Nikko
Track: Wedding Song
1 Track, Single (2010, Tenzenmen)
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Related: Nikko.
'Wedding Song' is the first taste of Brisbane quintet Nikko's debut album The Warm Side, due soonish on Sydney label Tenzenmen. Despite the title, this is not the kind of song to which you might celebrate matrimony. Rather, it's a low-key plod through fractured guitar, haunted vocals and droning violin. While the song seems poised for an explosive, post rock-esque climax, it never happens, tumbling instead into a miasma of drunken despair.
A classic tale of love lost, 'Wedding Song' is a bitter paean to regret. It tells of silent suffering and torn loyalties, the bleak lyrical mood matched by the band's measured intensity. “We swore to love each other/And sang underneath the stars,” laments Ryan Potter, before revealing, “And now I am at your wedding/Your husband to be was my friend/He asked me to play while you danced and drank/You vowed to love until the end.” He leaves no room for ambiguity; there's a universality to the scene that defies all need for obtuse poetry or vacant symbolism.
by Adam D Mills
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this is.. rather fucking good.
Really really fucking good band. The drumming is surprisingly brutal for this type of music.
i was impressed!
produced by nao anzai!
I like them a lot.
Yeah, this is pretty amazing. The lyric and vocal delivery totally make this song.
their stuff on myspace is very impressive. they play the old bar in late june, you should grab the dj slot frankie.
Yeah, I should. I'll make a point of being there anyway.
im disapointed as we were meant to be supporting them but drew will be in the U.S of A
Bugger!
i dig it - not entirely disimilar to silver city highway...
good tune...makes me want to down a bottle of red at 9.30 am
It's 9:32. You should have had that bottle necked by now.
ah Lax, you know me too well...yet strangely, I hardly know you at all
So it would seem. Hows that second bottle going? Slighty slower I would imagine.
Dave Allen
great song, but another band with a japanese reference for a name. ugh.
yeah shudda called themselves toowoomba
I thought it may have been a reference to Velvet Underground.
nah...could be way off here, but it may be a reference to marking pens?
They call the big fat textas nikkos in queensland - well, we used to when I lived there. When I asked someone for a Nikko in my first Sydney job, they didn't know what the fuck I was talking about
Thought I'd clear up this little debate...
We chose Nikko cus it's neutral. It doesn't have any real significance to us, although Matt was closest with the Velvet Underground thing.
All interpretations are welcome, but it's definitely not a Japanese reference. We'd never heard of Nikko the city when we came up with it, although we've since been told it's very pretty :)
Glad you're all enjoying the track!!
We'll see you in June ; )
yep, way off...not the first time, won't be the last
will definitely see you in June, Sam. Track gets better with each listen.
Great to hear!
You can check out the MySpace for more; www.myspace.com/nikkoband
I liked your summation by the way ie. the bottle of red : )
thanks for clearing that up Sam_Fear.
Nikko is an amazing place, so you could have done worse with the name. Again - great track.
they're also playing pony on June 25 with bodies and a few others
i vividly remember an old rave/timeoff (cantremember) interview with ryan that stating...''the name nikko comes from the japanese word for sun...'' summin like that. anyways. niceoneguys.
clue on their last fm page
Haha, that's not our Last.Fm page, we don't have one. I have no idea why there is a picture of us. Fucking weird....
really!? your songs are on there too!
Hang on, yes it is, but I haven't touched it in ages so now it's full of Nicklodeon cast members and amateur rappers with our name. Tagging is retarded.
better go touch it again
i always think off...
can't wait for the cd? order now at http://www.tenzenmen.com
http://www.triplejunearthed.com/nikko
For one reason or another, I've been receiving a lot of outstandingly sad music from Brisbane in my pigeon hole lately. Maybe the happy Queenslanders have started holding out on me, I'm just going with it. In fact I'm more than going with it; I'm well and truly singing the depressive gospel! I'm talking about bands like No Anchor, Kitchen's Floor, The Scrapes, and - the subject of this blog - glorious, soaring five-piece Nikko.
From what I know about Nikko, they're all friends who have learnt all about playing music as a group. In around 2005 they kicked off the band, learning tracks by the Stooges, the Velvet Underground, and the Modern Lovers. After gathering these pop conventions, they built from them, and set off on an altogether more instrumental trajectory. From there they've landed somewhere between the brooding dark side of the Drones and the brewing indie landscapes of Mogwai.
There's a real synchronicity between musicians evident on their debut release The Warm Side, which is out now. Their music swells and retracts seemingly pretty effortlessly (like a band who have grown up together), and I can only hope it's a much the same as this live; I am soon to find out. Lucky for us, they've put one song up on Unearthed ('Wedding Song' - as stream-able on this blog too)
If you too would like to catch them on their upcoming album tour, here are the dates...
Thur 3 June - Excelsior Hotel - Sydney
Fri 4 June - MILF at World Bar - Sydney
Sun 6 June - Lass O'Gowrie - Newcastle
Fri 18 June - The Zoo - Brisbane
Fri 25 June - Pony - Melbourne
Sat 26 June - Old Bar - Melbourne
Sun 27 June - Bar Open - Melbourne
And you can pick up their first album The Warm Side now.
''You guys are one of my favourite bands of this year! Your album is incredible.''
Steph Hughes, triple j
awesome!
The album is so fucken good! Been listening to the shit out of it for two weeks now.
''Writing the soundtrack to the ache of the modern world is no easy task. On the worn path, most bands you're likely to discover (especially in Brisbane) prefer to consort, and win you over by exploring the more positive side of the musical coin. This is what makes Nikko's debut album so good. Opening tracks ‘Wedding Song’ and ‘Fists’ show a level of self confidence in their post-murder-ballad-rock style that has been well worth the three years wait to be realised. Seeing these songs performed live should be at the top of your to-do list.''
Jacob Hicks - Scene Magazine
This song is amazing.
yep - the intro is pretty much stuck in my head...
from rave magazine:
Written over three years, The Warm Side is the long-awaited release from local experimental rockers Nikko. For a debut album, it is pretty much as close to perfect as you can get. Their brilliance doesn’t take you over in one hit though, but rather seeps in slowly as the album progresses. This isn’t your run-of-the-mill release. The lyrics are sparse, if there are any at all, and there are epic, Godspeed You! Black Emperor- level instrumental jams in most of the songs. It’s amazing that, given all this, they still manage to sound introspective and unpretentious. The songs are moody yet melodic, with just the right peaks and lulls to take you on a musical journey without being excessive. Every instrument and every note has been thoughtfully considered and has a reason to be there. The first single, Wedding Song, has dark vocals reminiscent of Nick Cave on a quiet day, with plenty of soaring guitar moments. The use of violins in title track The Warm Side creates unbelievable tension, which is built up more with subtle time changes and intelligent drumming, only to achieve welcome release in an abrupt ending. Other highlights include off-beat guitar riffs and trickling piano notes in Young Liberal and the intense, swelling build-ups in The Miner. Overall, the whole album is filled with well-written songs that come together seamlessly. It might not be the most commercially-friendly venture, but who cares. Nikko have created work of art that is best enjoyed all at once, leaving the listener feeling like they’ve just had an unexpected revelation.
**1/2
TIAN ZHANG
'The Warm Side' actually received **1/2 in RAVE. Jeez Shaun, way to make us look bad haha.
Dammit, I meant 4 and a 1/2 stars. Stupid filter.
review at bats magazine by tom pyle
There is a risk that post rock as a genre will soon become irrelevant to modern music as the genre name is to the musical styles it encompasses. Long gone are the glory years when bands like Mogwai, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, Explosions in the Sky and Do Make Say Think were at the forefront of a progressive and challenging genre. This could well be because the bar has been set very high over the past decade and a number of newer bands have failed to recreate the instrumental emotion many of the aforementioned bands managed to produce on a number of occasions. Of course some these bands have a special place for me in my album rotation, but it is difficult not to eventually grow tired of every instrumental-based rock band building, bridging, mellowing and climaxing time and time again over 10 minutes. I’ve heard it all before and I think it’s time this style of music takes a different direction before its oversaturated, overdone and finally ruined for me.
That was a pretty brutal introduction considering the band I’m reviewing is essentially a post rock band, but I think it’s important for me to highlight my opinion on the genre, so I can express why I’m rather impressed by the debut album by Brisbane’s Nikko.
The Warm Side, just recently released, is certainly not a bad start to the decade: as a whole, it does a fine job of mixing heavy chord progressions with subtle ambience into a delicate, balanced production. Well orchestrated string and brass instruments are interwoven amongst screaming, distorted guitars and driving drums to create some very epic tracks; very similar to much of Explosions in the Sky’s work bar one aspect: they are Australian - very Australian. Of course Nikko are by no means making a completely new sound, but I will say that it feels as if they’ve taken a lot of the good aspects of Post Rock we’ve heard in the past few years and added classic Australianesque vocals, which is for me is ultimately very, very refreshing. Songs such as ‘The Minor’ and ‘Fists’ bring a depressive, gritty, classically insular Australian element that not only breaks up the album nicely, but makes the album more accessible to a wider audience.