So…dancing with a giant blue, Martian starfish and coming face-to-face with a thrusting toadstool-tipped codpiece, were explicitly NOT on my bingo card for 2026. But that’s my error in lacking the vivid imagination of the inimitable Japanese. Strange Brew is the setting for Japan’s Super Jet Kinoko to showcase their unique ability to summon the visually bizarre combined with an intergalactic sonic landscape.
But first, I absolutely must say a few words about the wonderful support from ICHI. A fellow Nipponite, who is now based in Bristol. Using everyday objects – typewriter, yoga ball, megaphone, umbrella – homemade instruments including a lyre-like device with horns crudely attached – and his own bizarre sound effects – cow mooing, brushing his teeth – he creatives a one-man vaudevillian pantomime.
It’s incredibly inventive, providing plenty of humour and wonder. At several moments he walks offstage, at one time bellowing a makeshift kind of bag-pipe, meanders through the crowd and emits his brand of zany creativity into Fairfax street before retreating back to the stage. I liken the experience to watching an eccentric inventor emerge from his workshop to delight the local villagers with his new crackpot creations. Worth the price of entry alone.
Now onto our main event. To begin to understand a Super Jet Kinoko live show, let me, first, paint the surreal picture. Among the band’s entourage, besides the aforementioned starfish Smurf, are a hyperactive King Kong, bouncing tin-foil jellyfish and a giant white-headed bird dressed in a kimono. It’s like the piñata at Salvador Dalí’s birthday bash exploded. (Apologies for the merging of Mexican culture with a Spanish Surrealist).
This cast of characters get amongst the both on and off stage with King Kong leading a session of frenzied calisthenics, while the band scorch through an equally frenetic burst of their trademark syphilitic monkey trance music, before the kimono-clad bird adds a spiritual edge to the proceedings with a display of sleek interpretive dance. Oh, and let’s not forget the stage raver in a saucer-eyed alien onesie.
For a band who clearly value the visual performance as highly as the auditory, it is no surprise that we see the six-piece also dressed to impress. On stage, from left to right, let me introduce: the keyboardist – dressed in orange boiler suit and fur hat – a cross-dressing bassist – glamorously fitted out in blue dress and glittering heels – the lady in the group with her tight-fighting bell bottoms with parallel black and white lines, your singer in hi tie-dyed tracksuit and lid, the fun-gi (see what I did there?) with his toadstool cod piece, on percussion, and finally orange cowboy guitarist, mixing his Texas ranch garb with Hawaiian shorts and Sly Stone sunglasses. It’s quite the tableau even without the supporting cast of zany creatures.
As for the auditory experience: Imagine if Kraftwerk took a psychedelic-punk turn and then entered the Eurovision Song Contest, except the competition is hosted at that weird alien pub in Star Wars. This is no more perfectly encapsulated than in songs like ‘mademoiselle’ and ‘COME COME UFO’.
They do also have rare moments of calm. The ritualistic ‘Come Back India’ feels like a guided meditation to cleanse the senses with its pulsing beat and incantatory vocals before the second half develops into a psychedelic trance-like vibe.
The show closes with the epic, 8-minute paroxysm ‘Theme of KINOKO’. I’m surprised the audience has any carbohydrates left to burn, at this point, but pulses remain high pulses as the crowd dance convulsively, throughout. Kinoko, incidentally, means ‘mushroom’ in Japanese. The magic variety would certainly be a fitting mascot for a band bursting with the delightfully absurd and able to whip a crowd into a ceaseless boogie mania.
Thus, Super Jet Kinoko’s live performance leaves you feeling like you fell into a Frank Zappa acid trip. Before you can process what has happened you have been thoroughly masticated and spat out in a steaming bundle of sweat and reverie.
Dan Adshead
