A review of the Aphex Twin (Richard D. James) concert at Osaka Bayside Jenny, the first day of his first-ever tour in Japan as a live act/Live PA, on January 30, 1997. (Bayside Jenny was not in Nanko; it was in Tempozan.)

🔷 About Bayside Jenny

First of all, Bayside Jenny was a medium-to-large sized club and live music venue, and as others have written online, it was a venue with exceptionally good acoustics.
Since it was a club and live house converted from a waterfront warehouse, the ceilings were incredibly high, and despite having a two-story structure, the acoustics were quite good.
Some articles (like Tower Records) claim the capacity was 1,200, but they forget it was a two-story structure... everyone's memory is just too vague.
There are tons of people online saying 'Bayside Jenny was in Nanko,' but Bayside Jenny was actually in the completely opposite direction, near Chikko.
It could easily hold 1,800 people, and at full capacity, it held about 2,000.

🔷 The Live Performance (Opening Acts)

The support acts were
DJ: Grant
LIVE: CYLOB. Calling them opening acts is generous; they were just there to adjust the PA and warm up the sound system. They were made to spin at such a low volume it was almost pitiful, and not many people were dancing.

🔷 Aphex Twin's Appearance

There was a sofa on stage big enough to lie down on, and the surreal sight was Richard D. James just lying on the sofa, fiddling with a laptop. I read in an interview after the show that it was a custom-built laptop.

The first song was Pulsewidth.
It's not a particularly powerful track on the recording, but the moment the hi-hats and the intro pad sounds played, I thought, 'Wait, what?' The colors and range of the sound were on a different dimension from what I'd heard on the record, so the audience was taken aback.
The sound was completely unimaginable from the recording; it felt like he was composing with such precise calculation, obsessing over every single note.

Just from that hi-hat sound, the venue erupted in a storm of cheers. At this point, Richard had already seized control of the venue's atmosphere, so he didn't need to hype the crowd at all; he just silently fiddled with his laptop. He never once looked at the audience from start to finish.
Richard knew that Pulsewidth, a weaker track on the record, could blow the roof off, so he intentionally put it first.
With just a few notes, he pulled everyone perfectly into his world, and from there on, it was his exclusive domain. It was a world from another dimension.
He's a genius on the recordings, but hearing it live, every single note was genius.
It felt like I was being shown exactly what a 'genius' is.
It was almost violent.

Then, halfway through, the bass drum's four-on-the-floor beat kicked in. On the recording, the kick is quite weak and lacks the impact of typical club-style techno, but hearing it at the venue, it was a deep sound I had never experienced before. The sound pressure far exceeded the audience's imagination, so the audience wasn't in a state of thinking; it was instinctive, as if our bodies were reacting on their own. At that moment, the entire packed venue of about 2,000 people literally shook explosively.
It was a brutal sight.

During the show, several large, colorful rubber balloons—about 2 meters in size—were thrown into the crowd, and everyone was hitting them around to play.
Then, those bear costumes from the 'Donkey Rhubarb' music video appeared in the venue, doing weird dances and getting the crowd excited. Later, they got up on stage and danced.
The venue was in an extraordinary state of excitement, but Richard never once looked at the crowd until the end.

🔷 Actually a Legendary Osaka Performance

The Osaka performance was so explosively exciting that in 'Quick Japan vol.13' (Ohta Publishing), released on April 25, 1997, Richard D. James says that the concert at Osaka Bayside Jenny on January 30, 1997, was the 'second best of his life.' I've attached the photo from Quick Japan. (It's valuable material, so be grateful.)

🔷 Since I was a kid in my teens, I've been faking my age to work as a roadie for concerts and live shows, so I've seen over 100 live performances by various artists, but among them, Aphex Twin's show is by far No. 1. It's on a different dimension.
Second place is Jeff Beck, third is Metallica, and the rest are in no particular order. If I had to include others, it would be S.O.B., the origin of my musical roots, and NAPALM DEATH. Daisy Chainsaw was also brutal. I've seen Jeff Mills four times in total, and it goes without saying that he's amazing.

Conversely, the ones where I thought 'Give me my money back!' were probably Sonic Youth, Nirvana, Lenny Kravitz, and the Sex Pistols (during their reunion)... there are more, though.
It wasn't just bad; it felt like watching a classical music recital.
I even left halfway through the Sex Pistols show, haha.