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Detroit 4th Street Fair 2007 with dancer Rain
Kocho-Bi-Sexual is Emi Kariya, Sebastian Paulson, a Hammond console organ, and a Roland Space Echo.
Ms. Kariya dodges all stereotypes often ascribed to the cute, naive Japanese girl. She spent her childhood all over the place, England, Japan, even Pittsburgh. After being kicked out of a Wisconsin boarding school for sexual misconduct, she failed out of a science engineering program at Boston University. She then spent two years in pursuit of her commercial airline pilot's license, but finally graduated from Mass Art with a graphic arts degree. On the morning of Sept 11th, 2001, Emi flew out of Boston on American Airlines in an attempt to return to Japan. Fortunately she decided to lay over in Chicago rather than Los Angeles, and quite simply, favoring O'hare over LAX is the reason she was not on flight 11 that crashed into the World Trade Center that day. Inspired by her brush with a most terrifying fate, she felt a surge of appreciation for her life on earth; Fuck that 9 to 5 Boston bullshit, she would quit her job and move to New York City to work and live for herself.
Sebastian grew up in the white trash militia belt of Northern Michigan. Thankfully, skateboards and punk rock music steered him slightly left of center and he became the first kid at school with a pierced ear. In High School he was a track star, a jazz trumpet prodigy, a "long haired faggot". After Senior year, a surprise trip to Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia blew his backwoods mind further out of the box. While overseas, a poisoned stingray rendered him horribly ill, 20 pounds underweight, and completely unprepared to fulfill his track recruitment to the University of Michigan. Though he persevered as a collegiate athlete, it was within this first year at the university that Sebastian was seduced by the infamous Ann Arbor art-punk scene with it's late night basement jams and mind altering opportunities. He dropped distance running, picked up guitar, bass, and bongs and worked on solo recordings in between gigs as a session drummer.
So Emi and Sebastian collide in New York City, the only town tough enough to hold them (or is it?). First, Sebastian woos Emi with his irresistible charm and cheap beer. Then, the console organ is scored in a dank garage outside Lyndhurst, New Jersey. With the Space Echo riding shotgun, it was a magical combination, the music seemed to happen by itself -warm, psychedelic songs of shattered innocence with sweeping melodies and bumping beats that tantalize and color the moment. On stage, Kocho-Bi-Sexual is a charmed, subdued circus, as the duo draws the audience into a world of urban myth, simple pleasures, and perverted fantasy.
