Wednesday 12 February 2014

Currently listening to: Bito

Ah, YouTube. It may be stuffed full of videos of pranks and home-made channels whose videos have titles that scream “You just won’t believe this dirty fail!” but on the positive side you can find examples of almost anything.

I decided to look for some Japanese singer songwriters. Recently I’d been thinking about the archetypal guitar playing troubadour, the kind slightly arrhythmic, eccentric yet deeply passionate type who would suddenly go into a rambling monologue about something, with only the occasional strum on the guitar to reassure the audience that he hadn't forgotten about the song. Like the kind I'd seen in Live Tape or even episode one of Ueno Juri no Itsutsu no Kaban. A couple of days ago, I wondered if I could find a few on the internet.

Before long, I found myself watching a video of some guy in a tiny venue, singing to his own guitar playing, and I was captivated. He had a great soulful voice, and after searching around I found about half a dozen more songs, and I became more and more impressed.


It’s hard to say much more than that, though. With a name like Bito (written in katakana: ビト) it’s hard to find much about him on the internet. His twitter feed (in Japanese) is under the name hamabito69, but that’s about it. I’ve no idea how long he’s been playing or what other things he’s done. But that doesn't matter. I'll just listen to these songs and enjoy the energy behind them.

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