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Interview with eX-Girl's Kirilo B. Vocal
eX-Girl are Kirilo, Fuzuki, and Chihiro, three young Tokyo girls who started playing live punk shows in 1997 without any prior music experience. Their early performances were raw, silly, but somehow confident, and they had a knack for remaining instinctively true to punk's nature while incorporating their own batch of outer-space Planet Kero Kero weirdness. Hoppy Kamiyama, a well established undergournd musicican and producer, saw eX-Girl's early performances and was impressed by their raw energy and unique vocal arrangements. He only had a few words of advice to offer them: "Never learn music theory." Since then Hoppy has played curator, producing and co-writing all five eX-Girl albums to date. The results have been mixed: three experimental space-punk records, an amusing acappella effort, and raw clumsy sessions under various disguises Pink Lady and Legend of the Water Breakers. Surpassing their recording ambitions, however, eX-Girl have developed into a talented and compelling live band, a result of over a dozen Japanese tours, five US tours, and two world tours. They once told me that performing is what they love to do most, and it shows. Blending space-punk and surreal acappella, eX-Girl are like a trippy Mystere Des Voix Bulgares with flashes of Talking Heads and Nina Hagen, and their on stage personas are similar to a whacky DEVO video, or the crazy celestial adventures once performed by Sun Ra. eX-Girl admits Tokyo is their Earth home, but insist they come from Planet Kero Kero (Ribbit, Ribbit!), which as you may discern, is inhabited by frogs. Kirlo B. Vocal, eX-Girl's bassist, spoke to me earlier this year about eX-Girl's home planet and other space-punk oddities. Robert
Jarrell >> Tell me about Kero Kero, the planet eX-Girl comes from? What
does it look like and where do you live? Kirilo
>> Planet Kero Kero is an elongated triangular pyramid. We three eX-Girls
live at the respective corners forming the smallest triangle and the Frog King's
throne is at the pointiest apex. Its interlocking dodecahedral orbit is a result
of being a constellation of 12 stars. The biggest one is black and is central
to the constellation. It is said that is where the true body of Rainbow Satan
resides. From
what I understand Rainbow Satan is your "style commander" and curator.
Tell me more about Rainbow Satan? Is Rainbow a man or woman? Kirilo
>> Rainbow Satan is a kind of an anti-everything entity. Anti-everything
including gender. When speaking English we use the word "he" when
referring to him simply out of convenience. He is totally anti-fashion and dresses
only for warmth. The warmth that he dresses for is not the normal infrared type
that you earth people are familiar with. It is another parallel spectrum that
extends all the way from x-rays into the audio range. He's a broad-band rainbow.
That's why about 2/3rds of what we play is not even audible to earth people.
We do try hard to make the parts you can't hear perceptible in whatever ways
we can though. Tell
me about Frog King, the ruler of Planet Kero Kero? Kirilo
>> He is the vessel in which Rainbow Satan manifests when he chooses to
be seen. Very strange, but I like strange things. Kirilo >> Kero, kero! What
was your life on Planet Kero Kero like before your trasformation into eX-Girl? Kirilo
>> Chaos! Just like now. How
is it eX-Girl comes from a planet inhabited by frogs, which are usually considerd
unattractive, while eX-Girl are beautiful? Are your looks exceptional on Planet
Kero Kero or is everyone as beautiful as you? Kirilo >> You are very kind. But you really should take a look at some of our frogs sometime. We were happy to come here just to get away from the competition. Your
spaceship's name is Tranceform? Does the commute or transformation that takes
place from Planet Kero Kero to Earth take a long time? Kirilo
>> In this universe it is instantaneous. We do have to pass through three
different universes to do it though, and in each of the others it takes just
one day short of eternity. We pass the time in the other universes playing snakes
and ladders. When
eX-Girl arrived on Earth from Planet Kero Kero why did you pick Japan as your
home away from home? Kirilo
>> Well Japan is not exactly on Earth itself and is a pretty warped place
so Spaceship Tranceform's warp drive just kind of found it on its own. I
recently read that in Japan when people kiss they don't use their tongues (French
kiss) or transmit saliva. Is this true? How does eX-Girl and frogs from planet
Kero Kero kiss? Kirilo
>> Kissing looks like a nice activity but we have never tried it so we
just would not know. We're just visitors. I understand there are lots of educational
sites on the Internet with titles like "Asian Frenzy" that cover this
subject. You might check there for details. As for Kero Kero, sometimes we see
the frogs kind of shoot out their tongues at each other but we are not really
sure if it is dueling or foreplay. Whatever it is, it seems to be kind of dangerous
because sometimes their tongues get so tangled they have to get outside help
to get separated. This is apparently very embarrassing and sometimes they just
sit there and starve to death because they are just too humiliated to ask for
help. Frogs are proud. How
did you, Chihiro, and Fuzuki meet on Planet Kero Kero and whose idea was it
to form eX-Girl? Kirilo
>> It was at a convention of apex dwellers. Given our addresses and the
geography it was only natural that we and the Frog King were the only ones who
attended. Is
Planet Kero Kero where you record your albums? Kirilo
>> We do that here. There are no musical instruments on Kero Kero.
You told me in a past interivew that eX-Girl won a music contest on Planet Kero
Kero, and that's how you became elected to represent the planet. How can you
win a music contest if you have no instruments? Kirilo
>> We used our mouths. Before us no one on Kero Kero thought of doing
that. All the other contestants in that contest did compositions wherein the
melody was carried by stomach growlers and the sound of eye blinking provided
the percussion. Their songs were very beautiful but ours were much louder and
since all the contestants performed concurrently our victory was pretty much
a foregone conclusion. What
is your favorite thing to do on Planet Kero Kero other than make space-punk
music? Kirilo
>> Watch the polliwogs hatch. Tell
me one highlight from your recent European tour? Kirilo
>> The best part of that tour was when the plane was hijacked by Sentient
fart bubbles from the sixth dimension. Fart bubbles huff and puff a lot but
are really quite harmless. They just wanted to sing the cowardly lion theme
from "The Wizard of Oz" after which they went on to the eighth dimension
on business. We were the only people on the plane wearing tri-polarized sunglasses
so in the end we were the only people who even knew we had been hijacked or
why business class smelled kind of funny (one of the poor things had gotten
poked by a pointy stewardess cap and popped). Sentient fart bubbles are strange, but like I said before, I like strange things, especially strange smelly things. Kirilo >> Kero, kero! eX-Girl
has been well received in Finland as you went back to do a second tour specifically
for that country. Tell me more about Finland's reaction to your music? Kirilo
>> We got some hugs from some very cute girls after the show. They have
nice skin. Kiki
Poo is your American label. Do you have plans to release records other than
eX-Girl on the label? Is Kiki Poo releasing the new eX-Girl album? Kirilo
>> KIKI Poo is an international label. This spring it will release the
sound track album "Legend of the Water Breakers" and Eisuki's "Magunee".
Mike Patton's Ipecac Records will be releasing the new eX-Girl album (Back to
the Mono Kero) in America; in Japan it will be released by HiBoom records. Your
full eX-Girl name is Kirilo B. Vocal - Does the "B" stand for Bass? Kirilo
>> No its just "B" - Kirilo A. disappeared 86,576,374,643,998.5
years ago during testing of the prototype of the warp device used in Transform.
She was presumed dead and so Kirilo B. was cloned from cells found in a PAP
smear Kirilo A. made just before her disappearance. Quite recently it was discovered
that Kirilo A. survived and has been residing quite happily on the planet Orek
Orek. She wrote home as soon as she arrived there but due to an unfortunate
fluke in space time geometry the warp to Orek Orek is one way only, so correspondence
with Orek Orek is by surface mail only and we just got her letter a couple of
weeks ago.
What do you love most about life? Kirilo
>> Tofu. If
you could do anything in the whole wide world what would it be? Kirilo
>> What eX-Girl is doing now - constantly playing music all over the world. Who
is eX-Girl's biggest admirer? Kirilo
>> At one of our shows in Austin there was this one guy who must have
weighed 700 pounds. I don't even know how he got through the door. When
I first interviewed you, the bands you mentioned as strong influences were "Gentle
Giants" and "Love Minor," but I see you more influenced by Laurie
Anderson, Devo, Talking Heads - performance art bands. Do you agree, and if
so tell me why? Kirilo
>> I guess you see something we don't. That doesn't mean your wrong though. Is
your kind of performance-art typical in Japan or is eX-Girl unique? Kirilo
>> There are some great bands in Japan, but as far as we know there is
no one else here from Planet Kero Kero. One
of your songs has eX-Girl perform a repetitive chant: "How is your psyche?
How is your phyche?" I think this is one of your best songs because it
takes music to another level as it confronts and questions the audience. Can
you tell me the name of this song and what album it is on? Is this song meant
to provoke introspection in the audience? Kirilo
>> Actually this song is eX-Girl’s mantra. We are chanting it only
to ourselves. We are asking each other "How is your pshyce?" but we
are so busy asking that we have yet to find an answer. The mantra was bestowed
to us by a high priestess on Kero Kero named Zigmunda Frog who said "Sometimes
a penis is just a cigar. Got a match?" Wait,
let me go look for one ... I guess I’ll have to come visit you on Planet
Kero Kero - am I allowed to visit your planet, or do I have to transform into
an eX-Boy first? Kirilo >> Oh please do come. For directions just play any eX-girl CD on a grammophone at triple speed backwards, then write down your dreams for the following week. The final code word will appear as an anagram in your Cheerios. Be careful though or you may end up on Planet Orek Orek. Kero kero! robert jarrell, headlight journal, december 2000 - february 2001 | |
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