs were very structured and kept switching between blasts of noisecore, to hardhitting powerviolence, to slow sludgy (and very noisy) slammy riffs. The vocals were reminiscent of AxCx, a mixture of shouted/yelled vocals and some very Seth Putnam-esque vocals. They were extremely loud and made my ears ring after their first song. They were amazing and really good.

The second artist up was Ryosuke Kiyasu. He was doing his signature snare drum solo and it was really incredible to finally see this live. My seat was really close to where he was performing which made it all the more intense. He played the snare drum in a variety of avant-garde jazzy styles with an assortment of tools. The patterns ranged from jazzy to noisy to really fast and chaotic to rhythmic. He was doing some insanely fast snare rushes, seriously sounded like a computer was doing it. He also played his shoe, blew on the drum (while possibly hitting himself in the face with the drumstick), and slammed the drum on the table a few times. He moved all around the venue as he attacked his snare, then would noisily drag the table back into position. He also put his leg up on the drum and stuff like that. His performance was crazy good and I enjoyed it a lot, was really happy to finally see the snare drum solo live.

The final band that played was The Escape Agency, a really talented post-rock band. Post-rock stuff is amazing, and they were doing the technical kind of stuff where it constantly changes every 20 - 40 seconds. They seriously played every kind of post-rock there is, even some post-black metal riffs were showcased. Many of the songs were mostly instrumental but there were some vocals too that gave it a really indie vibe (their opening track was more indie than post-rock, but it definitely had those post-rock vibes that I love). Both the guitarist and drummer were insanely good and totally in sync with each other. At the end of their set the guitarist threw his guitar down onto the pedals and started punching it repeatedly. He then picked it up and speed strummed a nice noisy drone which closed out the show. They apparently usually have a bassist too, but this performance was drums, guitar, and vocals only (guitar and vocals were the same person). Despite not having their bassist, this band totally rocked it. The drummer broke a stick too and it went flying.

The show was over and my ears were ringing. The venue was very small and people were using rather large speakers and amps. It was a really amazing event and I had a ton of fun.

The trip was over, and it was now time to take a nighttime Muni back to Bart. I was excited to see the scenery again but at night, but sadly the brightly lit newer model Muni made it nearly impossible to see outside through the reflective glass.


 

We got back to Bart, Bart to home station, home station to home, and that was the trip~!


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In the future I will write about some older shows I went to and provide journals for those, so stay tuned~! Reminder, this blog is updated daily; whether you want to check it daily, weekly, or whatever is up to you~~