As I have talked about before, Mass of the Fermenting Dregs are one of my favourite bands. I discovered them back in 2017, and have since been fortunate enough to see them live a total of five times – three of which have been in Japan. As luck so had it, they happened to be playing a show in Shibuya over the time I’ve been in Tokyo recently. What’s more, the gig was supporting Haru Nemuri, who I also like a lot, and have taken pictures of in Glasgow before. Obviously, I had to go.
The band gave me a photo pass, after I shot them in Manchester on their European tour, and so I took along both the Sony A7 IV and the M6, loaded up with some of my dwindling stock of Neopan 1600. The latter which I’ll get around to processing and scanning at some point.
The gig was being filmed, which meant that there were a bunch of videographers in the pit. That is always tricky to contend with, as by the nature of video they take up a lot of space, move around a lot, and are able to be less flexible than photographers. So long as people are polite and considerate of each other, that can usually be navigated fairly easily. Unfortunately though, one of the videographers was pretty rude to me right from the get-go – questioning why I was there and where I was standing – which made things much more awkward than they needed to be (naturally of course, they weren’t Japanese). I’ve been shooting gigs for about twenty years at this point, and I wish more people would realise much quicker that it is much easier for everybody if you are just pleasant to one another.
Anyway, the band were great, though I felt like I didn’t get much time to take in the set, as I was concentrating on getting decent shots in relatively challenging circumstances. There wasn’t any time limit like you usually find at these things (first three no flash etc), and I was painfully aware that we were blocking the people in the front row who had paid to be there, which meant crouching down to try and limit the interference, though that also made it much harder to get good angles – and no matter where I went I couldn’t get a usable shot of Isao on drums. My legs are now killing me – which is probably a sign that I need to get back into the gym and do more squats.
At one point Natsuko started speaking about their European tour, and whilst I am not exactly fluent in Japanese, I knew enough to understand that she was saying that their photographer from Glasgow in Manchester had also come along to Japan and was shooting the gig… something confirmed when they all smiled, clapped and waved – which was both lovely and unexpected.
As usual, I took far too many pictures to share them all here, but since I am having trouble deciding which ones are worthy for the blog, I’ll just dump a whole bunch below. That’s half the point of this place, after all.
Now I like Haru Nemuri’s music, so getting to see her live back in Glasgow was great, but I also really enjoyed taking pictures. She is very expressive on stage, and a really interesting performer to watch. The venue in Shibuy was much larger than the Hug and Pint, and I was looking forward to seeing her presence expand to match the size. Within just the first few minutes, she had stepped right over my head and onto the barrier to interact with the crowd.
One thing that always strikes me about gigs in Japan is just how quiet the crowd are in between songs. Back home there is always some kind of constant noise – an energy and electricity. In Tokyo, it’s often eerily silent. That brings its own kind of atmosphere, and it worked especially well with how intense Haru’s performance can be.
Until next time.
Note: A bunch of these pictures have since been featured in Rolling Stone Japan.