For the most part at Oberlin, Kishi Bashi’s work had not been heard. Despite this, he flooded the Cat in the Cream to maximum capacity this last Saturday. This was a rare feat, especially for unknown performers. However, his social proof and music spoke for itself – As a multi-instrumentalist, graduate of Berklee College of Music, and composer, Kishi Bashi did not have to prove himself as an exciting act. But, he did anyway.
Bashi worked with longtime friend and banjo player Tall Tall Trees to put on an exciting performance. Half of the stage was filled with pedalboards for the two musicians, which were put to good use. The show opened with Bashi as a solo act, playing songs from his 2016 release Sonderlust. I was able to talk to him while writing a show preview for the Oberlin Review, and he was absolutely right when he said his live style is completely different from his studio sound. What remained was his effortless control over the sound from his violin, and filling the room with lower octaves on the violin through the use of his effects board.
It was magic. The weight of the audience was lifted around me, and I was finally calm. Bashi touted his classical training in his traversals up and down the neck of the violin. Students clapped along whenever they could- One would think that for a campus of conservatory students the clapping would stay on beat. Other minor hiccups included the lack of an optimized sound on stage, where both performers turned a joke into the constant requests for turning microphones up and down.
One cannot write down Bashi’s performance as static- There were changes at every corner. He started to beatbox, which served as a driving force in his songs. He blended in pizzicatos as he built his songs, and harmonized with himself. His duo partner joined the fray, and proudly boasted his glowing banjo (He called it the banjotron), which he used as a drum. But this was not a traditional folk setting- Trees acted as a rhythmic and percussive section for Bashi. The use of the banjo was comparable to an electric guitar at times, and a drum in other songs. The momentum of the finished songs was incredible, but they ended as soon as they started. Bashi built up his next songs just as quickly, but he never put himself in the groove of each piece for too long.
Bashi and Tall Tall Trees had a wonderful dynamic together- They have known each other for years, and picked up wherever they left off. In an on-stage comment, Trees said that no matter how long time had passed between them, Bashi’s new material always kept its signature style. The improvisational portions of the show kept a break between looped songs. They captured the intimacy between the two as performers who know each other’s styles and repeated motifs- You could see it in the smiles and locked eyes between one another.
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