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May 30, 2006
Last Weekend
Was a fun one. Saturday was Riow Arai and Pandatone’s show at Office Gaienmae. This event featured a whole lot of great acts, in the lovely, personal, comfortable, wi-fi enabled space that is Office, and for a mere ¥1000 (or in my case for free ^_^). Many lovely guests also stopped in, and I have a small number of photos of some of them. Looking back on my photo-journalist attempts on these types of evenings it is usually quite apparent that I am a drunk person with a sub-par digital camera. This is also apparent from the fact that I actually forgot said camera at the venue, and had to go back and pick it up tonight, hence the late update.
Nevertheless some decent, lo-fi movies of the live performances usually come out. In this case there are a very small number of Pandatone, Arai-san, and female laptop / singing duo Groopies... And then there are a large number of Shugo Tokumaru (I guess I am showing some kind of bias here)! I much prefered this solo performance to the one he gave last week with a very large band. I am sure a lot of it just has to do with the atmosphere however.
PS. See a retarded picture of me at this event (scroll down a bit) on digiki’s blog!
Additionally I saw Motocompo and Metalchicks who were both in top form (and about 10 minutes of some Swedish techno guy who was slightly intolerable) on Sunday. No photos / movies from that one though.
Posted by shane at 02:46 AM
May 20, 2006
Everyone Wants To Be Prefuse
You might not realize it, but it seems that Prefuse 73 is the major influence on every Japanse trackmaker coming up now. Shit, we even paid the 本人 himself some substantial sum as a producer for Afra’s “album” (actually it’s barely an EP in disguise). I guess it’s like how when I was a teenager you could hear a little bit (or a lot) of Aphex Twin in everyone and anyone making electronic music at the time.
I ran across another one last night. This artist called Geskia has considerable skill, but I hope it continues to go somewhere new. Anyhow, lots of nice free music on his site.
Posted by shane at 03:26 PM
May 13, 2006
No Comment
I have disabled comments from all preceeding entries on this site. And by default, they will not be allowed on future entries. This is mostly due to comment spam, which comes in at almost a hundred pieces a day, and also crowds my email inbox with notifications. Since the commenting signal to noise ratio is possibly less than 1 percent, from here on out this site will probably remain comment-free.
Posted by shane at 03:20 PM
May 10, 2006
Golden Blur
Last week in Japan was what is known as Golden Week, which consists of three consecutive national holidays followed by a weekend, making for 5 days off in a row. If you also take Monday and Tuesday off, that makes for a full week off, plus two weekends, totaling to a 9-day consecutive holiday. While I didn’t take it to that level, 5 days off was still a nice break, and I spent it in a blur of live shows, drinking, music listening, and one sentou trip. Lives included Riow Arai + イルリメ, Digiki + many friends, and my friend Kei’s event with much live painting and music. Also there was DaDaKingz with a visual performance at the Apple store Shibuya with music by Underslowjams. I also ate good Thai food. And I’m also living in a beautiful hijacked apartment in Minami-Aoyama at the moment where a small gathering of friends one day cooked up a whole bunch of yummy gyoza and drank many beers. Gyoza movie and Digiki live movies (in which you can make out nothing save for a glowing apple logo) can be seen here.
Relinquish The Tracklist!
Additionally, over this break I was spoiled rotten by two major mixes from friends which are filled with stupidly ridiculously beautiful songs, almost none of which I know the identity of due to the fact that there are no tracklists on either compilation. This irks me quite a bit, and neither person has yet to respond to my request to relinquish the tracklist. One is Digiki’s Polypunk 007, which is readily available to the internet-connected public from his website. The other is エミリィ’s shamelessly romantic, warm, yet melancholy 19-song collection of songs that make me cry, only perhaps two of which are even halfway within my frame of musical knowledge. This compilation belongs to me and is not available even to the internet-connected public.
The third song in Polupunk 007 is so fucking awesome I don’t even know what to say. Track 1, 3, 6, and 14 (which is obviously Fishmans, though I’ve never heard it) of エミリィ’s comp are really hitting me hard right now. Some day soon these kids (who apparently have met each other in Paris perhaps three years ago at Toog’s house, and coincidentally are both simultaneously influencing my musical taste at the moment) will give up the tracklists, and I can explore the constiuent artists more, incorporating them into my own spectrum and maybe even stealing a song or two for my own podcast.
Thank you music, for bringing me up and even putting me down: All I can really say is at least you make me feel things deeply.
Posted by shane at 01:29 AM
May 04, 2006
Sonosphere
I remember seeing Sonosphere a while ago, but not being able to download it :(. Then today, I checked Aoki Takamasa’s site for the first time in a while and noticed that he started a podcast with Nao Tokui, the creator of sonosphere (which I was subsequently able to download and try). It seems only natural that the two would work together!
Posted by shane at 02:13 AM
May 03, 2006
Music Related, People Related
I will DJ at this event at Office Gaienmae on Saturday, May 27th. With this quality of live performances, an event like this should be at a much larger venue. And for the bargain price of ¥1000! What are you nuts! Shugo or Arai-san alone should be at least ¥3000.
Music Related, People Related
Saturday 5.27.2006
Office Gaienmae / 03-5786-1052
Open / Start 21:00
1000¥ (+drink order)
Live
Pandatone, Shugo Tokumaru, Aus, Hokama&Yim, Riow Arai
DJs
Tacky, Shane Lester
Posted by shane at 03:28 PM
Reality Television
I previously said that we would be on TV. Here is the proof. Gino got cut out, which is stupid. :( I talk a little bit, and +cruz talks a lot, cos he is the man. :) The whole vibe is kind of 8 O'Clock news-ish.
Posted by shane at 03:23 PM