If you are a fan of wacky synths, raise your hand (my hand goes up). Osaka’s super-eclectic Neco Nemuru has you covered! Their music is often called an instrumental multi-genre mashup with a hard throughline of Japanese bon-odori music. People do say that, and those people are right!

The set opened with a genre defying banger you could imagine hearing at the coolest matsuri in outer space. Dueling lead guitars, drums heavy on the non-kit percussion vibe, synths, and all anchored by a funky-as-funky-can-be bass.

Again, bon-odori comes up a lot in conversations about this band. But Neco Nemuru proves that the matsuri feeling is just another form of isolated and condensed summer vibes. The clouds parted just in time for their set, and like Ultraman himself the band and audience seemed to be powered by the summer rays.

The music throughout the set would flit from breezy genre to vibez-y genre like a well tanned butterfly. And the crowd was like a gaggle of Coppertone kids chasing that butterfly around. No need to catch it, just fun to chase. There were heavy crowd interactions the whole time, from clapping to wolf howls and verbal ejaculations, the crowd was having as much fun as the band.

It was hard to tell where one song ended and the next began, the jam just went on and on. And before you knew it their 40 minutes had gone by, just like a seemingly endless summer afternoon, leaving the crowd grinning and satisfied. Perhaps a little winded as well. But grinning and ready to see what the rest of the day had in store for them.