On Friday, I was transported to a pixelated wonderland for a night of music and dancing—that is to say, I saw Anamanuguchi play at Backstage Bar.
Anamanaguchi is a chiptune band founded in New York back in 2004. I first became aware of them when they soundtracked the excellent (and impossible to find anymore, which makes me “sad and stuff”) video game adaption of the Scott Pilgrim comic book series. More than a decade later, in 2019, the band has a new album, [USA], out on one of my favorite labels, Polyvinyl (Jeff Rosenstock, Chris Farren, American Football, etc). This year, they also “finally” made their way to Vegas – “finall”y in quotes because the band’s guitarist, Peter Berkman, mentioned that they did play the DEFCON Hacking Conference in Vegas back in 2014.
Berkman and company – guitarist Ary Warnaar, bassist James DeVito and drummer Luke Silas – seemed shocked and visibly happy at the turn out, and to be honest, so was I. I’m admittedly not tuned in (no pun intended) at all to the chiptune scene in Vegas, even though I do enjoy the music, so I had no idea what to expect. With no expectations, I was pleasantly surprised to see Backstage Bar closer to capacity than I had ever seen it outside of a Punk Rock Bowling club show.
And much of the crowd – which was skewed fairly young – actually danced to fan favorites like “Miku,” “Endless Fantasy” and “Another Winter.” It’s like someone entered a cheat code to remove the “arms crossed, standing in the back” concert attitude that’s all too prevalent. For those who didn’t want to boogie, watching the band’s captivating light show was enough to entertain. The band just has such great energy live and it was so cool to see how they blend electronic elements with the live instrumentation.
Players Two and Three to Anamanaguchi’s Player One – aka the openers – were electronic artists Nullsleep from New York and locals Default Genders. Nullsleep is the moniker of Jeremiah Johnson, who creates music with their laptop, Game Boy and NES (and possibly more).
Default Genders, consisting solely of Jaime Brooks, was sandwiched between the two east coast acts. Brooks sang through a voice modulator – giving the vocals a Wall*E-esque quality – over music playing from their laptop. The two acts both fit the bill well but with very different energy: Johnson being the epitome of chill, not surprising due to his long history in the genre, while Brooks exhibited more of a nervous energy.
After a good turn out and fun vibes, hopefully Anamanaguchi decide to continue to add Vegas to their touring schedule.
-Emily Matview
Photos by Aaron Mattern | https://www.flickr.com/photos/akmofoto/
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