Nohshintoh


Date: 2008-05-05


Location: Nagoya, Japan


Venue: Club Rock'N'Roll


Event: 
Ryuu Kyuu Night Vol. 13: Afrirampo Iki Iki Fukkatsu Matsuri
(Imperial Dragon Night Vol. 13: 
Afrirampo Alive and Kickin' Come-back Festival)


Source: AUD/SBD ~75/25~ live matrix
Studio Projects C4 pair (ORTF: 110*-30cm) + stereo SBD > 
Yamaha mg102c > Tascam Porta07 > Marantz PMD660 -> 
Lexar 4.0g 60x Compact Flash -> WAV16/44.1(0)


Lineage:  WAV(0) -> (USB -> HD) -> WAV(1) ->
Audacity 1.3.2-beta (Unicode)[track split] -> WAV(2) ->
 shntool fix -o wav -nopad -noskip -> WAV(3) ->
flac 1.1.4 -> flac16(0)


Set List:
trk: title [time]
     /pronunciation/ (translation) 

Disc 1

01: crowd [1:11.00] >
02: Free Form Improv [2:47.22]  >
03: San Cho Me No Hito [2:38.35] >
    /sahn choh may no hee-toh/ (3rd Block People)
03: Jump [7:04.72]
04: "konban ha" [0:29.70]
05: Inochi [9:38.05] 
    /ee-noh-chee/ (Life Force)
06: Horo Yori [3:41.31]
    /ho-rlo yo-rlee/ (Over The Top)
07: "itsu shinn demo ii... sore ha iyada" [0:34.32]
    /ee-tsoo sheen-deh-mo ee ... soh-rlay wa ee-yah-dah/
    (I'm ready to die any time... no I'm not)
08: Uuchii [2:41.56]
    /oo-oochee-ee/ (7, 8)


Total time: [30:47.23]


Artist Note:

http://busaichedelic.org/nohshintoh
http://myspace.com/nohshintoh


Band Members:

Haru-chan: vocals/synthesizer (pronounced /ha-rloo/) - fire
Sakai-san: bass/chorus vo. (pronounced /sa-ka-ee/) - earth
Take: drums/vocals/pianica (pronounced /tah-kay/) - water
Yagi-chan: guitar/chorus vo. (pronounced /yah-gee/) -earth
Eiichi: dub/vocals/rhythm box (pronounced /ay-eechee/) - earth



They are like a baby, both cute and grotesque at the same time



This group have been together for somewhere around 20 years,
starting out as a free-form new wave goth punk/krautrock unit 
with the Tsuchiya brothers (Haru and Take) and Sakai-san. 
Yagi joined the group later and his cutting Junior Marvin 
inspired guitar playing and Haru-chan's discovery of
Lee 'Scratch' Perry transformed them into a non-rasta dub band
A real down-home Japanese spirit molds this wide range of music 
into an original sound I call 'Japanese Spiritual New Wave Dub'. 
Perhaps you can imagine Nina Hagen produced by Lee "Scratch" Perry 
with The Slits' Japanese alter-ego as the backing group. 
Eichi, better known by his solo project, "Ichi" is the newest 
member and defacto band manager.






Recording Note:

Recorded between 4 and 5 meters from the stage at a height of 
approximately 2.5 meters (about 30cm from the ceiling) 
with the back legs of the mic stand touching the base 
of the mixing booth, which is on a riser of a little over 50cm. 
The mics were at about the same height as the sound man's head. 
The booth is off-center from the stage, 
The mics were roughly centred, but with a large and potentially
energetic crowd I took advantage of the fact that the house-right
corner of the mixing booth jutts out like a square collumn,
allowing me to somewhat hide one mic-stand leg in the indented
area and another under the table the soundman kindly provided me.
(It helps to call in advance! :-) Thanks!)

I chose ORTF to keep the mics from pointing directly at the 
stacks which, for an electric band, can be painfully loud.

A sound-board line was also available to me and this recording
is a matrix of the soundboard and mics 
(Again, it pays to call in advance. Thanks! :-) )

To get an idea of the mix, the dials on the mg102c were set at
3 o'clock for the C4s and 9 o'clock for the sbd.
The input gain for the C4s was also at 3 o'clock, which is
2 lines short of -60, 
while the gain for the line from the board is full,
according to my notes... I may have made adjustments later.

I was trying to adjust the line percentage
during the second track, but it should settle down
by the time the third starts.

The mixer was used solely as a pre-amp to line in to the 660.
No EQ or balance adjustments were made.

The Yamaha MG102C sends phantom power to all of the balanced
inputs. To be safe (ie, to not be responsible for potentially 
burning out the mixing console mid-set... I still don't know
if should worry about that btw) 
I took an unbalanced line from the board.
The sound-man said, he wasn't sure if it would hurt the console, 
but thanked me for taking that into consideration and 
provided me with balanced to unbalanced cables. (Thanks again!)

I was getting a buzz from the board when everything was quiet.
At this writing I don't know if the unblanaced input
is the source of the buzz or if it is because the mixing 
console and the light show are on the same circuit. 
Maybe both. The noise seemed to start after sound-check 
and once the stage lights were turned on
before the doors opened.

I don't hear it when the band is playing and the levels are 
set as above.

Overall the level is a bit low, but clean.

I'm a little nervous about trying to add gain or normalise
in post using Audacity, but the volume will need to be 
adjusted if this is used in a mix or played sequentially between
other recordings.

I had a look at adding some gain, but
there are a few peaks here and there that would need to be 
attenuated in order to boost the whole thing, so 
I've left it in its original state.


A Tascam Porta07 was also in the chain ahead of the PMD660.
Nohshintoh had been requesting
an analogue master. This was partially due to the flaws
found in the previous digital Club Rock'N'Roll recording.
This was still a rather experimental set-up and I hadn't fully
gained confidence that the PMD660 could withstand the club's
sound system, even line-in, so I put it at the end. 

I rolled cassette during Nohshintoh's set, but 
this is the PMD660 source. It's really not so much trouble,
but I have yet to play the cassette for an A to D convert.

I'll put that up at a later date, 
just for curiositiy's sake.


Venue Note:

Club Rock'N'Roll is a blasting square box of a club
with the stage tucked into a slightly smaller box between
two giant speaker stacks. Almost any performer can reach up
and touch the ceiling from the stage.

Every instrument goes through the house PA. 
The floor space is about 5 meters deep and 6 or 7 wide. 
The bar is up two steps and a further 3 meters to house left 
with no wall separating it from the floor.

Without the Yamaha mixer, recording here with a stock PMD660
would be nearly impossible. The bass frequencies distorted
heavily in my one attempt. At that time the levels were high, 
but within reason, I'd thought.


Comment:

Brought to you by busaichedelic.org (aka BS Entertainment) :-)

Nohshintoh  reserve the right to sell or 
otherwise distribute any portions of this recording as they please. 

For those who know, you can ignore this,
those new to trading might be interested to read the following.
:-)

Feel free to pass it along, or trade,
Let's not make money off the artist without their involvement, ok?
Please include this info file with any further trades
if possible.
Transparency is peace-of-mind. :-)
Trading as FLAC preserves quality for those further down the line
Please add a CDR(N+1) generation to CDR you burn.
Note, the current lineage has no CDRs so if you've downloaded this
and burn it, that would be the master CDR, thus CDR(0)...
at least, that's how I'd do it. :-) peace

-S

