A Head Full of Wishes is a site for Galaxie 500, Luna, Damon & Naomi, Dean & Britta and Dean Wareham. With news, articles and lists of releases and past and future shows.
My record collection
#184: Damon & Naomi - Shibuya O-Nest, Tokyo (DVD)
This was the second of two limited run DVDs of live shows that Damon & Naomi released, this one was recorded over two nights in Tokyo in January 2008 with Michio Kurihara on guitar, Helena Espvall on cello and Bhob Rainey on sax.
It’s a lovely performance shot with a couple of static cameras and has lots of nice long, lingering shots, although not always lingering where you might want it to be, most notably during Kurihara’s fabulous guitar freak-out during This Car… which has Naomi in the way at the beginning of it, and that would generally be no hardship, but the freak-out is so unexpected that it seems a shame we don’t see the beginning of it. It does later cut to the other camera so we don’t miss it all!
There’s an eight minute clip of Stars Never Fade from the DVD on YouTube that is pretty special too - with Kurihara and Helena Espvall duelling instruments
I love live albums, a couple of my favourite albums of all time are live ones, and I do like live video clips that turn up on YouTube - but full live concert videos for some reason don’t work, perhaps because a live audio recording can take you into the room, but a live video is clearly not where you were, or where you stood? I guess I’m not alone since video still hasn’t become a method of music distribution.
Having said that, this is lovely as a record of a show (that I wasn’t at). It’s very heavy on tracks from Within These Walls - seven of the 12 tracks are from that album, but that’s what they were promoting, and Lilac Land and Stars Never Fade are up amongst my favourite Damon & Naomi tracks so, no complaints here.
Damon & Naomi are back in Tokyo next week for a couple of dates - and if you’re not in Tokyo you can still enjoy their show on the 5th November online!
- Catalogue Number: AHFOW 13/009
- Artist: Damon & Naomi
- Title: Shibuya O-Nest, Tokyo, Japan, 2008
- Format: DVD
- Bought direct from Damon & Naomi