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September 11, 2007
Tenori-On
Apparently Iwai Toshio’s Tenori-On is finally going to see a public release first in the UK.
Posted by shane at 12:44 PM
September 04, 2007
Old News
Hifana’s live DVD album, Connect was released over a month ago, and I failed to mention it. For a while you could even see our promos running regularly on many of the large screens above Shibuya. As a full-length video album, I’m not sure it tops or falls short of our previous effort, Channel H, but the title track’s music video I think is a pretty nice piece of work.
Admittedly, like all our jobs, it had no budget, and was stressful, time-depraving, and rushed. Therefore, a number of things in said video are actually being brushed up and fixed now for future premieres such as onedotzero and the like. Nonetheless, here is the version from the release. And here is my other favorite piece from the album, the live shoot of which I blogged about in the past. There is a whole host of other work on the DVD which amounts to around 55 minutes, so please buy it [JP / USA] if you’ve got the interest and wherewithal.
Love to everyone who worked on this including Hifana crew and the usual W+K Lab team, plus Genki Ito, Mark Okon, Ian Lynam, Takeshi Kogahara, Aleksandra Domanovic, Oliver Laric, and anyone else I might be forgetting.
Posted by shane at 07:42 PM
September 03, 2007
Jun Mania
It was a number of months ago that I rented some CDs by Guernica and Yapoos, little did I know what was in store. At this point, I own the entire Yapoos discography, have yet to properly explore Guernica (an assault of retro, militaristic, marching-theme sounding songs), and have delved into a number of Togawa Jun’s solo albums as well. I don’t even know what to say about it really other than, WOW, its rare and wonderful to find a deeply serious artist that can make you really feel something, allow you to appropriate their unique and perverse worldview, spend some time inside there, and come out with the ability to contemplate expression in a newly expanded way.
Why I personally get so much from someone like Togawa Jun is a completely different story, as I imagine the barrier for entry to this one is perhaps a bit high for the majority of the world’s listeners. The video above isn’t one of my favorite Yapoos songs, although it is perhaps the most famous. This one is particularly strange for the interaction between Jun and the show hosts before the start of the performance.
Posted by shane at 02:53 AM
Art Star
A comic book I saw today was musing on the idea of “Art Star” and warned about the danger of mixing up art and fame.
I want to stop advertising. I don’t think I like the world view that it engenders in me. On the other hand, I understand more than ever how things have to be big, have to blow up and explode, have to be seen and promoted and shit-talked, to make it up to the top. I guess I just never thought I‘d be someone to contribute to that.
I saw a videotaped talk of Barry McGee from opening of his recent installation at Watari-Um. Presenting some slides of graffiti, he mused about the typical street scene that the artwork is a part of, and about its coexistence with billboards and advertising. This is paraphrasing but he said the worst graffiti, he thought, were those very billboards. I might agree with that.
Maybe this is completely unrelated, but I also stumbled upon this very very smart website, as found.
Posted by shane at 02:29 AM