Cibo Matto

with Solex

Cotton Club, Atlanta, GA • September 28, 1999

Edward Sofield

Cibo Matto came to town to support the best album ever recorded, their couple-month-old Stereo*type A . They brought along a less welcome guest in Solex, a Dutch trip-pop-sampler trio that didn’t hit it over well with the in-crowd. Solex (aka Elizabeth Esselink, who tours with friends but records alone in the Amsterdam record store she owns) seemed to work best with big beats, strange noises, and sweet girlish harmonies. All told, Solex was a good warm-up for the main course.

Cibo Matto has now solidified into a line-up including Sean Lennon (yes, that one) on bass, harmonies, and bouncing, MC Duma Love, and drummer/singer Timo Ellis. While Miho Hatori focuses on keyboards and samplers, Yuka Honda takes front-girl position, making Cibo Matto an actual rounded-out team. Sporting completely revamped songs and a new bounce to their step, Cibo Matto traveled distances from disco-type pop to death metal (“Blue Train”), and even pulled a few ballads out for the audience. Before the show-closer “Sci-Fi Wasabi,” Honda even made the mostly twenty-something audience do the electric slide, a sight to see even without Lennon and Hatori (a couple) doing their own bouncy dance throughout the show.

All-in-all, fears that the samples and beats that make up Cibo Matto’s material would not translate on stage were most definitely squelched – Cibo Matto are the next must-see of the nineties. ◼