By Greggory Moore
Perhaps you’ve had occasion to be out somewhere with no intention of hearing live music — instead just wanting to read, work, indulge in coffee and conversation — and to have felt that pang of annoyance when you realized a band was about to play. If you’ve been lucky, at least a few of those pangs have been pushed aside by the pleasure of a new discovery, a new shade finding a place in your personal musical spectrum.
It was one night near the end of 2006 while at Portfolio that the band oto (who plays Viento y Agua on March 24) afforded me such an experience. Three young men took to the stage with acoustic guitars, a tiny drum set, a decrepit portable organ, a melodica, and a xylophone. With their brand of quiet, spacious, tastefully simple artistry they sent an airy musical breeze throughout the coffeehouse that in a mere half-hour had blown through and blended back into the silence that is ever-present in the band’s compositions.
“(The name ‘oto’) doesn’t mean anything,” Hiro confesses, “it just looks nice.” oto formed less than 18 months ago — amusingly enough (if you’ve got a penchant for nerdy linguistic humor), from the remains of a band called “soto.” Hiro and Boon, along with Takeshi (who is still a member of oto, though he’s back in his native Japan), decided to change the sound from soto’s “more instrumental post-rock (to) more organic sounds.”
Hiro, 25, has lived in North America for the majority of his life, growing up in Ottawa before eventually graduating from UC Irvine with a degree in Computer Science.
Boon, 26, found himself enrolled in one of New York’s music universities even before he spoke much English. But the language barrier was not the one he found insurmountable. “College life was great,” he recalls, “but musically I had a hard time getting along with New Yorkers. … They had a different attitude and behavior toward artistic (things).” Since graduating and a return trip to Japan, he’s lived in Long Beach for the last two years, attending CSULB and majoring in Microbiology.
Tai, 21, made his way to Irvine Valley College straight out of middle school with almost no English. When Takeshi had to leave in September, Hiro recruited Tai to fill in. Tai’s musical experience had been limited to the melodica (an instrument that “every Japanese elementary-school student has to learn to play,” he reports), but he was thrilled with the opportunity, as he was a big fan of oto’s music. The lineup clicked, and oto soldiered on without missing a beat. Hiro says that the ideal live situation would be for Takeshi to return and for the band to perform as a quartet, but as it is Takeshi partakes in trans-Pacific electronic recording sessions (and in fact will be enjoying a short stay in the U.S. in April for more recording and possibly one of those ideal performances); and the three Stateside members are well able to execute oto’s delicate and haunting soundscapes.
The boys in oto seem almost painfully shy (“We don’t have many friends,” Hiro laughs. “I think we’re lacking social skills”), and so the band had no luck getting shows until they joined MySpace at the beginning of 2006. That, along with exposure on Internet music label creation-centre.com, paid immediate dividends, as venues began to seek oto out. Still, although they have played steadily since then (mostly in L.A. art galleries), they have taken gigs sparingly; and only now are they beginning to think about seriously seeking out a record label. The first step will be to add three finished studio tracks to the three they’ve completed, which will give them a six-song demo to shop around.
In the interim, oto is likely to continue to gain fans where-/whenever they play — a phenomenon to which Shea Gauer, who has featured oto at {open} (and hopes to do so again at the bookstore’s new location), enthusiastically bears witness. “It was one of those things where all these people kept telling me about (oto), because they were so surprised at how good the band was,” he says. “They would say, ‘Man, I saw this group at Portfolio — they were amazing!’ … I still get people telling me about how they happened to see this band that was really good: ‘They’re these Japanese guys…I didn’t catch their name or anything, but I love their sound.’ They’re like an unknown band, but they’re really coming up right now, which is exciting. … All these people around know who they are. … I play (their music) all the time in the shop. It’s one of those (discs) that stays in the CD changer, and I just put other things in around it.”
At 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, March 24, oto will play Viento y Agua (4007 E. Fourth St.; (562) 434-1182) — an intimate space for intimate music, something you should not miss. To get yourself in the oto loop, visit www.otosound.net and myspace.com/otosound.
(Note: this piece was originally printed in the Gazette Newspapers.)