ICHIKO AOBA

ICHIKO AOBA/GWENIFER RAYMOND AT MAYFLOWER STUDIOS, SOUTHAMPTON – 14/11/21

There I am dawdling along, having killed some time wandering around the empty municipal spaces of the city, thinking I have all the time in the world, daydreaming in the toilets, when a voice disturbs my reverie. “Please take your seat,” it says. “This evening’s performance will be starting in five minutes.” It's very commanding, the voice, and it unsettles me a little. I rush through the disorientating corridors of the MAYFLOWER STUDIOS, and hand my ticket to a grey haired man. He scans it with a little handheld device. This is how things work. I take my seat and look around. Two Japanese girls are showing each other memes.

The empty municipal spaces of the blah blah

There's something very exciting about the way GWENIFER RAYMOND plays the guitar. There's something tense and edgy about it, like there's about to be a showdown, or someone's been murdered, or some bad news has just come to town, or there's a storm coming, or the storm has just been. There's something quite Gothic about it. If Mary Shelley or Emily Brontë had been a solo guitar player, influenced by the American Primitive tradition, I imagine they might have produced music like this. There's something disquieting about it, so it's hard not to feel a little on edge. It keeps you on your toes. I close my eyes and lose myself for a moment, but then I open them again, deciding it best to keep my wits about me. You just never know. It's troubling music, dark and stormy. "Hi, I'm Gwen," says Gwen, after a few songs. "It's nice to meet you all. I'm not very good at this bit, so I'm just going to play some more guitar." It's like a stormy sea, I decide. It's like what a stormy sea would sound like it if was music. That's what it's like. 
 

Don't close your eyes

During the interval ICHIKO AOBA glides onto the stage. The Japanese girls gasp. She sits down and starts playing her guitar, whistling like a songbird, while an iPad-clutching soundman makes little adjustments, and talks in low, whispered tones, and two other men construct a merch stall. She has a little team of helpful men. One of the merch stall guys also doubles up as a telling-people-to-stop-making-videos guy. He just sort of steps forward and waves his hand in front of people making videos and his meaning is clear. Aoba, meanwhile, is warming up with a wordless version of My Favourite Things. How lovely, I think. How delightful. And then the lights and the helpful men fade and the show begins. 
 

Ichiko Aoba and the Helpful Men

Aoba's music is incredibly pretty. It's hard to imagine anything prettier. It reminds me of water. Like water, it's impossible to imagine her making a mistake or forgetting her words. Water doesn’t make mistakes. It all seems perfectly natural. At one point she pretends her fingers are a little creature scurrying along her mic stand. She gobbles it up (pretends to) and at the end of the song she regurgitates it (pretends to) and it scurries off. It's pretty cute. I can’t imagine anything cuter.

‘Water doesn’t give a damn’ D.C. BERMAN

Interestingly, her style forms a marked contrast with Raymond's. While Raymond's music instils a sense of restless unease in the listener, the effect of Aoba's to create a sense of calm and serenity. The differences between them seem perfectly symbolised by their choice of drinks, Raymond opting for a bottle of beer, while Aoba sips from a half-full tumbler of water.

At the end the merch stall is mobbed, but no one's buying anything. “There's no vinyl, I'm afraid,” says the merch guy, which explains it. Damn you, vinyl delays. We shuffle out. It's only nine thirty. The two young boys behind me are going to be able to catch the earlier train if they hurry.