DISCO!!! DISCO!!! DISCO!!!

It was not long after The Telephones took the stage that frontman Akira Ishige was screaming at the crowd in his shrieking falsetto: “ARE YOU DISCO!!! ARE YOU DISCO!!!” And this against a backdrop of guitar noise. The avant-pop Tokyo 4-piece has never been embarrassed about being 100% pro-disco while playing music that is often based in guitars and drawing from new wave and punk. Lester Bangs is surely turning over in his grave.

But how can you not smile at a band that is young, 100% energy, jumping all over the stage, crowd surfing from the first note and screaming continuously, incessantly, unstoppingly about “disco”. Their lyrics went: “I love disco!”, “disco disco all the time”, “A.B.C. disco” and “We’re crazy for the devil.” And that just from the first three songs.

They were not only about guitars. Listening to the keyboard parts, it crossed my mind to peg them as a Japanese MGMT, but I will just mention it to give you some rough coordinates. By the fifth song, they had swung around to a booming, pre-recorded electronic disco track. After that, they went back to the guitar disco-punk. And kept screaming, and a sizable White Stage crowd was loving it. They are a party band, and as far as they are concerned, the party is whenever they are playing. For this particular occasion, it was between two o’clock and three o’clock in the afternoon.