Hikashu at Ausland / Saturday, 24.10.2015

Although being recognized as a rock band, Hikashu has been incorporating elements of spontaneity and improvisation into their music for years. For instance, their concert has no setlist and with lots of room for experimentation.

In a sense, vocalist Makigami Koichi decided to pursue music accidentally. In his formative years, his main aspiration was to become an underground theater actor. But preparing some original music for his own theatrical work with friends, he soon discovered how enjoyable it was, and the friends felt the same, so they decided to form a rock band together instead of theater. They called themselves Hikashu and that’s how the band started. It was 1978.

Here below how they described their relationship with Berlin and Deutschland:

” We are very glad to have an opportunity to perform in the city.
In fact, we had something to do with your country.
We covered two tunes of Kraftwerk, Model and Radioactivity, and in the early 90s we recorded two albums at Hansaton Studio in Berlin. Around that time, we did a few small gigs in Berlin and Hannover. And a cultural event called Japan Verstehen in Bremen invited us so we performed there as well.
In the 1990s, Torsten Rasch from Dresden joined the band. Later he released an album called “Mein Herz Brennt,” which is a collection of Rammstein songs in orchestral arrangement, on Deutsche Grammophon label. It was the first solo album for him and he made a pretty good start. Since then Mr. Rasch, now resides in Berlin, has been active as a classic composer. Moreover in 1990, Sakaide Masami, our bass player, wrote some ballet music for Nationaltheater Mannheim which his spouse was a member.
However, after that, our relationship with Deutschland was somewhat disrupted, unfortunately. So it’s great pleasure for us to tour the country at last, after some twenty years.
Hikashu’s music is an amalgam of various elements. Things like traditional music, popular music, modern serious music, and a bit complicated kind of contemporary rock, are elaborately intertwined, and additionally there are improvisation of our own. This might sound difficult, but actually our music is quite accessible. For our live performances, every element comes forth one after another spotaneously, with our sense of humor. Usually we don’t prepare setlists beforehand, and pay attention to it being like a huge stream of long, continous improvisation. We hope you experience the one and only world of Hikashu on the spot.
We look forward to seeing you soon at the gig. Thank you.
Hikashu from Japan ”