Takeshi Nishimoto x Kazuhide Yamaji feat Mergrim at Spektrum Berlin / Friday, 20.10.2017

Takeshi Nishimoto and Kazuhide Yamaji present the European premiere of their performance piece Two Guitars at Spektrum in Neukölln this October.

Takeshi Nishimoto (born in Fukuoka, Japan) is a classically-trained guitarist and composer who is conversant with European, Northern Indian, and American jazz classical traditions. In addition to collaborations with diverse artists late sitar master Rahul Sakyaputra to I’m Not a Gun associate John Tejada, Nishimoto has also performed extensively as a solo artist. Nishimoto’s second solo album, Lavandula was released from Berlin based Record Label, Sonic Pieces in 2013.

Kazuhide Yamaji is a Japanese guitarist, vocalist, composer, producer, he has over 30 years of experience. He was born in Yokohama in 1966, and now lives in Tokyo. In 1987, he started music under the influence of musicians like Television, The Velvet Underground, Sonic Youth, Neil Young, and so on. The Guitar Magazine, known as one of the most famous musical publications in Japan, ranked Kazuhide at 49th in list the “Greatest Guitarists of All Time in Japan“ in 2017.

Yamaji’s band “ dip ” has released 12 albums and two live albums to date. Addition to this, he has released three albums and more than 20 CD-Rs as a solo musician. As a guitarist, he is highly regarded as a great improviser and played with famous and great musicians Keiji Haino, Tom Verlaine. Yamaji has performed at “Fuji Rock festival”, one of the most big music festivals in Japanese the past five years in a row.

As a film music composer, Yamaji composed and performed in several movies such as “9 souls” and “Tokyo Rampage (known as “pornostar” in Japanese) by Toshiaki Toyoda, a Japanese film director. His guitar sound is the style of psychedelic, noise music, same time he is really good at playing improvised music in an imaginative way. As a singer-songwriter, he has an established reputation for nuanced, lyrical, heart-searching style of singing, and melodiousness.

Takeshi and Kazuhide will be joined for their second set by Mergrim who will provide modular synth accompaniment. Mergrim is a solo project by Takahisa Mitsumori, a musician born in Takaraduka Hyogo. He is owener of Electronic music label moph records. He has 4 albums released so far with solo / unit / live remix album etc. He is also the booking director of the club KGR (n) in Kagurazaka Tokyo.

At Digital in Berlin we are excited to present this exclusive performance. We are giving away a pair of tickets for the show – send a mail to win@digitalinberlin.de with “Two Guitars” as the subject for a chance to win.