Shuffling onto the stage in a flurry of robotic jerks come three men wearing glazed expressions and identical striped tops. In time with the retro-futurist synthesizer chirps and bleeps, they then lurch into a kind of clockwork dance routine, while a fourth man, wearing a construction helmet and mask, scampers around, correcting mechanical errors in his "robots."
So begins (M)otocompo's live performance. Equal parts comic theater, technopop symphony and postmodern pop deconstruction, the group is the all-boy ("otoco," geddit? A multilayered pun on the band name as well as the Japanese words for "man" and "sound") spinoff from new-wave/electropop duo Motocompo, playing a mixture of songs band producer Nobuya Usui (a.k.a. Dr. Usui) wrote for his other band and occasionally surprising reworkings of famous songs by other artists.
Behind the humorous exterior, however, (M)otocompo (the bracketed "M" is silent) is also a carefully realized concept born of sharp and occasionally withering observation of social and musical trends.