...For the ladies

Warning: This post is purely because I know I'm going to get strife for the last one from a certain someone.

...and here's a shot of the (unofficially) hottest man from Japan. Hiro Mizushima.
I wouldn't do him, but he's a bit of alright.

Lies & Damned Lies

Warning: 90% of statistics are made up - and when they aren't, rarely do they prove anything.

I've been quite thrilled to see the visit count on my blog get some serious boostage lately. The thought that my musings on seemingly arbitrary themes were gaining popularity makes my head swell most fetchingly. Especially seeing as I didn't post at all in April or May (blame China - I often do).

But sadly, it appears that the figures don't actually mean much. The most popular month this year was May.
Question: why would people read my blog more when I posted less?
Answer: They weren't reading it, they were imagining a naked woman.

And I mean that. Upon further research I noticed that almost all the visits to the blog were from google image search, and to my post about hot olympians. Most of them were image searches for Jennie Finch, the "hot" baseballer and Republican. I'm almost tempted to remove her - how can I sleep knowing that 99% of my blog love is all because of the male love of the female figure - and a right-wing figure, at that?

Moral of the story? Sex sells. Don't try to deny it.

I'll never stoop to such base levels of marketing my blog again.

Meanwhile, here's a picture of Aoi Miyazaki.

I mean, just damn. If you don't like that, no more women for you.*

*If you don't like women, of course, that's no problem. Besides, that means all the more for the rest of us.

Afraid of the dark?

Warning: This post contains graphic makeup. And bugs.

Photography buff blog Sooth Brush posted some time last year about the delightfully chilling work of a certain Joshua Hoffine, a man obsessed (possessed) with childhood fear art photography. The brilliant composition and art that goes into the pics is just as impressive as the fact that they aren't photoshop edits, but straight shots with only colour adjustments and tweaking done by computer. The rest is all family & friends, a bunch of free time and an artful eye, resulting in vivid images that shock in their contrast of stark gore with symbols of purity & innocence.

Check out Joshua's site to buy signed prints - or even a brooch version of the beasty below. Or just give him blog love.


Props to Rodney for the linkage.

Not something you see every day

Warning: This post contains footage that may be beat-influenced

Ayoji, aka. Yoji Biomehanika, rocked up to Triangle a week ago as a "secret special guest". Probably the worst kept secret in Osaka, judging by the crowds reaction. The reason he wasn't headlining was purely because he wasn't DJing; evidently the man wanted to try out his guitar skills and didn't feel they were polished enough to do it officially. Good fun all the same - not the most amazing set, but certainly one of the rarer ones you'll see around here.
Here's about a minute of it:

Killing time on Youtube

Warning: This post is a collection of entertaining time wasters.

I think anyone who has ever used the internet has spent time procrastinating on Youtube more than once or twice, and between that and posts on Facebook you've probably seen these before. However, for those not in the viral video loop, here's a few gems I came across lately.

Drumnbass Church Rave - very well edited


Hammertime in an LA store - flashmob at its best


Nyuki nyuki nyuki - give a girl a camera...


Damian Walters - gymnast, stuntguy, spiderman


Now, go forth and waste time.

Dubstep Rude? Very.

Warning: This post rinsed it out hard Friday night.

Caspa made his Japan debut @ Noon in Osaka last Friday, and though the crowd was a bit thin (half the crew I know weren't even in the city - well done guys), the guy still pulled out a set bulging with bass, turning the club inside out.

Chatting to Gary (Caspa) on the night, despite my intoxicated state I did manage to get a few coherent questions out about how he was enjoying the scene. He said tho Japan was small he was impressed with the committment here, and though he loved making tracks, there's nothing like bringing it to the masses.
And bring he did.

Jah Works Sound Systems in Sakai brought out a sound system so large that I struggle to think how they got it through the door. Come Sunday I'm still feeling the buzz in my ears - and on the night I remember feeling the cartilage in my nose vibrate. Madness.

The lack of art from the night is on account of me forgetting my memory card, and being too Jagered up to get anyone's addy for their pics. Still, here's the promo mix Caspa dished out on the night. Short but sweet and...dutty.

Edit: Toshi sent me a few pics including this mint one of Caspa on the decks. Big ups!

Holy crap

Warning: This post is a BIG FUCKING ROBOT

To celebrate the 30th anniversary of the anime Gundam, the crazy Japanese have decided to build a temporary monument in Odaiba in Tokyo.
A LIFESIZE motherfucker. That's 18m.

Although I don't really follow Gundam to any obsessive extent - OK, any extent at all - I still love a good giant robot.
For now its just a static thing, but imagine the awesomeness if they made the thing move. Even the fingers or the arms. Damn.

...and progression (Sonifi)

Warning: This post is the reeeemiixxxxxxx.

So as I mentioned earlier, Rose of Jericho from BT wasn't really doing it for me like I wished it would. Listening to the more subtle points of it, the quality of sound is actually very BT, but it's all overshadowed by a very generic, fairly garden-variety thumpthumpthump of a progressive house/trance bassline. Even a 30 second rip-it-all apart segment in the middle would have tacked 2 extra stars on my rating of it. The remixes on the release (Sultan & Ned Sheperd, Robbie Riviera) are also underwhelming - the former is just a more generic house rendition, and the later feels like an attempt at currently-trendy electro that falls short.

There is one more remix on the market, though, and this one rocks the party that rocks the mutha-loving party.

For non-BT fanboys and girls, you may or may not have heard of Sonifi, an iPhone app that the man and his crew have been slaving over for some impressive amount of time. The app essentially allows live remixing of tracks using the iPhone. LoFi, Low Pass & High Pass filters are activated by sliding fingers on the screen. Each of the 4 layers of the track (melody, extra synth, bass, beats) have multiple samples available to interchange between. And finally and perhaps most impressive of all, is BT's own Stutter Edit effect, activated by shaking the iPhone - not 1, but in 3 different axes to achieve 3 different effects.

That's 3-dimensional remixing, ladies and gentlemen. 3 dimensions. Count them.

The thing is so piss-easy to use it could make a toddler seem like a pro-dj, and yet has enough going for it that it's far more than just pushing buttons. It's highly addictive.

All good things are by no means perfect: there's only one track available as yet; Rose of Jericho. It could have extra options like a time remaining bar or a tempo gauge, but I'm just hunting for faults now. All in all, it's a fantastic piece of innovative work, and I'm more than impressed.

One more fault though - it's extremely addictive. I think my productivity for Friday afternoon has just been reduced to zero.

Here's a vid of a guy playing with it.

Re-progression

Warning: This post takes a step backwards.

Today BT released his first musical work since the eclectic and ambient This Binary Universe(2006). The track - available "exclusively" at Beatport.com and only to US customers - is entitled Rose of Jericho, and currently has 3 mixes (the album mix and 2 remixes) out, with another 3 to come in 2 weeks time.

Three years after BT decided to tread a different path with TBU - a beautiful album, but entirely bereft of "club music" - he's brought himself back somewhat to his prog-house/trance days, in the vein of Godspeed or Namaste from Movement in Still Life(1999). Words like "eagerly awaited" spring to mind - Movement was an amazing album (still is, 10 years on), and while the successive Emotional Technology (2003) and TBU are masterpieces in their own right, fans have been wondering when the man might come back and make something that will blow them away on the dancefloor. I am one of those fans.

Damn.

Picking up Movement in 2001, purely because I'd seen the cover so many times at Real Groovy that I became too curious, I'd have to say BT put me firmly on the train towards being the electronica fan I am today. His attention to detail in the sound, beautiful synth and vocals over more than a simple house beat, mixed in with breaks and flourishes that no-one like Sash! or Paul Van Dyke could pull off, I was thoroughly smitten. Seeing him live in Auckland twice at God's Kitchen and Two Tribes, he easily outshone "bigger name" DJs like Mauro Picotto, Above & Beyond & Tomcraft) with both sets, mostly with superior track choice and energy. Let's face it, the guy's a hero of mine. And he doesn't sing too shabbily either.

Spot the fanboy

Listening to Rose Of Jericho today though, I'm yet to be impressed by it. Sure, it's a decent track, but hardly as memorable as I expect from the man. The beat reeks of Tiesto & Van Dyke, which I guess the Cali crowd lap up (judging by how packed Tiesto was on NYE 07/08 in LA). The synth is tight, but it's minimal, progressive, and fairly easily forgotten. No vocal, no drop, no breaks. It could have been written by any generic house name. Especially Du Monde, or Deadmau5 on an unproductive day.

Maybe I've moved on, or maybe he has. But I swear I still hold a special place in my heart for BT's exceptional work - I'm just not quite sure this qualifies.

Album will be out near the end of the year, which may be a totally different kettle of fish. For now, I'm going to go listen to Hybrid to fill the void.

Edit: Checking a few clips kicking around of stuff he's working on for the album, they did sound better. Here's hoping!

Underdog

Tetralogistics@Triangle

Warning: This post provides a small, intimate setting that probably doesn't break revenue costs.

Talking with a friend in the Osaka electronic music scene recently, it came to my attention that perhaps Osaka is fighting a losing battle in the electro scene. While I'm not surprised that Tokyo pulls the bigger acts and has the more well-known scene, after hitting clubs in Osaka, Kyoto and Tokyo I can confidently say that the Easterners have nothing on the vibe of the West. In this case, bigger simply does not equal better.

Of course, in the case of massive festival gigs, Osaka can't win. Tokyo has the huge ageHa (though it's usually reserved for the kind of sickly, overground house - think DJ Emma - and local acts like Takkyu Ishino), and the immense Makuhari Messe (home of Summer Sonic, Ganban Night, and the now-extinct Electroglide). Osaka, by comparison, only really has Studio Partita ("Black Chamber"), about half the size of ageHa, meaning while it is fantastic in its own right, pulls less than half the revenue. I'll concede Tokyo has the large-scale events in the bag.

Womb:Intense...perhaps TOO intense
But it's the small events where I think Osaka reigns supreme. Tokyo's big electronica clubs, Womb, Air, Unit etc. are all spacious, but also full of the usual fronting you get in hip-hop clubs. The location tends to be near semi-residential areas, which means the clubs have a responsibility to keep the external noise from the patrons coming and going to a minimum. Nothing kills my buzz more than having a security guard tell me to stop being so excitable when I arrive. Come on now.

With the lights on, it's tiny. But on the dancefloor, it's perfect.
Osaka's clubs are smaller, which means they often take in less than a third in revenue on what can be made in Tokyo. But that size creates a community and intimacy that I revel in. Some people prefer not to know everyone at the gig, but for me if we're all mates one way or another, the whole place reverberates with the vibe. No cold, heartless pushing to the front. No "pick-up bar" feel to it. Everyone's there for the music, and each other. Sounds pretty hippie, huh. Meh - that's how I roll.

Anyway, point being - clubs like Triangle, LabTribe, and Onzieme need your help! It's up to you to keep electronica alive in Osaka - otherwise we'll all be stuck going to Pure or listening to DJ Kaori.

You Rang...

First iPhoto I iTook with iMy iPhone (outside our iOffice)
Warning: This post uses outdated technology. Updating can be financially taxing.

I'm fresh back from a 6-week stint in China, during which I couldn't really/maybe could have but was too tired/lazy to update the blog. It's not the first time, and surely not the last. But all good procrastination/hiatus must come to an end, so here we are.

I had a list of gripes about China, but I lost it, and it's hardly fun to get back to posting with a bitch session, now is it?
On a more positive note, back in Japan and with my pockets lined with hard earned cash, I found a spending spree was in order, and the first order of business was ditching the old burner. About time to get an iPhone.

Though I spend stupid amounts of money on gadgetry across the board, I very rarely pick something up on the launch date. Got a PS2 well over a year after they came out. My PSP, DS, Xbox 360 were all years after the first ones came out (though the DS and PSP were new editions of the same). I always buy my cameras one model older than the latest, and my iPods and cellphones are not the newest on the market.
Reasoning? The first is money, and the second is customer feedback. Without fail, any major electronic release (esp. gaming) gets a barrage of online forum complaints about bugs and defects. Look at the debacle with the first Wii, or how desparate people were for new iPhone software the day it came out. I love new stuff, but in this case I'd rather wait for the DVD release (so to speak), just in case the movie isn't that good.

iPhones have dropped fantastically in price since their release in Japan, for the basic fact that they are not at all geared for Japan's needs. No infra-red (the most popular way to share contact details and data here), no cell internet (including sites to pick up purikura (those cute Japanese photo booth things) online, and no microSD drive for storing off the hard drive. Plus, the phone treats email like normal computer email, where in Japan cellphone email is the substitute for inter-network SMS. However, for a net-loving gaijin in a country with wi-fi almost everywhere, it's fabulous. Not perfect, but quite nice.

I may be approaching my quarter century, but I'm still a kid who likes his toys, even if they're not the latest ones on the shelf.