Come In Tokyo: The Dynamic Duo

In many areas of life, great things come in pairs: for your dinner, you’ve got fish and chips; for an evening drink, maybe a gin and tonic; for the late hours, there’s always rock and roll. In those dark hours, permeating a sweaty, dancing crowd, you can find another great pair, one which forms the core of rock and roll – beats and riffs. And it’s in utilising these two essential elements that Come In Tokyo forge their simple yet visceral sound.

The band combines Alan Oates’s cutting guitar work and vocals and Anna Duffield’s time-keeping on the trap kit, and this tandem has been gaining in momentum since their unassuming inception in May 2006.

“I was writing stuff for [solo alias] Little Pebble, and asked Anna to play on a couple of my songs,” Oates says. “She came out and we recorded it, then had this idea of ‘Yeah – do you wanna play more songs? – I got this Fender… I don’t really know what to do with it.’”

Duffield responded by putting him through a crash-course in the music she was looking to produce. “She gave me a CD of stuff – like Pixies, Sonic Youth and The Fall on it – and I went ‘OK, you wanna create music like that? … I don’t know if I can do that.’”

Oates’s apprehension was short-lived, however, to the benefit of the Edinburgh rock scene. As he recounts, “I dropped both E strings to D and just started playing around with it… And had the idea to take it live.”
The twosome took it to Henry’s Cellar Bar in December 2006, and mere months later were whisked away on tour with The Aliens – “a proper tour of venues in each city” – none too shabby for a band in its infancy.

Doubtlessly helpful in warming the crowds up on tour, and filling large spaces with the sounds of just two musicians, are Come In Tokyo’s technical practices. “I guessed as a two-piece, that might be needed – make a louder sound, keep it more interesting,” Oates says, explaining that the band beefs up its sound by splitting guitar and vocal signals, and adding additional amplifiers. The result is a fuller experience of the band’s unpretentious style, a classic sound that has served rock well over the years.

In the years since forming, Come In Tokyo has spread that sound to various venues and bobbing heads across Scotland, releasing a handful of vinyl records and performing at the Fence Collective’s Home Game, and Edinburgh staples Limbo and The Mill.

It’s at the former where the band were recently hand-picked by Edinburgh’s Found to help usher in the second year of gigs. Entitled ‘A Year of The Mill’, the organisers have invited back fan favourites, encouraging them to bring other artists they feel are the best of local music.

Aside from this already sold out showcase at Cab Vol and a cheeky date at the City Café, the band has chosen to postpone heavy gigging until the release of their album. In the works for nearly a year, Oakes says a copy has been sent to their label, but awaits a green light. “We’ve given it to Fence Records to listen to, and it’s really whether they say, ‘That’s sounding good,' or they may say, ‘Can you remix it?’ But until the album’s there, we’re not really wanting to go on tour or play away.”

When the full-length comes – and if it builds on the band’s raucous live gigs – it promises to be a winner, documenting a sound as classic to auditory canals as tea and toast is to palates. Only with Come In Tokyo, it won’t be going stale in a week’s time.