Concert Review: Kikagaku Moyo Live at the Imperial

Wednesday 17th, October 2018 / 07:18
Photos and Review By Maddy Cristall

Saturday, October 6

The 1960s reviving psych rock band Kikagaku Moyo took the sold out crowd at the Imperial to a different dimension. It’s difficult to write about psychedelic rock without sounding like a pretentious stoner, however it’s certainly possible. Kikagaku Moyo are a a five piece band that hails from Tokyo, Japan. They all look as though they’re in 11th grade and just snuck into a Black Sabbath Concert but they play music like they’re in Black Sabbath, the early stuff at that.

Playing for almost two brain bending hours, each of them clad entirely in vertical stripes and astutely focused on their instrument. Their particular style of psych rock is much softer than contemporary heavier bands in the genre such as Thee Oh Sees and the Black Angels. Kikagaku Moyo’s music is much more of a truly surreal tapestry of sound like bands actually from the 60s such as 13th Floor Elevators and Shocking Blue. Each song gracefully merged into the next which made for zero silence for the entire performance. There is no time to think about the next song because it is already happening.

The band has four stunning albums and each one is very much a record, not a collection of songs. This is refreshing in a our “play free bird” kind of society. The audience was unsurprisingly bewildered by the sonic avalanche happening right before us. The band plays in Vancouver frequently and even though fans know their concerts are going to be great, they somehow surpasses all expectations. This is because their music isn’t linear, it’s an experience that you get lost in. Their concerts are like a ticket to a temporary time travel that includes cocktails. Needles to say, this performance was like a vacation from our society which in today’s climate felt absolutely amazing.


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