#need machine sounds? industrial loops? weird smoke noises? nature sounds? girl speak? tatsuya has it covered

[dorianbrightmusic]

Tatsuya's Impressions: Four Stories.

-While Tatsuya's best impressions and imitations are those he does of motorcycle engines and construction equipment, he's adept with recreating sounds more generally, and, on a good day, will take requests/challenges. Once, he did a voice impersonation of Eikichi that was good enough to make a couple of Kasugayama students start sweating, terrified that he was lurking somewhere. He's also got the ability to conjure up a startlingly quiet, gorgeous impression of birdsong.

-Once, when Katsuya was being especially insufferable, odd noises started to sound out in the living room. For a while, Katsuya could swear he heard something quiet coming from behind the couch, then near the window, then, eventually, on the roof. For hours, Katsuya could hear some kind of an animal yelping and purring; when his mother arrived home, both were convinced that a cat must have climbed up onto the roof, but couldn't find it. When Katsuya went to go rescue whatever was trapped up there, fully prepared to take benadryl as soon as he came back down, he was utterly flummoxed to find nothing. Eventually, the Suou sibling's mother noticed that whenever Tatsuya spoke, the noise stopped. Tatsuya did a deliberately awful imitation of a cat to try to deflect blame; Katsuya realised, however, that Tatsuya's impressions were never that abjectly awful, meaning that it was almost certainly a red herring. At the time, Katsuya acted as if he were angry with Tatsuya for sending him up to the roof with confusion. Later, however, he's been caught laughing whenever the incident's been brought up—it's a rare good memory for both Suou siblings, even if Katsuya never had the gumption to admit to Tatsuya that he found it hilarious.

-Notably, when This Side's Tatsuya stays out late, since his father tends to be awake into the wee hours, he's developed a method for not getting caught walking in at 3am. That is, he'll throw on Katsuya's voice long enough to pretend he's coming home from a shift, and then walk as quietly as he can, trying not to be seen. It works surprisingly well, though he has been caught in the act several times. Notably, while the Other Side's Tatsuya had hijacked This Side's Tatsuya's body, he didn't tend to pull this trick when he came home. Seeing him enter the house at 4am without making an effort to be inconspicuous was a major sign that something was terribly, terribly wrong.

-As part of Gas Chamber, Tatsuya sometimes sings and contributes sound effects—while he's musically illiterate, he has a far better voice than either Jun or Eikichi, and can do more interesting things with it without sounding as nasal and Björk-y as Eikichi can. Usually, he contributes backup vocals and guitar, as well as the odd lead vocals on a soft ballad number (if Eikichi's feeling uncharacteristically humble). However, sometimes, Eikichi needs an ostensibly sexy female voice to provide spoken-word parts on a track, and as much as he loves Miyabi, her performance isn't great. As such, Tatsuya tends to read out this parts in a deliberately husky tone—he doesn't need to raise the pitch so much as change the timbre in order to conjure up a convincing femme fatale voice. On demo tapes, it's inconspicuous and well-mixed. Live, it's hilarious, since the single most muscular, manly man in the band is the one who's not only taking high harmonies, but filling in the female spoken vocal part.