News
July 27, 2009
News | New Yoshihide Otomo Documentary |
For a certain sort of someone, a documentary on Japanese composer-musician Yoshihide Otomo--especially one that features the likes of Yasunao Tone, Yamataka Eye, John Zorn, Christian Marclay, Tatsuya Yoshida, Jim O’Rourke, and Keiji Haino--should be heaven on earth.
Franck Stofer, co-owner the always-interesting Sonore label would seem to be just that sort of someone. Thus, the disappointment evident in his review of Chikara Iwai's new Kikoe is not a good sign concerning this feature-length film. Judging from the review and the trailer below, Iwai takes a quick-cut, pastiche approach that favors sensibility over sense. When it comes to what are, to most, relatively obscure subjects such as noise and electro-acoustic improv, a more linear approach would probably be more edifying.
But then again, those of us who are into this sort of thing will probably watch it no matter what.
(Via the new Sonore blog.)
July 23, 2009
Mic check, 1-2... For those of you who keep old, dusty feeds in their news readers, hello! Here I am, a blast from the past ready to get this Far East Audio thing rolling again. Fatherhood and grad school had me put the site on hold for quite some time, but as I prepare for a three-week trip to China in August, it's time to see if this ancient version of Movable Type can still pump bloggage.
So, if you've got the feed, stay tuned. If you're visiting by chance, subscribe or check back throughout August, as I'll be visiting the venues, record shops, and junk markets of Shanghai and Beijing. Look for some interviews with Chinese and Laowai musicians as well.
And if you've got any tips or requests for stories, let me know. I'm at your service.
Mack
January 13, 2009
Just in time for the Western holiday season, Christiaan Vivrant and Zhang Jian (aka FM3) released a sequel to their Buddha Machine, the mass-produced musical art object that so delighted fans of audio gadgets and avant-garde music. Although the ambient looper has become familiar to enthusiasts since its 2005 release, its origins in Asian spiritual technology are perhaps not as well known. As the Buddha Machine’s name suggests, small boxes containing loops of Buddhist prayers (sutras) have been used by believers in East Asia for quite some time. I first heard a “talking sutra box” in Taiwan in the early 90s, found it fascinating, and have managed to collect a few of them over the years. Vivrant and Zhang found these devices so compelling that they tracked down a Chinese factory to commission new versions that played the duo’s own original loops.
As I usually write about live shows or CDs, the Buddha Machine II provides a welcome chance to do something different. In the spirit of the “shootout” between competing products found on tech review sites, I thought I would compare the Buddha Machine II to two similar (but non-secular) products that are currently available online. In true Buddhist fashion, however, it was only moments after turning these boxes on that the Buddha boxing match became a love in—the three sounded so good together that any sort of competition became irrelevant. I have interspersed this review with Youtube videos of the boxes at play.
Buddha Machine II (L) at play with Taiwanese (R) and Tibetan (top) chant boxes.
Like its predecessor, the Buddha Machine II erodes the distinction between musical instrument, playback device, and recorded musical performance. It is a small, plastic speaker box containing a digital chip loaded with several short, minimalist musical pieces. Each track is looped and can be listened to as long as one likes (or until the AA batteries run out), while a single button allows the user to switch between loops. In a sense, the Buddha Machine is an album that plays itself, unlike an LP or MP3, which require separate devices for playback. However, the unit is also designed as performance instrument, and has been used as such by Zhang and Vivrant’s own FM3, as well as Low, Sun O))), Mike Patton and others. As an instrument, the new version of the Buddha Machine II is greatly improved by a new pitch bend wheel, which allows the user to adjust the pitch and tempo of the loops to match other material.
The loops themselves do a lot with very little. Simple guitar and piano lines, immersed in strange resonances, vibrate out of the box. FM3’s use of feedback is particularly interesting, as it is impossible to discern whether the distortion is coming from the source material, the low-bitrate of the reproduction, the tiny speaker being over-driven, or some combination of the three. I find that this mystery, as it repeats itself over and over, begins to smear my sense of place as my consciousness switches back and forth between the speaker in the room with me, the idea of the crunchy silicon chip, and some imagined space in China where FM3 recorded these evocative sounds. Zhang and Vivrant resist the temptation to over-embellish these tiny compositions, nor do they attempt to prescribe a particular emotional response. The pieces are ambiguous enough to shift from beautiful to ominous and back again as minutes pass by, perhaps reflecting the mind of the listener more than the intentions of the performers.
FM3's Buddha Machine II meets a Taiwanese Buddhist sutra box, creating something like an Enya, Jesus and Mary Chain. Toward the end, I remove the chant box so you can hear the BMII's feedback loop.
Digital Buddha Jukebox (13-Song)
This Taiwanese Chant box features 13 renditions of sutras, most of them done in a contemporary, syncretic musical style that reveals both traditional Chinese and contemporary pop influences. The sound is that of a slickly produced digital recording that has been bit-mashed and fed through a crappy speaker, making it the new millennial equivalent of an AM transistor or shortwave radio tinkling out a carefully crafted Carpenters tune. (If Karen was high on Buddhism instead of pills, of course.)
If you’re anything like me, the above description, coupled with the $9.30 price tag, has you sold already—and I haven’t even mentioned the swirling lightshow. In the front of the box is a circular cutout that houses a semi-transparent image of the bodhisattva Guanyin sitting on a lotus flower. Behind her, a swirling, kaleidoscope of rainbow light beams emerges in a mesmerizing 3-D effect. Everyone I have handed this thing to has stared helplessly at it for minutes at a time.
FM3's Buddha Machine II meets a Tibetan sutra box, which features a traditional chant rather than a modern musical adaptation of a Buddhist prayer. The loop on the BMII is a guitar that seems to toll like a bell in the context of the chant.
Digital Buddhist Jukebox in Tibetan (5 Songs)
This box is smaller than the two others and includes a strap to hang it from your neck. The strap, coupled with its headphone output, means that you can rock these gritty Tibetan prayer loops on the subway or bus. The iPod drones will eye you with curiosity and envy when you sport these two inches of plastic chant bling, embossed with a distinctive lotus-shaped speaker. The loops on this box keep it old school, with a monk chanting a cappella—no synths, melodies or other musical trappings. At a mere $4.00, it is a must-buy for believer and non-believer alike.
March 30, 2008
News | Interview with Sound Collector Jason Kopec | China
If most backpackers are mainly sightseers, Jason Kopec is a soundhearer. Instead of a camera, his primary method of capturing memories is a microphone and field recorder, and he releases his sonic catches from Burma and China in his Ground Up series of discs. (That said, Kopec does also carry a camera and his pictures are beautiful--you can check out both sounds and images on the website of his label, noise|order.)
Kopec calls himself an audio ethnographer, a fact that might draw the ire of cultural anthropologists and ethnomusicologists--not necessarily because he lacks a particular degree, but because his discs lack ethnographic detail. Release the Cheerfulness China: Ground Up 2 contains lovely music and fascinating sounds, but even less contextualizing information than you'll find on your average Sublime Frequencies disc. This lack of context is not surprising, given the producer's fascination with the ways that the familiar sounds of one culture take on new meanings for a visitor from another: Kopec's works are less ethnographies than the audio travel diaries of a self-confessed "sound junkie." I recently asked him about his travels and favorite timbres.
We could start by me asking you what your background is and how you came to travel around China with a microphone and a field recorder...
Well, I'm at heart a sound junkie. I've never been that interested in taking photographs as a way of artistically capturing a feeling, place or person, so my interest in field recording and phonography was in a way inevitable. I began seriously recording in the field in 2000 when I was in South Africa. I had been bouncing around the globe for a spell, and had heard so many amazing sounds that I became more and more interested in the idea of capturing them for future use. After hearing a Kurdish folk group in Van, Turkey give their first public performance after a seven year government crackdown on the PKK and all Kurdish activity, I knew I HAD to get something to start recording such moments. My next major destination happened to be South Africa, so while there I bought a mini-disc recorder and a cheap Sony stereo microphone. I started turning it on at various times when something of interest was happening around me, be it music or an engaging sound.
I then ventured to Burma and became much more focused on my effort. I no longer approached travel as a predominantly visual adventure, but more a sonic one. While there I had so many incredible experiences recording that I managed to amass enough material to put together an album ("Burma 1 - Ground Up 1" on my label noise|order). Burma was the first time I literally spent days walking around a town looking for music and musicians. Since the interactions and situations that resulted from that effort were so enjoyable, it prompted a whole new style of travel and documentation for me. Now I always search incessantly for music and interesting sounds wherever I go, and my previous experiences have allowed me to get much more bold in my approach.
I've now traveled extensively in over 40 countries and have been recording material everywhere I've been since 2000.
READ FULL ENTRY...March 12, 2008
News | Marvin Sterling Speaks On the Japanese Reggae Boom |
Marvin Sterling, an Assistant Professor of Anthropology at Indiana
University and author of the forthcoming "Babylon East: Performing Dancehall, Roots Reggae and Rastafari in Japan" will speak at IU on Monday, March 17 from 4:00-5:30 p.m. Location: Student Building 159.
It looks to be a fascinating talk. Check the abstract:
"Race and ethnicity in the Jamaican response to the Japanese reggae boom"
In the early 1990s, roots reggae music flourished in Japan. Later in
the decade, a more recent style of reggae, dancehall, began its own
ascent towards achieving "boom" status in the country. In many ways
dancehall has come to eclipse the success of roots reggae only a few
years before. As a measure of this success, in 2006, Yokohama Reggae
Festival attracted about 30,000 Japanese reggae fans, filling Yokohama
Stadium and making it very likely the largest one-day reggae event in
the world. Much of the success of dancehall in the country can be
attributed to excitement surrounding recent Japanese victories in
international competition otherwise dominated by Jamaican reggae
artists. As such, more and more Jamaicans have become aware of the
intense Japanese interest in dancehall and roots reggae. In this paper
I argue that Japanese engagement with reggae and the Jamaican response
to this engagement might be productively read in ethnic and racial
terms. I argue that Japanese engagement with reggae affords
perspective on the Japanese construction of ethnoracial identity and
difference in the two countries, in ways that might be seen as
ultimately speaking to ethnoracial identity in Japan. I also argue,
focally, that the Jamaican response to this engagement represents a
perspective from which to view the Jamaican imagination of its status
as a postcolonial nation in a rapidly neoliberalizing globe.
By "international competitions," I wonder if Sterling is referring to things such as the International Dance Hall Queen competetion held in Montego Bay, which was won by Japanese dancer Junko in 2002. When a white Canadian woman known as Moo Moo won the competiton in 2007, some Jamaicans responded by "throwing bottles and other objects on stage."
Online responses to Moo Moo's win, written in rasta patois, also reveal identity concerns and an anger that extends to Japanese dancers:
How a white oooman win this sh*t are they trying to take over dance hall queen now it gone to the wolves SHAMBLES FOR LIFE
yes same wit japanese dem cant dance all dem can do is jump and spin on deh head and dats not dancing,di white ooman has no ryhthm at all,i was deh and ah pity dem try comercialize dancehall so dem give it to white ooman,she cant dance at all shes terrible,real bad u see her dance at last years,it was the worst
Of course, these kind of tensions often emerge when a the "cultural expression" of a local group becomes a "cultural product." The pride of seeing one's culture gain the world stage is often made bittersweet by the fear of losing it as one's own. It should be interesting to get the perspective from the Japanese side of the coin (as Sterling presents it).
March 07, 2008
News | Liminal States: Life as an Indie Musician on Taiwan |
I have a new article online in Folklore Forum, a peer-reviewed journal dedicated to “the free exchange of ideas on the cutting edge of folklore, folklife and ethnomusicology.” “Liminal States: Life as an Indie Musician on Taiwan,” centers on the life and music of Huang Wan-ting, a founding member of grrl punkers Ladybug who I profiled a few years back on this site.
In the article, I use the concept of liminality (coined by the great anthropologist Victor Turner) to examine ways Wan-ting exists in between some of the recognizable identities people use to identify one another. On the level of national identity, for example, she considers herself Taiwanese and is frustrated by the fact that the world refuses to recognize Taiwan as an independent nation. She feels trapped between the identities of “Chinese” and “Taiwanese,” disempowered. On a level of musical identity, however, Wan-ting maintains a liminal state on purpose, as it empowers her creatively. As an indie musician, she stays on the edge of the music mainstream, making styles of popular music that are not yet popular (and may never be). This status on the edge of popular music identities gives her the freedom and power to play with new ways of sounding and being.
I’m particularly pleased that this article came out in a special issue that honors recently retired Indiana University professor Roger Janelli, a great scholar of Korean folklore and folklife. In fact, it was in a class of Professor Janelli’s that I first started developing these ideas. I haven’t met a better teacher or a nicer guy.
February 25, 2008
When people tell me that Asian music has become "westernized," one counter-argument I toss out is the fact that so many instruments played by western musicians are made in the East. Particularly in the case of electronic instruments, in which potential sounds and rhythms are often predetermined by programmed "presets," I would argue that global pop music has been Asianized. For instance, entire genres of music have coalesced around the TR-808 drum machine, created by Japan's Roland Corporation.
The Asian manufacture of "western" instruments predates the synthpop era, however. For example, according to today's piece on NPR's Morning Edition, Taiwan began producing and exporting saxophones shortly after World War II. By the 1980s, the island was building roughly a third of the world's saxes, mostly lower-quality student models. Today, spurred on by Chinese competition for the low-end market, the Taiwanese sax is increasing in quality and global reputation. Says one American player:
"You would never have thought of Taiwanese instruments trying to inch into the pro territory. But they are. And they are making some really nice horns."
February 22, 2008
This isn't the sort of music I usually cover (how many times have I written that on this site?), but I was struck by something in the video below. In it, a huge and rapturous Chilean crowd thrills to the operatic, hard/soft, early 80s rock of Journey, a band that provided aural backdrop for many a sixth-grade love drama when I was at summer camp.
But it wasn't so much nostalgia for my youth that made this clip so affecting. Rather, this video gave me a momentary flash of popular music's astonishing reach through space-time and its emergent role as a sort of global connective tissue made of music, emotion and technology. How else could a Filipino club singer end up fronting this famed and aging North American rock band on a South American stage in 2008?
[Keep reading below the video.]
Marx and Buddha
Though I subscribe to neither of the religions that bear their names, two of my favorite thinkers are Karl Marx and Siddhārtha Gautama (aka the Buddha). Both men emphasized that what we perceive as stable and separate--things such as the history of a nation or the identity of an individual--are in reality enmeshed in, and dependent upon, the constantly changing material conditions from which they arise. Marx saw these changing material conditions the "means of production" and sought to reduce suffering by adapting social conditions to suit them. Buddha, on the other hand, thought suffering could be alleviated only through the total acceptance of the interconnectedness and impermanence of one's life and surroundings. Both would agree that trouble arises when we adopt an ideology that doesn't "go with the flow" or "change with the changing times."
On the political left and right, people in the United States are currently getting confused by just this sort of limiting ideology, reacting with xenophobia and protectionism to the sometimes frightening changes brought by globalization. These folks would do well to throw a little Marx and Buddha into their mix--to not fight change, but instead fight to make that change equitable.
Schon and Pineda
Journey guitarist Neal Schon saw Filipino singer Arnel Pineda fronting his Manila cover band on You Tube and--in an inspired act of musical outsourcing--hired him as the band's new singer this past December. A long-distance, high-profile connection like this draws a lot of attention, but it is only a single example of the kinds of connections that music constantly creates and draws upon.
This video is an object worthy of our contemplation. Consider the materials and relationships that went into its creation: African musical elements of rhythm and timbre, European harmonic sensibility, synthesizers and effects boxes developed in Japan and built in China, American technologies such as the electric guitar the internet, the food the performers ate the night of the show, the roads they traveled to get there... This just begins to tell the story of how a piece of culture such as this video reaches your eyes and ears.
Like it or not, everything local is global as well. A popular music performance both embodies and represents the journey culture makes through the world. Or put another way, it takes a planet to create a corny-ass love song. There are other more damaging ways to spread cultural forms, such as military imperialism and terrorism. We need to study and promote the types of cultural flow that make people happier. I'm not saying that there are no downsides to economic and media globalization, but there is no way to disconnect from the world. We should focus on making our connections as positive as possible.
On an aesthetic level, the positivity of Journey's musical contribution is certainly arguable. But hey, they sure dig it in Chile.
February 13, 2008
News | Happy Chinese New Year and Happy Birthday Radiodiffusion |
As we ring in the Rodential Lunar New Year, my friend Stuart celebrates a personal milestone--two years of posting obscure global oldies at his site Radiodiffusion Internasionaal. If you haven't been downloading his digitized found sounds, you've missed out on over 100 weeks' worth of 60s pop singles from Central, South, East and Southeast Asia.
This week the site features two tracks by the Stylers, an instrumental band from Singapore who dealt in "non-stop dancing music." Stuart asked me to lay down a little background on this rather obscure genre, as I'm a bit of an aficionado. Here's what I came up with:
Non-stop instrumental dancing records go at least as for back as the 1950s orchestral work of Germany's James Last. Non-stop ballroom has had a lasting influence in East and Southeast Asia. (In the mid-1990s, I purchased a wonderful cassette in the Philippines called "Non-Stop Cha Cha Extravaganza," for example.) However, it is the Asian version of the "A Go-Go" pop medley sound that has captured the imaginations of Western record collectors in recent years. Influenced by instrumental rock groups from the US and UK, the 60s teen scenes of Hong Kong, Macau and Singapore produced numerous dancing albums. These albums often retained the ballroom sensibility of listing the intended dance styles next to the track titles (A Go-Go, Blues, Fox Trot, Cha Cha, etc.), but relied on a rock line-up of bass, drums, guitar and organ. As for the songs performed, Western pop hits, regional pop hits and even traditional folk melodies were all fair game.
By the 1970s, surviving instrumental bands like The Stylers seem to have gotten more ambitious, incorporating into their albums film themes, sound effects, "hi-fi" production values, and musical elements of the emerging disco sound. By this point, non-stop instrumental albums were less a teen dance phenomenon than they were fodder for the high-end stereo equipment of Asian audiophiles.
To hear the music and get more information on the Stylers and Asian A Go-Go (including many informative links), go to this week's post. You only have until Sunday morning...
August 21, 2007
News | The Band Apart Hits Midwest |
Japan's The Band Apart play big festivals in their home country and have sold over 700,000 copies of their surprisingly sophisticated alterna-rock. Like the U.S.'s 311, they use the "modern" guitar tones of Hot Topic rock, yet manage to come off sounding way smarter than their peers. There's a bit of math rock, emo vocals that verge on smoothed-out J-pop, jam-band guitar licks and a dash of cocktail jazz in their mix. It's very polished and works for me in practice way better than it sounds in theory!
Next month, a few lucky inhabitants of the American mid-portions can avoid the air tickets, stadiums and port-a-potties and see The Band Apart in a small rock club, as the band tours the States for the first time:
09/21/07 - Nashville, TN @ The 5 Spot
09/23/07 - St. Louis, MO @ Cicero's
09/26/07 - Chicago, IL @ Subterranean
09/27/07 - Bloomington, IN @ Uncle Festers
By the way, check out these guys' merch. Why don't more American bands sell towels?
August 20, 2007
NPR has continued their recent trend of occasional but excellent reports on Chinese music with a profile of Beijing post-punk band Rebuilding the Rights of Statues (Re-TROS). The band, who recently played South by Southwest, have released a disc in the U.S. on the San Francisco/Beijing imprint Tag Team Records. Says bassist Liu-min in the NPR report:
We don't expect it will be a big seller, but of course, we are excited to come to the U.S., the most developed rock 'n' roll market in the world. And if Americans hear us, they might see the progress that rock 'n' roll music in China has made.
Look out for a review on this site soon.
July 27, 2007
News | New Japanese Oldies Blog Showa OK! |
Music writer Nakore recently got in touch with me to spread the word about his new audio/video blog, Showa OK! , which is "devoted to archiving rare and forgotten Japanese pop gems of the Shōwa period (1926-1989)." The first entry includes an early music video of what I suppose is still the most famous Japanese song in the United States, "Ue O Muite Arukō" (aka "Sukiyaki"). It is interesting to me that in the four decades since that song's 1961 release, Japan's enormous international cultural influence (Walkman, anime, manga, Nintendo, Speed Racer, fashion, karaoke, etc.) has not extended to mainstream popular music. The closest thing I can come up with of is the work of Ryuichi Sakamoto, but the cultural influence of his genius has been largely subliminal, I think. In any case, check out this strangely existential black-and-white film of Kyū Sakamoto (no relation) performing his pop classic.
Speaking of Ryuichi Sakamoto, Nakore's second music post discusses the life and work of his ex-wife, Akiko Yano, singling out a sweet track from her 1976 debut album. Yano's voice here reminds me of her contemporary, Kate Bush, in its quick, breathy assuredness. The backing band, Nakore tells us, is made up of members of Little Feat, Happy End and Haruomi Hosono--talk about a supergroup!
Informative, musically astute and a pleasure to read, Showa OK! already looks like a must-read blog.
July 22, 2007
News | SambaSunda in Chicago Monday |
My fellow Chicagoans have a rare opportunity to hear the sophisticated Indonesian pop of SambaSunda, who perform at Millennium Park Monday. Describing a sampler of the group released by Far Side Music in 2005, one reviewer (okay, it was me) likened it to "a batik woven from the sounds of the Middle East, the Indonesian archipelago and perhaps (in the vocal of one track) a hint of Indian film music." The 17-piece group is led by Ismet Ruchimat, who got his start performing with the Jugala Orchestra in 1989 and later led the Jugala All Stars on Sabah Habas Mustapha's world music hit Jalan Kopo.
Aside from Ismet's skills as a composer and singer Rita Tila's gorgeous voice I'm most anticipating the feast of diverse timbres that emanate from instruments such as the metal Sundanese gamelan degung and bamboo angklung.
The performance begins on Monday, July 23, 6:30 pm.
July 11, 2007
News | Red Chamber Rocks Pitchfork Lunchbreak Series, Releases Downloads |
Masked marauders Red Chamber thrilled a daytime audience at the Chicago Cultural Center on Monday, performing as Part of the Pitchfork/Cultural Center Lunchbreak Series. Performing sans their video spectacle, the group still provided more than enough music, costumes and dance to satisfy attending hipsters, toddlers and senior citizens alike. Fan videos have already surfaced on YouTube.
Live tracks from the band's performance in the studio of Chicago's WIUX radio (previously released on CD as Red Chamber Brings You the Mao Sound) are now available for download..
June 08, 2007
News | Bunnys and Sharp Five Tracks for D/L |
Hit this link now--you've only got until this weekend to download two cuts of splendid eleki (Japanese 60s instro-rock). Terry Terauchi, the master of idiom, shows off his precision picking on "Flying Guitar" and the Sharp Five bark out the gnarly-toned "Golden Guitar," a track with some serious back-alley attitude.
If you're new to eleki, these tunes are a great intro. Also check out this eleki page from our archives.
May 15, 2007
News | Links from the eMailbag |
One reason I'm glad I started this site (over three years ago) is that people send me links to cool stuff on the web that I probably wouldn't have found on my own. Here are some recent finds:
Mai from Tripmaster Monkey gives the headsup on this Time article on Indonesian indie and metal music. While there's a burdgeoning scene, the author points to a problem I've also seen in Taiwan: "When two little-known Scandavian bands recently played in Jakarta, the kids were willing to shell out $40 for the show, while a gig with five local bands would struggle to charge $5, even with a free drink." If indie scenes are to reach critical mass in these places, kids will have to support their local bands.
What if Liberace was Japanese? It's a question that western musicologists and philosophers have struggled with for decades, yet needlessly--if only they'd had a friend like Chui-wa to send them this video of Kenichi Mikawa. I first saw him on a hotel TV in Taiwan, dripping in furs.
Speaking of Japanese video, my friend Hsin-wen sends us this hip-hop summer jam by M-flo. Its pure Puffery sweetened with strings a la Pizzicato Five. I dig the wardrobe and the DJ scratches booties!
May 08, 2007
News | Boredoms to Take 77-Drummer Show on Tour |
Japanese noise masters Boredoms have gone increasingly rhythm-mad over the years, developing a hypnotic, drum-centric sound. This summer they will push things to the limit with performances of the oft-postponed "77 Drum" in Brooklyn, Canada and Europe.
According to Pitchfork, there will be a need for volunteer drummers for the Brooklyn show:
Interested drummers should contact Hisham Bharoocha (currently of Soft Circle and formerly of Lightning Bolt and Black Dice) at [e-mail address retracted at Bharoocha's request] for more information. Former Minuteman/current Stooge Mike Watt and Sonic Youth drummer Steve Shelley are helping to spread the word about the performance, so there should be all sorts of cool people involved.
Hear that, "cool people"?
Anyway, here are the projected tour dates:
06-30 Calgary, Alberta - The Warehouse
07-02 Toronto, Ontario - Phoenix
07-07 Brooklyn, NY - Empire-Fulton Ferry State Park (Brooklyn Bridge Park)
08-08 Oslo, Norway - Øya Festival
08-10 Gothenburg, Sweden - Way Out West Festival
April 27, 2007
News | Shortwave Sound Snippets |
I bet I'm not alone in acquiring my taste for sounds from distant places as a kid playing around with a shortwave radio. Shrouded in no other context than the electromagnetic sound of the Sun, words and music from who-knew-where tickled my ten-year-old brain--and probably helped turn me into the hopeless cultural relativist I am today.
Actually, I don't have to bet I'm not the only one. Musician and shortwave enthusiast Myke Weiskopf has blogged about it and recently released an album based on his love of "music and/or musical noise intercepted via shortwave radio."
The following are links to some Asian entries I found on his soundblog:
Chinese Opera
Japanese Flute Music and Old Man Pop
Chinese Guqin (zither)
March 18, 2007
News | 60s and 70s Asian Pop Gallery |
San Francisco-based photographer David Greenfield has posted a wonderful gallery of 60s and 70s pop album covers from Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Thailand, Hong Kong and Japan to the photo site PBase. David tells me he has over a thousand Asian pop tracks in his ever-expanding collection. His gallery has caught the attention of Singapore rock historian Joseph C. Pereira, author of Legends of the Golden Venus, who commented that the collection "will make even Singaporeans and Malaysians green with envy."
I wonder if David has considered linking some sample mp3s to these groovy covers...
March 16, 2007
News | Cornelius on Tour in US |
Japanese pop music innovator Cornelius will be on tour in the US during April and May, including an appearance at the Coachella festival. The tour is in support of his new album Sensuous. The dates are as follows:
Portland, OR Wonder Ballroom (April 23)
Seattle, WA El Corazon (24)
San Francisco, CA Bimbo's 365 (26)
Indio, CA Coachella (28)
Los Angeles, CA El Rey Theater (30)
Boulder, CO Fox Theater (May 3)
Chicago, IL Park West (7)
Baltimore, MD Sonar (9)
New York, NY Webster Hall (10)
Philadelphia, PA Theater of Living Arts (11)
Source: NME via Plastic Bamboo
March 06, 2007
News | Far East Audio on WIUX's Global Riffs |
On March 7th, I'll be on Indiana University's WIUX to talk about some of the Japanese bands that will be appearing at this year's South by Southwest in Austin, Texas. Global Riffs, hosted by IU Telecom prof Mark Deuze, is broadcast every Wednesday from 08:00 to 10:00 AM. The show features independent rock, pop, metal, techno, and lo-fi tunes from all over the world. I'll be on around 9 AM. You can stream it in high or low quality.
For you visiting WIUX listeners, welcome to the site! Here are links to the bands we're talking about:
The Emeralds
50 Kaitenz
Pistol Valve
Asakusa Jinta
These bands will tour the US before and after SXSW, hitting Cambridge, New York, Philadelphia, Chicago, Austin, Los Angeles, San Fancisco, Seattle. The Chicago show is at the Empty Bottle on March 14.
We're also talking about Red Chamber.
Please check out our archives on the side bar--we have over 150 reviews and articles.
March 04, 2007
News | Indonesian Girl Group Dara Puspita |
This week Stuart's featuring Indonesian 60s girl group Dara Puspita. If you've been to his site Radiodiffusion Internasionaal before, you know the drill--he'll have these mp3s up for just a week.
While he was researching the group earlier this week, Stuart got in touch with me, looking for information. I emailed Anton Pulung, Indonesian singer of the mysterious masked men of Asian surf/instro rock, Red Chamber. Turns out Anton used to go to church with one of the members in Jakarta!
Anyway, start your week off right with some charming, upbeat pop from Dara Puspita. I love the vocals--the sweet harmonies bounce around in a psychedelic echo chamber.
February 20, 2007
News | Happy Chinese New Year, Mon! |
As we root our way into the Year of the Pig, NPR drops this heavy piece on Reggae in China. Lauren Keane surveys the reggae scene in the PRC and finds that the closest thing the Chinese have to Bob Marley is the rocker Cui Jian. Funny, I thought he was supposed to be China's Bob Dylan... or was it Bruce Springsteen? Anyway, Keane's point is that Chinese reggae artists have the rhythms down, but not the politics or spirituality. Seems capitalist Chinese reggae is just plain decadent--nothin' but a party. Her basically tongue-in-cheek search for the Chinese Bob Marley ends with the conclusion that he probably won't be found anytime soon.
While your at it, check out Nippop's article "Rastaman Vibration - What's up with Japanese Reggae?"
February 15, 2007
News | Instrument Focus: Pipa |
Today I'm posting a mid-length article I wrote last year on the Chinese pipa. It addresses the classification, construction, origins, distribution, cultural meaning, scholarly treatment and pedagogy of the instrument. I conclude with an annotated bibliography that I hope will be helpful to others beginning a study of the pipa. As I state at the beginning of the article, the pipa doesn't get nearly as much scholarly attention as the qin and good books and articles can be hard to come by in English.
February 05, 2007
News | SXSW Japan Nite 2007 Line Up |
It's barely February, but already preparations are ramping up for South by Southwest. I've received promo discs and press releases from the bands in SXSW's 11th annual Japan Nite, the showcase for Japanese indie acts presented by SXSW Asia. Even if you don't make it to Austin, TX. you may still see the bands as they make their way around the country. I'll bring you a preview of the tour and some CD reviews in future entries. For now, here's the line up for Japan Nite 2007, held on March 16th at Elysium:
HY
The Emeralds
The 50 Kaitenz (see photo)
GO!GO!7188
Pistol Valve
ORESKABAND
More to come soon...
January 27, 2007
News | Slate's Back Door to "jTunes" |
This week Slate writer Paul Collins points out a somewhat hidden passage to Japanese music: by switching countries in a pull-down menu in iTunes, you can check out the world of Japanese pop. Much of it, he notes, is in English and much of it is excellent:
Like the British invaders of 40 years ago, the Japanese seem to care more about our music than we ourselves do.
The result? Japan's bands are by turns bracingly experimental and jubilantly retro, a land where our own greatest music returns with an alienated majesty.
Okay, wait a minute. Whose music? Unless "Paul Collins" is a pseudonym for Little Richard, I'm not sure how he gets off claiming ownership of rock-n-roll or any of its bastard offspring. Popular music has been a transnational phenomenon since its birth in the heyday of recorded music. Jazz was being played in Shanghai before Mr. Collins was born and the Japanese surf rock explosion was roughly concurrent with the British Invasion. In other words, rock is every bit as much "their" music as it is "ours."
Anyway, that objection aside, Collins is to be commended for turning more people on to Japanese music. The problem, he points out, is that Apple doesn't want you buying Japanese music from iTunes Japan--they'll block any purchases you try to make with your US credit card. He suggests a sneaky workaround involving fake foreign addresses and Japanese iTunes cards.
However, you can also do what I suggested a few weeks ago and try Japan Files, a hassle-free, DRM-free alternative to "jTunes."
January 22, 2007
This week's mp3 offering at Radiodiffusion is one of Stuart's finds that raises more questions than it answers, a pop music LP from Papua New Guinea. Its old-school, academically lecherous, National Geographic-esque cover has nothing to do with the electric guitars that emerge from its grooves and it was put out by a label in New Zealand, both of which suggest that it was not for local consumption. No date of release, no indication of what the language is. As for the tunes, they're not bad.
January 17, 2007
News | SUBS' Transnational Identity Crisis |
Beijing rock band SUBS consists of the caterwauling of Kang Mao, the sonic assault of Wu Hao on guitar and the thunderous rhythm section of Zhu Lei (bass) and Shi Xudong (drums). They are really good at what they do, which is to push the sound of heavy 80s and 90s post-punk forward in the 00s. However, this hasn't been the main focus of the media attention they have received. For foreign reporters interested in China more than music, the story is that they are punk band--something these writers (incorrectly) perceive as rare. For foreign music media, the story is that they are Chinese. For Chinese rock writers, the story is that the band tours abroad. As for SUBS, they wish writers would focus more on the music. Pop Matters writer Jon Campbell wrote a perceptive article on this issue of SUBS' transnational identity crisis about a year ago. This kind of media attention is a crisis that a lot of Chinese bands would love to suffer.
Article: "China Syndrome" by Jon Campbell, Pop Matters
Radio Report: "Artists Make Noise on Beijing's Fringe" by Anthony Kuhn, NPR
MP3s: SUBS on purevolume.com
More info and links: SUBS on ChaileWiki
Photo essay: "Foursome punk band in Beijing" by Reuters
January 08, 2007
News | YouTube Gets Hammered-On Mario |
One of my favorite cultural phenomena of 2006 was YouTube--I had no qualms about jumping on the bandwagon of linking to music videos, digging up vintage eleki from Japan and homebrewed goofiness from China.
However, the most interesting musical use of "web 2.0" I saw last year was the YouTube shredders, amateur guitarists from all over the world who use the site as a way of showing off their hot licks. Often young and often Asian, these six-string otaku look like they've spent years woodshedding in their bedrooms--indeed, the videos are often shot in their bedrooms, creating an interesting dissonance between private practice and public performance. The players are almost always alone and sometimes seem conflicted about exposing themselves, concealing their identities with baseball caps and obscure screen names. This has led to a controversy over the identity of "funtwo," whose blistering version of Pachabel's Canon became one of the most-viewed videos on YouTube. A reporter from the New York Times eventually found the true performer, 23-year-old Korean Jeong-Hyun Lim.
However, in terms of pure enjoyment, my favorite video is by a young Korean living in Malaysia, Zack Kim Yong Woon: the Kuala Lumpur resident does a great version of the theme from Super Mario Brothers. Playing two guitars at once, Zack uses the metal-derived technique of "tapping" or "hammering" the guitar frets, allowing for a degree of polyphony otherwise impossible on guitar. He's not the only guy doing this on the web, but he's got a nice sense of feel and a nice sense of humor--it's just fun to watch and listen to him play:
This video got me thinking about what a great tune the Mario Bros theme is. Its author is famed Nintendo composer Koji Kondo. Would it be safe to call him the first great video game composer? Wikipedia points out the severe technical restrictions imposed on him by the technology of the early game hardware:
Kondo found himself in a totally different environment at Nintendo. Suddenly, he was limited to only four "instruments" (two monophonic pulse channels, a monophonic triangle wave channel which could be used as a bass, and a noise channel used for percussion) due to limitations of the system's sound chip. Though he and Nintendo's technicians eventually discovered a way to add a fifth channel (normally reserved for sound effects), his music was still severely limited on the system.
Viewed in this context, the Mario theme seems almost miraculous to me. Kondo still composes for Nintendo today. And he apparently wears a white lab coat while doing so, which scores major bonus points in my opinion!
January 04, 2007
News | Beijing Music, New and Old, in the U.S. Media this Week |
Billboard Magazine and National Public Radio dip into the music of Beijing this week. The U.S. music industry magazine names China's capital one of "five unlikely cities spawning exciting new sounds" and singles out indie label Modern Sky for attention. It also claims that soon the city will be a regular stop on the world tour circuit: "'At the moment it's uncharted territory,' says Maximo Park manager Colin Schaverien. 'But in five years it will be a natural routing point stop-off on the way to, or back from, Japan.'"
Over at NPR, the always-terrific China reprter Louisa Lim profiles a British man who dropped his whole life at age 32 to study Beijing opera, studying with Chinese students two decades his junior. Anyone who knows about the rigorous physical and artistic training that it takes to perform Beijing opera will be surprised by the story of Ghaffar Pourazar, who hopes to help save what may be a dying art.
(By the way, for another good NPR piece, check out Anthony Kuhn's "Lost Sounds of Old Beijing" from May 2006.)
January 03, 2007
News | More Links from the Japanese Underground |
When I round up links of Asian music sites for your perusal, they tend to focus on Japanese music. The reason is pretty obvious: when it comes to English-language representation on the web, Japan easily eclipses its neighbors. This is probably due to the popularity of Japanese pop culture in the west and the presence of some 50,000 westerners in the Tokyo metropolitan area alone. Japan has a large number of distinctive pop music subgenres and a fair number of online reviewers, DJs, and bloggers to help the rest of us sort them out. Here are a few more of my favorite J-links that focus on music you might not otherwise hear about:
What's next, filling you in on a cool new search engine called Google? If you don't know it, Keikaku has at least ten writers in Japan and around the globe and they turn out a lot of reviews. The site is also valuable for its profiles, which provide bios and discographies for a number of indie bands. Think of it as a cross between Pitchfork and All Music Guide for Japanese rock. "Rock" is probably the operative word, as the profiles tend to focus on dudes with guitars like Eastern Youth and Polysics.
The premise for this excellent blog is simple: a foreigner living in Tokyo goes to live indie shows week after week, snapping photos and writing about bands that get little to no exposure outside of Japan. Have you heard of advantage Lucy, Orange Plankton, Plectrum, Spangle call Lilli line or Swinging Popsicle? Neither had I until I started reading Japan Live.
As an outsider, one could be pretty into the Japanese pop, owning discs by disparate groups such as Shonen Knife, Cornelius, Boredoms, and Nobukazu Takemura, and have little idea what scenes they come out of or how they relate to one another. Clear and Refreshing is a good place to get your bearings, as its reviews and articles tend to contextualize artists within their respective regions or genres. It's a good place to read a brief rundown of the Osaka or Tokyo underground and learn that "the "Akiba-kei" strain of new wave and technopop is quite possibly the most irritating of all musical genres," capable of turning an otherwise normal person into a raving kitten killer.
This is an mp3 blog with tasty J-pop, underground, electronic and oldies tunes for your listening pleasure. Unfortunately, downloads are limited and I never seem to get there in time!
I'm cheating a bit here, because I think I wrote up this site when it launched, but Japan Files is now building up trove of Japanese indie rock, pop, punk, techno, and hip-hop for legal download. As far as I know these tracks have no DRM (take that, iTunes!) and go for 99 cents each. Hurrah, I can download the nutso new Limited Express album without paying Japanese import prices!
December 29, 2006
If you're tired of waiting for a backordered Nintendo Wii or PS3 and you happen to be a hip hop or electronic musician, the Japanese musician-hacker JJ has solution: play Pong on your Akai MPC 1000. Posted on the music gear fetish site Music Thing, JJ's mod turns the quintessential sampling tool into a pricey retro game platform.
December 20, 2006
Western expats in Japan can tell you that a lot of Japanese people really dig Christmas--department stores often bring in Santa and pipe in the "Jingle Bells." Yes, in terms of music, the Japanese tend to stick to the Western Yuletide standards; perhaps because the whole Christ thing hasn't really caught on that much, Japanese don't have much in the way of homegrown Christmas music.
However, if you've been pining away for some traditional Japanese Christmas sounds, despair no longer--a pair of musicians in the American Pacific Northwest have come to the rescue. En, "a duo bound to Japan, music, and each other" have produced a shakuhachi and koto version of "White Christmas," available on their website. If you thought Bing Crosby always sounded half in the bag, this version is positively woozy!
December 11, 2006
News | A sheepish return, a Vietnamese peace offering... |
It's been mighty quiet around here, hasn't it? For that, I apologize. Going to graduate school in one state and trying to spend time with my pregnant wife in another has been a bit of a challenge. (Maybe I could load Dragon Naturally Speaking on a PDA and write for this site via voice during my eight hours a week on the road?)
In any case, it's winter break time, so I'm back with this crunchy Vietnamese peace offering. Stuart's got a rare sixties pop track from Viet Nam Records ready for download over at Radiodiffusion. It sounds a lot like the Cambodian pop of the era, dimly preserved on an extra-crackly slab of vinyl. Act fast, this will only be up through Saturday, Dec. 16.
Oh, you noticed that "my" peace offering is merely a link to someone else's upload? C'mon, don't be such a stickler.
October 17, 2006
News | The Greatest Film Composer of All Time? |
Who is the greatest film composer of all time? Over at Slate, Jan Swafford has been pondering this and he's come up with an intriguing answer:
"My new champion is a composer who's scored nearly 100 films, from thriller to arty, who had an encyclopedic command of style as well as a singular voice of his own, and who is numbered in the highest rank of modern concert-hall composers—something many film composers aspired to but only one achieved: Toru Takemitsu.
Takemitsu was an amazing figure: a first-rate straight composer, detective novelist, and fanatic of film and pop music. ("My teachers," he said, "are Duke Ellington and nature.") Despite his success in the concert hall, he's not properly recognized in the United States for his movie work simply because many of his movies never made it here. But there's enough that can be found in your video store to show what he could do, including Woman in the Dunes and, near the end of his life, Akira Kurosawa's Ran."
September 25, 2006
News | Dengue Fever Rocks Chicago, Provokes Musings on "World Music" |
With their current tour, L.A.'s Dengue Fever has broken out of the west coast circuit and graced stages across North America with their high-energy version of 60s Cambodian pop. On their stop in Chicago, they played a few shows at the 2006 World Music Festival, including a well-attended Sunday night set at Martyrs.
The Set
I'm well acquainted with the band's two albums, but what struck me live was the tight, sinewy lines laid down by bassist Senon Williams and drummer Paul Smith. Their grooves were so propulsive and full that brothers Ethan and Zac Holtzman (on Farfisa and guitar) weren't tied down to playing chords and instead were freed up to explore slinky, psychedelic melodies.
But of course the centerpiece of Dengue Fever is the amazing voice of Chhom Nimol. If you've been worn down as I have by the furtiveness and/or irony of a thousand indie singers, her sound and presence may well build you up again. Here is a singer who can... sing. On the Cambodian oldies, she leaps gaping intervals with ease while never losing the song's emotional import. On the couple of occasions that she sings in English, she sounds remarkably like Debbie Harry, with all the languid coolness that implies.
What Kind of World is This?
After the show I spoke with drummer Paul Smith, who also takes on studio production duties for the band. Our conversation revolved around the "world music" label and whether that's something Dengue Fever really wants to take on. Smith said he feels they're a rock band made of musicians who all love old Cambodian pop. We both agreed the world music scene can sometimes give off an almost puritanical vibe of being obsessed with authenticity.
On the other hand, world music festivals pay well and tend to take great care of their artists. Plus, the mere fact that a band like Dengue Fever is on the bill shows that the scene is more open minded than some might think. The Chicago World Music Festival deserves a lot of credit for putting on a show like this one. The opening act was Extra Golden, an American rock-Kenyan benga band collaboration on indie label Thrill Jockey--again, not exactly your typical drum circle fare.
I find myself feeling really encouraged by the increasing crossover between the world music and independent rock scenes--bands like Isotope 217, Antibalas, Dub is a Weapon, Nomo, etc. haven't so much broken down walls between genres, but proven that those walls were just illusions to begin with. Who did more for world music than the Clash, a "punk" band who spent their entire career on a corporate label? As numerous reissues have recently proved, African electric bands in the 70s were trying to sound like James Brown or Iron Butterfly and only started sounding more "African" around the time they learned there was a western market for it. Distinctions between genres and major vs. indie are probably more a matter of marketing than fact--to me, it all falls somewhere in the pop music continuum and real "world music" is just the big, messy sound of this ball of confusion we live on. Genres and labels can be good--the distinctions we make are helpful in identifying things we love. But it is also important to attempt the impossible and truly think globally, to wrap your mind around the complexity and interrelatedness of it all.
September 20, 2006
News | "Far Side Radio" Asian Music MP3s |
I doubt anyone in the UK is doing more to introduce people to the diverse wonders of East and Southeast Asian music than Paul Fisher. Paul, whom I've interviewed in the past, runs the label and online shop known as Far Side. He also has a terrific Asian music radio show on London's Resonance FM, but this here yank has never been good at catching the live stream online (noon on Wednesdays London time equals sleepy time at my house). Lucky then, that Paul has stashed some Far Side Radio shows on his site. He spins good music, provides just enough information about the artists and often throws in a tale or two from his extensive Asian travels.
September 04, 2006
News | Japanese New Music Festival |
Tatsuya Yoshida from Ruins and Atsuya Tsuyama and Makoto Kawabata of the Acid Mothers Temple are currently on the road in North America with another tour of their Japanese New Music Festival. They'll play Chicago tomorrow night at the Empty Bottle. Here are the rest of the dates:
9/02 New York, NY - Tonic
9/03 Brooklyn, NY - Northsix
9/04 Atlanta, GA - Eyedrum
9/05 Chicago, IL - Empty Bottle
9/06 Denver, CO - Larimer Lounge
9/07 Seattle, WA - Wooden Octopus Festival (venue TBA)
9/08 San Francisco, CA - Bottom of the Hill
9/09 Los Angeles, CA - The Smell
9/10 Mexico City - Alicia
For details of all the permutations of Acid Ruin madness, check Brooklyn Vegan. For just a small taste, see them here as ZUBIZUVA, a self-described eccentric, polyrhythmic a cappella ensemble:
August 23, 2006
In my last entry I promised you more random links, but I've decided to get a little less random this time and focus completely on two great resources for downloading Asian sixties grooves.
Tofu Magazine
The first comes from yet another great magazine that found it much easier to push pixels than print: Tofu Magazine was a Hong Kong experiment that debuted a couple of years after the HK handover. Describing that heady era in the territory, publisher Benoit Dupuis says "It was a time of great expectations, from which little has emerged beyond the consolidation of cultural uniformity." Alas, only three issues of intelligent, stylish and bilingual Tofu came out.
Lucky for us, Benoit and co. kept the faith and went virtual. Most important to our purposes, they have put together the best permanent collection of 60s pop mp3s from the Chinese diaspora that I've found yet. Be sure to scroll horizontally or you might miss free downloads by the Quests, Mystics, Zoundcrackers, Lotus, Reynettes, Rita Chao and other pushers of instrumental and vocal a go go sounds.
My Video A Go Go
Aren't we sick to death of the overhyped YouTube by now? Hell no. For your viewing pleasure, I've put together a list of my favorite East and Southeast Asian 60s pop clips. Get your fill of Japanese surf and Khmer oldies. I'll be adding to this over the coming months, so check back often.
August 19, 2006
News | Random Japanese Music Links |
I just finished my intensive Chinese summer class at University of Chicago and have allowed myself to relax with some random websurfing and email checking, yeilding this lovely crop of random Japanese music links:
avant japan
Sonore is a very interesting Japanese label featuring electronics and sound artists such as Yuko Nexus6, who just played last night in Chicago, matched up with a taiko group led by Japanese Chicagoan Tatsu Aoki (head of label Asian Improv). Many Sonore releases are available on iTunes, including the latest from Yuko Nexus6, which focuses on the manipulation of the human voice.
j-pop magnet
Junk Magnet is an old West Coast zine that's been floating in my peripheral vision for as long as I care to remember. These days, it's one of those websites I accidentally end up on every now and then because, though it may not be updated that often, the writer's tastes are in the same ballpark as mine. Behold, if you already haven't, the Junk Magnet J-pop page.
I wound up on the page last night after watching Shunji Iwai's All About Lily Chou Chou, a seminal film for those interested in Japanese youth, music and internet cultures--it's also thoroughly depressing. Beautifully shot in digital video, the plot revolves around twisted Japanese teens obsessed with the Bjork-like and fictional J-pop idol Lily Chou Chou. For this to work, the music in question would have to be quite good... and it is. Junk Magnet offers up links and info on the singer behind Lily, Salyu.
Another find on the Magnet Japan page is PineAM, a catchy electronic girl group that crafts polished pop. Nice sounds... check out their MySpace Page. Actually, they sent me a review copy of their year-oldPull The Rabbit Ears. I sent it to another reviewer and that person never wrote the review. Sorry, PineAM!
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I've got a lot more in the old link bag, so maybe I'll stretch this out over another entry. Until next time!
August 15, 2006
News | Radiodiffusion Internasionaal Ebay Auction |
Stuart from the world retropop site Radiodiffusion Internasionaal is auctioning off a bunch of music right now, including several old 45s from Thailand and Indonesia.
This could be a good chance to pick up some Southeast Asian vinyl history without bleeding your wallet on overseas shipping costs.
July 27, 2006
News | Tatsu Aoki's re:ROOTED Project, with special guests Jon Jang and Francis Wong |
Here's where I'll be tonight, as described by participant/drummer Mia Park:
Made In Chicago : World Class Jazz; Asia-Chicago
Date: 7/27/2006
Time: 6:30 PM - 8:30 PM
Chicago's Millennium Park: Jay Pritzker Pavilion
Tatsu Aoki's re:ROOTED Project, with special guests Jon Jang and Francis Wong
What do Korean rock musicians, Japanese Taiko drummers, Chinese folk singers and African-American jazz musicians have in common? They are all united by the drum. Tatsu Aoki's Re:ROOTED Project is the culmination of an exploration of Asian identity and cultural integration in three different communities. Marrying traditional and unconventional musical instruments and forms, the Re:ROOTED Project also blends the unique perspectives of older and younger generations of musicians. The concert features pianist Jon Jang and saxophonist Francis Wong.
http://www.millenniumpark.org/parkevents/
July 18, 2006
News | Chinese Lunar Probe to Kick Out the Jams |
The Chinese space agency is taking musical requests. The lunar program Chang'e (named for a mythical goddess who flew to the moon) will launch a lunar probe as early as next year and plans to broadcast Chinese music to the Earth from lunar orbit. You can vote online for one of 152 patriotic songs and pieces that represent China's many regional and ethnic groups. The list includes nu metal hit "The March of the Volunteers," Broadway show-stopper "The East is Red" and the classic slow jam "I Love You, China."
It's not the first time China's space program has launched an orbital jukebox. Its first satellite beamed down "The East is Red" from Earth orbit in 1970. And when it comes to kicking out the jams in the vacuum of space, the Middle Kingdom is not alone. NASA's Voyager 1 and 2 space probes carried gold records for the listening pleasure of extraterrestrial life (not realizing that all life in the universe would soon succumb to Apple marketing and buy an iPod).
It seems fitting that China, with its history of using loudspeakers to transmit the party line, would use music and space technology to symbolize its national strength and (by including regional and ethnic minority tunes) geographical unity. But I think that what future Chinese spacemen and women do with music won't be nearly so political... zero-G karaoke sounds like a blast.
July 02, 2006
News | Can Live feat. Damo Suzuki in Red Velvet Jumpsuit |
What more is there to say?
June 27, 2006
News | Concert: Boredoms at Intonation Festival, Chicago |
To my left a man held his hands in the air, tent revival-style, and shouted, "Thank you!" To my right, a man held his middle finger in the air and shouted "Fuck you!" Different nervous systems will react to the overwhelming intensity of the Boredoms in different ways.
The Boredoms don't play music, they play your head. Their tools are the technologies and conventions of popular music, used instead to perform brain surgery. They wield with precision the mundane array of three drum sets and a couple of keyboards to cut ecstatic waves in the air.
It's not chaos, not noise: It's all mastery and concentration. They'll work a high-speed interlocking tribal beat for 19.56 minutes, then stop on a dime and restart. Eye plays ascending swirls of augmented keyboard chords as if he's the horn section for some jazz band that's not there. After ten minutes, you start to hear the jazz band. That's not there. You start to hear a lot of things. That aren't there. Are they?
June 23, 2006
News | Beijing's disco crackdown sounds familiar |
Reuters reports that:
Beijing has banned disco and other dance music in private rooms of nightclubs and karaoke bars to curb the flood of illegal drugs into the capital's entertainment venues, Chinese newspapers reported Friday.
"Because many drug takers regularly dance and go crazy to upbeat 'disco' music in private rooms, police have specially requested karaoke machines not have this music," the Beijing Times newspaper said.
Club owners were now expected to delete disco and "other forms of vulgar entertainment" from karaoke machines in private rooms, the Beijing News said, as part of a "responsibility agreement" written up by police.
What kind of totalitarian state would do something as absurd as censoring dance music in order to curb drug use? Try the United States. In my hometown of New Orleans, the Drug Enforcement Agency held a rave promoter criminally liable simply for holding a rave in 2001. He faced up to 20 years in prison and $500,000 in fines. States like Illinois followed the federal lead, proposing anti-rave laws.
Of course, by the time the old folks were getting lathered about raves, the fad was on the wane in the US.
June 22, 2006
News | Asian Music in Chicago this Weekend |
There are a couple of great Asian music events coming up in Chicago:
Friday at noon Mia Park presents Silk Road Sounds. Mia, whose many activities include playing drums in various bands, hosting an indie music/puppet show on Chicago TV and writing the occasional review for this site, will bring Korean fan and drum music and Tibetan Buddhist chanting to Millennium Park.
There will be a Javanese puppet show at the Cultural Center on Sunday. For those of you who've never gotten to see wayang kulit (Indonesian Shadow puppets) and hear their gamelan musical accompaniment, this is a great opportunity.
See you this weekend!
June 16, 2006
A fine profile of Tan Dun appeared on National Public Radio this week. Particularly moving was his description of taking the "spiritual medicine" of Bach after suffering through the Cultural Revolution.
June 05, 2006
News | Film Review--Yang Ban Xi |
A common experience for tourists in China is sorting through the colorful and kitschy Maoist knickknacks sold to foreigners. In some ways, Yang Ban Xi is the filmic equivalent to that experience. Obviously aimed at foreign audiences, this documentary sets the Eight Model Works, the propagandistic musicals of the Cultural Revolution, in the context of today’s capitalist China. Director Yan-Ting Yuen serves us generous cuts of the surreally colorful and hysterically optimistic movie versions of the works, then leaps forward to digital video interviews with fans and performers. He also stages hip-hop and electronic reworkings of the musicals’ signature tunes.
In Yang Ban Xi, the digital present literally pales in comparison to the hyper-Technicolor past, suffusing the work with nostalgia that sometimes turns bittersweet. Its more poignant moments come from this interaction of past and present. It was jarring, for example to hear a Chinese artist who, like me, grew up in the 1970s, say that propaganda films such as The White Haired Girl and The Red Detachment of Women were the only popular culture he knew in his youth, as all other works were banned. (As he hit puberty, the latter film became fodder for his first sexual fantasies because the revolutionary outfits of the dancing Red Women showed a bit of leg.) In another scene, a director scolds the teenaged ballet dancers who are performing in a revival of The Red Detachment, who lack the fiery eyes of the original dancers. “Don’t look like it has nothing to do with you!” he shouts, but of course, it hasn’t. These lucky, young, bourgeois sons and daughters of the revolution know little of the madness and fervor of Mao’s decade. When Yuen’s young people dance to remixes of Model Works songs, the choreography is about the joy of movement and carries no other meaning at all.
While Yang Ban Xi does a good job of exploring the mixed meanings and feelings its subjects carry in relation to these Cultural Revolution spectacles, it doesn’t do as well at exploring the works themselves. Although the informed viewer will easily spot elements of Chinese opera and western ballet in the vintage footage, there is no explicit mention of this hybridization or how it came to be. The central role of Mao’s wife is made clear (in another of the documentary’s creative flourishes, the voice of dead Madam Mao caustically comments on scenes and interviewees) and key performers and a screenwriter are interviewed, but Yuen doesn’t look very deeply into the making of these films and attempts not at all to fit them into the cinematic and musical history of China. Instead, she presents the Eight Model Works like Mao wristwatches in a sidewalk display—colorful, gaudy, nostalgic and just possibly useful for telling us what time it is today.
May 25, 2006
News | Teen Dance Music now on Emusic |
The classic thrift shop bootleg of way-out Asian a go go is now available for download at Emusic. If you're not hip to this must-have collection, here's a description from my 2004 review:
"The Mao Sound at its grooviest--happenin' beats, craaazy farfisa organ sounds, surf guitar and plenty of Spy and Morricone influences. It's a cultural collision of Latin percussion, 60's pop and occasional Chinese touches and melodies. If Bruce Lee met James Bond for a showdown in the Spaghetti desert, this would be the soundtrack."
May 17, 2006
News | Sublime Frequencies Trailer |
Sublime Frequencies has released a trailer for a forthcoming DVD, PHI TA KHON: GHOSTS OF ISAN, directed by Robert Millis. The video documents a Thai ghost festival SF calls "The Mardi Gras from Hell." Expect a review here when it comes out.
News | Vietnamese Pop circa '66 |
Stuart's got a split 7" from Vietnam available for download at Radiodiffusion this week. Pressed in 1966, this scratchy disc features Duc Minh on one side and Thanh Vu, Hông Phuc & Phuog Bang on the other. These aren't the most memorable tunes in the world, but as Stu points out, you don't get to hear a lot of 60s Vietnamese pop. Cambodia faired much better in that respect.
The mix on the Duc Minh track is really strange--there's a drum that's way louder than anything else on the record. Part of the interest of records like this is imagining the material and social circumstances of their production. A year ago, the excellent recording magazine Tape Op had an article on studio recording in Vietnam today, but that's the only information I've ever seen on the subject.
May 11, 2006
News | J-Pop Will Eat Itself (again) |
The Stylus column J-Pop Will Eat Itself is back, now with a new writer, Teresa Nieman. Last month she kicked things off by writing a short history of Yellow Magic Orchestra and providing a list of her top five YMO songs. It's great to see J-pop back in the esteemed pages of Stylus.
The list should probably come with a warning label that YMO doesn't exactly age like fine wine--or, more pointedly, like Kraftwerk. There was a kitsch element to the Japanese synth legends' act from the get go and time has added another patina of retro kitsch on top of that. I don't say this to detract from the talents of Haroumi Hosono (video, featuring several performance clips) or the genius of Ryuichi Sakamoto (video, many more here). It's simply a fact that many first listen to this foundational-group-in-the-history-of-electronic-music-amen and say, "What the hell?"
Teresa Nieman has also written recently on Shiina Ringo, Koda Kumi and Visual Kei stars Glay.
May 01, 2006
News | 28th Bali Arts Festival June 17 - July 15 |
The island of Bali seems like one big arts festival to begin with--its dance, music, painting and puppetry are enmeshed aspects of the daily life of many Balinese. The addition of an official arts festival on top of all this activity must be something to behold. This year will mark the 28th annual Bali Arts Festival.
The following description is from the official website, which has yet to be updated for this year's festival. I'm not sure what "trances from remote mountain slopes" are, but I'm willing to find out...
The Bali Arts Festival is a full month of daily performances, handicraft exhibitions and other related cultural and commercial activities during which literally the whole of Bali comes to the city to present its offerings of dance, music and beauty. On display are trances from remote mountain slopes, forgotten or recently revived village dances, food and offering contests, classical palace dances, stars of Balinese stage, odd musical performances, "kreasi baru" (new creations) from the dance schools of Denpasar, as well as contemporary choreography and dance companies from other islands and from abroad.
April 30, 2006
News | Japanese Group Sounds "Go Japanese." |
There's an interesting clip up on youtube, a publicity reel of Mickey Curtis and his band Samurai attempting a British Invasion of their own. In this 1960s film aimed at British music fans, the bi-racial Curtis and his group play up their Japanese identity. While the voiceover man rattles off cliches ("Six swinging samurais from the Land of the Rising Sun... led by Mickey Curtis, a top name on the sake circuit..."), the band eat with chopsticks and clown around in robes.
Japanese Group Sounds and surf bands also presented Japanese-styled versions of pop for Japanese audiences, but in this case it's pretty clear that someone thought that the only way the Samurai were going to make it in the UK was by playing up their "exotic" heritage.
You could argue that things haven't changed much, as many bands still play up their Japanese ID when they tour the west. Personally, I don't think that's so bad--in the end, the individuality of a good band will shine through. But let's hope that publicists steer clear of the lame chopsticks-and-sake talk in 2006.
April 23, 2006
Radiodiffusion has a tasty track by 60s carnivores, the Jaguars. Actually, "omnivores" would be a better description of the band performance of their song "The Legend of Kisanado"--within the first thirty seconds, the Jags go from Spanish surf rock to something like a TV western theme to smooth Group Sounds harmonies. This one's a keeper.
Nice vests, too.
April 13, 2006
According to Pitchfork, the Boredoms will hit Europe and the US this summer. The groundbreaking, ear-shattering, shamanic noise scientists of Japan will have both Yamatsuka Eye and Yoshimi P-we in their lineup for this tour. The fantastic Intonation Festival will be one of their stops, providing yet another reason to attend Chicago's indie spectacular.
05-20 Camber, England - Camber Sands Holiday Centre (All Tomorrow's Parties)
05-22 Berlin, Germany - Maria am Ostbahnhof
05-26 Dublin, Ireland - Temple Bar Music Centre
05-29 London, England - Shepherds Bush Empire
06-01 Barcelona, Spain - Primavera Festival
06-24 Chicago, IL - Intonation Music Festival
06-25 St. Paul, MN - Turf Club
06-27 Columbus, OH - Wexner Center
06-28 Cleveland Heights, OH - Grog Shop
06-30 Philadelphia, PA - Starlight Ballroom
March 07, 2006
News | Red Chamber on the Empty Bottle Podcast |
The inaugural podcast of the Empty Bottle, Chicago's legendary indie venue, features an interview with yours truly in my capacity as manager of Red Chamber. In case you haven't caught wind of them yet, Red Chamber is an ensemble of masked players and dancers who throw down the Asian surf sounds of yesteryear.
The interview was done shortly before the band took the Bottle stage on Feb 1. In the words of co-hosts Fred and Gabe, "They're wrapped in a shroud of mystery and tight musicianship... Man, these guys are crazy. It was an insane show... Not many bands playing right now that are that tight."
You can listen to the entire podcast, which features music by Test Icicles, Plastic Crimewave Sound, Field Music and Mogwai, or just catch the 11-minute Red Chamber segment. Big thanks to the Bottle, Gabe and Fred for the show and interview!
March 03, 2006
News | How to flow in Japanese. |
For most non-Japanese speakers who know anything about it at all, hip hop from Japan is represented by turntablist/producer DJ Krush. Working a genre that crowns lyrical excellence to the near-exclusion of melody, star rappers like King Giddra are unknown quantities for most outside of Japan.
So how does rap work in Japanese and what do its lyricists write about? A couple of scholars provide us with multimedia windows onto the hip hop soul of Japan.
CUNY PhD student Noriko Manabe's "Globalization and Japanese Creativity: Adaptation of Japanese Language to Rap," the lead article in the current issue of Ethnomusicology, explains that rapping in Japanese is no simple matter. Here's a bit of a red flag: the Japanese language is ill-suited to rhyming and the country has little or no tradition of rhyming poetry. Secondly, Japanese lacks stress accents, which are crucial to lyrical flow in English. As a result, Manabe tells us, Japanese emcees have to be very creative in their efforts to emulate African American verbal styles. This is a key theme in transnational studies and ethnomusicology--globalization doesn't create a monoculture of imitators. Instead each culture adapts styles to suit its own local purposes.
Check out this 45-minute lecture by Manabe in streaming video. She gives a quick history of hip hop in Japan, then breaks down flow in Japanese.
If you want to know what's on the minds of these Japanese artists, Ian Condry is your go-to man. The MIT Assistant Professor has assembled a Japanese Hip Hop page that includes English-subtitled music videos by the likes of Giddra, whose crew unravels the geo-political complexities of 9-11 with lyrical aplomb.
February 22, 2006
News | Indie Singer on the Verge--Shugo Tokumaru |
He writes lovely and whimsical tunes, has opened in Japan for M Ward and Animal Collective, and has sold out of copies of his first album. Oh yes, and he just got a shout out from "indie pop heartthrob" Jens Lekman in Pitchfork. If none of this means anything to you, pat yourself on the back, but still check out Japanese songwriter Shugo Tokumaru. He should soon release his second album in the US and UK and maybe do some touring abroad as well. You can hear some of his stuff on his myspace page.
February 15, 2006
News | Japanese Jazzercise with Poodles |
Well, it's East Asian and it has music. Oh hell, I'm not even going to try to justify posting this. It's just so disturbing I couldn't bear it alone. Apparently, this video was produced by the Panasonic Corporation. To think I just bought a television from these people...
January 23, 2006
News | Old School Asian Downloads |
My friend Stuart has been making cool mix tapes for twenty years--I still have cassette productions he made back when "cut and paste" involved scissors and glue. Although we didn't always stay in touch, our tastes seem to have stayed in line and now we're both big into "lost" international pop from the 60s and 70s. Just as in the days of Monster Magnet and Butthole Surfers, Stu is a far more serious collector than I--and still cranking out the killer mixes.
Now you can be on the receiving end, too. His site Radiodiffusion Internasionaal features a weekly mp3 download from his collection. Past countries of origin have included Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Thailand and Cambodia, as well as Africa and South Asia. And if you've got stuff to trade, you may hit the motherlode...
January 10, 2006
While listening to Rice Records' latest compilation of dangdut queen Elvy Sukaesih, I started doing a little browsing on Indonesia's favorite brand of homegrown pop. Dangdut, an amalgam of Arabic, Indian, Indonesian and contemporary pop influences, is--get this--often compared to salsa! Sometimes I wonder why we bother to attempt writing about music at all. Tell you what, just listen to some dangdut hits to get the idea.
Like any form of pop with staying power, dangdut started in the working class and was bashed, then embraced by the middle class. Like French hip hop, the genre presently is said to reflect the frustrations of male muslim youth--according to Wikipedia, the self-proclaimed king of dangdut, Rhoma Irama, "proclaimed himself as an Antichrist" two Christmases ago. Will it belong before the CIA employs ethnomusicologists? (Nah, way too creative, that.)
But dangdut isn't an inherently political genre--it's Indonesian party music. You can get a peek at the future of the genre in this article on "dangdut trendy"--the type of stuff pumping in the Jakarta club world.
November 06, 2005
News | Former Shonen Knife Drummer Dies in Car Accident |
On Friday, November 5, the high-energy Japanese band DMBQ was involved in car accient that killed their drummer, China Nishiura. The band was on an East Coast U.S. tour. The band's other members were released from the hospital after treatment for minor injuries.
Nishiura, a former drummer of the legendary Shonen Knife, was called "the greatest female drummer I ever known" by Benten label owner Audry Kimura.
New York promoter Todd P reported the following on his site:
Hello
It is with a lot of grief and weariness that I announce that this weekend’s shows with DMBQ and friends show were cancelled following a tragic car accident involving the members of DMBQ.
Please direct any donations to benefit to help cover DMBQ’s and Michelle Panache’s travel and medical expenses to the following address via PayPal: dmbqpanache@lovepumpunited.com
READ FULL ENTRY...October 28, 2005
I don't know how long this has been making the internet rounds, but it's pretty damn amusing. "Two Chinese students" mockingly lip sync one of the more treacly American pop ballads of the past decade on a web cam video.
I especially like the guy in the background sitting at the computer the whole time. Looks like he's playing Doom or something. Don't Chinese kids ever study anymore?
October 18, 2005
News | Filippino-Indonesian Music Workshop Planned in Hawaii |
Get away from the winter cold with Joey Ayala and Ismet Ruchimat (of SambaSunda)...
This coming winter, February 2 through 5, 2006, "The Power of Music" workshop series is bringing world-renowned musicians, dancers and instrument makers from Indonesia and the Philippines to teach and share their performance skills on the Garden Island of Kauai. Workshop artists were chosen for their interest in blending the old and the new: each one possesses a deep knowledge and reverence for traditional forms of expression, along with a keen interest in innovation.
Workshop participants will have the opportunity to interact, study and perform with artists including singer/songwriter Joey Ayala from the Philippines, Sundanese gamelan and kacapi maestro Ismet Ruchimat, founder of the fusion group "Sambasunda", and Ening Rumbini and Ati Sumiati, performers who specialize in Sundanese modern dance and martial arts. They will be joined by Lei Ouyang Bryant and Andrew Weintraub, musicians and university teachers of Asian culture who have done extensive field work in ethnomusicology.
For more information, go to: http://www.power-of-music.org/
October 11, 2005
-They're a Japanese band named after a Chinese greeting.
-They play inventive, heavy, playful, deconstructed rock.
-They're not unlike the Boredoms, but they're not too much like them, either.
-You can read an interview with them here.
-You can buy their two 2004 mini-albums, Red and Blue, on iTunes instead of paying import prices.
-Now please go do so.
September 27, 2005
News | Benten Finds US Distributor, Announces Tour |
News from Japan's girl punk label Benten today--they've found US distribution through NAIL, which means future CDs by great bands like Kokeshi Doll should soon be a lot easier to get ahold of in the States. The first release will be TsuShiMaMiRe's "Pregnant Fantasy," slated to hit shelves November first. TsuShiMaMiRe will tour the West Coast with two other bands.
Nov. 6th LA @ King King
Nov.7th TBA
Nov. 8th SF @ Studio Z
Nov. 9th ARCATA @ TBA
Nov. 10th PORTLAND @ Towne Lounge
Nov. 11th & 12th SEATTLE @ ROCKGRL Conference
September 16, 2005
Those folks at Fancy have once again done their part for the edification of the public on things Asian pop. This time it's a groovy article on 60s Singaporean pop idols the Trailers. The writer is Mr. Joseph Pereira, author of Legends of the Golden Venus, a history of a popular Singapore nightclub. Here's how the article starts off:
Legend has it that at one performance in the Sixties, a female fan became so besotted with Benny Koh’s singing that she climbed on stage and with her red lip stick scribbled “Benny, I Love You” onto his trousers. That says it all. The hysteria a front man like Benny Koh was capable of inspiring. In the pantheon of Singapore Sixties bands, The Trailers rank up there with the best.
September 07, 2005
News | New Dengue Fever Album Available for Download |
Dengue Fever, the excellent southern California band that pays tribute to and updates the sounds of classic Cambodian pop, has just released its new album in digital format at the RealPlayer music store. The CD will be available shortly--keep an eye out for a review here. Fans in California, Arizona, Washington and Oregon can catch them on their upcoming tour, but the rest of us will have to make do with this video: hi|lo
August 27, 2005
News | New Land Address for Far East Audio |
The Far Eastern Audio Review has relocated its corporate offices (i.e. my laptop) to a new address in Bloomington, Indiana, where I am beginning graduate studies at Indiana University's Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology. The transition from unchallenged know-it-all of my own tiny virtual kingdom to grasshopper in the vast academic field is sure to be daunting, but I will do my utmost to continue reviewing new Asian music on this site as it comes in. As always, I invite musicians and reviewers alike to submit their stuff--the latter can email me, Mack, @ far east audio dot com. For CD submissions, the new mailing address is:
The Far Eastern Audio Review
601 W. 6th St.
Bloomington, IN 47404
USA
July 15, 2005
News | Taiwan Chronicle #5: Stranger than Paradise |
As an expatriate destination, the draw of Taiwan is not exactly self-evident. Despite being frequently mistaken for it in conversation, Taiwan is not Thailand-- you’d have to be smoking something really strong to mistake the tobacco-leaf shaped island for an island paradise. Yet many foreigners do come, often to teach English, and some hearty souls stay on for years. In this fifth and final chapter of the Taiwan Chronicles, we take a look at four foreigners involved in Taiwan music.
June 26, 2005
News | Taiwan Chronicle #4: Coffee with Wan-ting Huang |
Towards the end of my trip, I interviewed Wan-ting Huang. I'd first met her by chance in Chicago a few years ago. Two bands we were playing in were sharing a bill at Schuba’s and we'd started talking. I was excited to find out that she was not only from Taiwan, but was the guitarist and a founding member of Ladybug, the trailblazing punk band. Ladybug was a fun band, but perhaps more important to their success, they were an all-female punk band that emerged just as the late-90s “riot grrl” trend caught fire in the States. Two U.S. tours ensued and the band played with indie luminaries June of ’44 and Yo La Tengo.
In 2000, Wan-ting broke with Ladybug to study sound engineering in Chicago, where studios like John McEntire’s Soma were perfecting the pristine organic/electronic hybrid that “post-rock” had become. She’s back in Taipei now, but the sonic imprint of those Chicago years can be found in the work of Varo, an instrumental project which highlights her skills in the studio and on a laptop more than her guitar work.
At a time when Taiwan seems awash with three-chord indie girl bands, Wan-ting, now 30, seems to neither want nor receive any credit as a pioneer. She’s moved on, making sophisticated new music that has gotten little attention at home, but has raised the eyebrows of tastemakers at BBC Radio and the Wire abroad. Blazing her own trail has meant not only recording her own music, but releasing it. Her 7” Vinyl label puts out CDs by Varo and other bands from Taiwan and Japan.
We met up at Wan-ting’s favorite Taipei coffee house and had a wide-ranging conversation about indie music in Taiwan. She began by telling me why she does everything herself...
READ FULL ENTRY...June 21, 2005
News | Taiwan Chronicle #3: Karaoke Radio |
In this instalment, we travel to the betel nut-red heart of Taiwan. It's a little wild south of Taipei, with beautiful mountains and girls in glass boxes. And in the little town of Puli, a favorite old folks’ pastime is singing telephone karaoke on the radio. In fact, it’s so popular that it’s practically the only thing on. Play the mp3s as you read the travelogue in the full entry. It doesn’t get any more Formosan than this…
Puli FM-1: reverb chit-chat | Puli FM-2: caller sings | Puli FM-3: radio host sings | Puli FM-4: host-caller duet | Puli FM-5: passionate grandpa sings an epic
READ FULL ENTRY...June 11, 2005
What better way to take a break from documenting my trip to Taiwan than to read about another Asian oldies lover's recent trip to Japan. Sheila is the New York-based editor of Cha Cha Charming (a global girl group site), a freelance writer and former intern at Sony Japan. She went back to Japan for a visit in April and attended a CD release party for the "Moodsville Presents Shouwa Dance Party" compilation (something I'd love to get my hands on).
As Sheila explains it,
Shouwa is technically the term for Emperor Hirohito's reign (1926-1989), but it is more commonly used as a reference to '60s-'70s Japan. The Shouwa era marked the introduction of kayoukyoku (Japanese popular songs), an umbrella term that covers '60s beat girls (Linda Yamamoto, Jun Mayuzumi), Group Sounds (The Tigers, The Carnabeats), and countless pop idols (Mieko Hirota, Ayumi Ishida). I'm a Shouwa girl- a little too obsessed with '60s Tokyo, which is why this dance party turned out to be one of the greatest nights of my life.
Looks like it was a hell of a party, featuring Pizzicato Five's Konishi, Moodsville Records' Hirabayashi, and Ballroom Records' Uchimon, who got naked (see photo).
June 06, 2005
News | Taiwan Chronicle #2: Hunting Vinyl among Ghosts & Owls |
For used vinyl hunters, the rainy, semi-tropical isle of Taiwan can seem like an arid desert. My own efforts are illustrative: though I came equipped for the hunt with the Mandarin Chinese phrase “second-hand records” (er shiow chang pien), two weeks of its frequent use reaped only a bounty of earnest head scratching. People understood what I was asking for, but had no idea where to find such a thing.
The explanation for the lack of vintage LPs is simple: the Taiwanese don’t like anything old. When an object has outlived its usefulness in the cramped condo or apartment of the average Taiwanese family, it quickly finds itself out in the alley for garbage pickup. (And as a minor unintended consequence, foreign, tail-chasing miscreants—er, visiting teachers of English as a Second Language—are able to furnish their apartments for free.) But it’s not simply an economy of high disposable income vs. low personal space that sends lao dongxie (old things) to the alley. Despite being a sophisticated population and unsung heroes of the silicon age, the people of Taiwan do honestly—and fearfully—believe in ghosts. In fact, during my stay, a newspaper survey of college students confirmed my years of anecdotal experience: 90% admitted a belief that spirits roam the island.
READ FULL ENTRY...June 03, 2005
News | The Taiwan Chronicles |
Your faithful editor is back from a three-week trip to Taiwan, the island nation/renegade Chinese province (take your pick) where I lived for nearly four years. It was ten years ago that I left Taiwan, but that distinctive Taiwan vibe was still there when I returned--crowded, lively, warm, friendly, fearlessly high-tech, surprisingly traditional. I'll chronicle my journey in five or so entries, each focusing on a different aspect of pop music:
There will be an overview of the Taiwanese soundscape, a report on the challenges of hunting vintage vinyl in a place where no one keeps anything old, an audio journey to the heart of the island in search of old people singing karaoke on the radio, a look at indie rock in Taiwan and a wide-ranging interview with one of the genre's most interesting artists. I've also accrued over fifty Taiwan LPs and CDs on this trip, so there's lots of Taiwan goodness to come...
On a sad note, one of my cameras broke right before I left and the other got lost, so please pardon the lack of pics.
News | Taiwan Chronicle #1: Taipei’s Sonic Ecosystem |
I kick off the series with impressions of aural culture shock (the experience a pair of foreign ears is likely to undergo upon arrival in Taiwan's capital city) and a general description of the island's current mainstream and indie music trends...
The ears too must bear their burden in the sensory barrage that greets the visitor to Taipei, Taiwan, one of the most densely populated places on Earth. Certainly it seems at first that the eyes and nose catch the brunt of things, a dizzying array of sights and smells: movement and neon, food and incense, but first and foremost the human throngs that Taipei-ers call people mountain/people sea. But the ears must adapt to another kind of volume intensity. Truth be told, the Taiwanese don’t much care for quiet, which is good because it’s in very short supply.
Taipei’s sleek and efficient underground rail system means it’s no longer in danger of unseating Bangkok as Asia’s Greatest Traffic Cluster-Fuck, but the city still teems with busses, cars and motorcycles. These set a humming, whooshing, squealing, beeping soundstage upon which a myriad other noises vie for lead actor: cell phones, sidewalk barkers, karaoke emanations from who-knows-where, political sound trucks, the electric-entrepreneurial wails of cart-pushing bun vendors and knife-sharpeners, the amplified snake-charmer reeds and wailings of paid mourners in funeral processions… and from every shop (which essentially means "every doorway" in this most thoroughly mercantile metropolis), music, music, music.
READ FULL ENTRY...May 09, 2005
News | Far East Audio Goes to Taiwan--No New Posts 'til June |
Far East Audio is making the first of what I hope will be many fieldtrips tomorrow, as I travel Taiwan for three weeks. The site will be on standby while I'm gone, but come the second week of June, you can expect a series of reports on the bands, record labels, clubs, music shops and street music of the island, complete with audio and photos.
This trip will be my first back to Taiwan since I lived there in the early to mid 90s. While I was there, martial law under the KMT was still a recent memory, but already clubs were popping up everywhere, the first Spring Scream (see entries below) went down, and even a nascent noise subculture was emerging. And I can't neglect to mention metal--a more-than-healthy dose of it.
Nevertheless, the predominant musical form was very much that of the formula teen idol. It was quite easy to feel smug about Taiwan's obsession with these candy-colored clowns at the time, but not long after my return to the States the same grim idolitry took hold there. So, all the while I thought Taiwan's mainstream scene to be a throwback to 50s/early 60s America, it was really a harbinger of our new millennium.
Can't wait to see what's next...
In addition to my role as your humble editor on this site, I've now decided to undertake the role of manager for an obscure band of instrumentalists from parts unknown: Red Chamber.
While the identities and histories of Red Chamber's members are lost to a fog of mystery (and, I'm told, Mekong whiskey), their power as a rock combo comes through loud and clear. Commanding the stage in matching red shirts and Chinese opera masks at Chicago hipster joints the Hideout and the Empty Bottle recently, Red Chamber wowed crowds with their blend of 60s & 70s Asian a-go-go and psychedelia.
Despite the language barrier (they don't speak), I have become their manager and built them their first english-language website. Learn about their shadowy 30-year history and check out mp3s and photos at http://www.fareastaudio.com/red
April 26, 2005
News | "Ni de mama steals cheap rice wine from 7-11!" |
This year's Spring Scream unearthed a little-known (but energetic) music subculture in Taiwan. Leonie Sanderson throws a little more light on the subject:
Rockabilly is undergoing a resurgence… in Taiwan. Perhaps never that popular in the first place, rockabilly has become an underground favorite replacing death metal in the popularity stakes.
The recent Spring Scream music festival saw four rockabilly bands play in a row, including popular Japanese band, Greassy Spoon. Resplendent with duck’s tail haircuts and cuffed denim jeans, Greassy Spoon played to packed crowds and lived up to their description as a cross between ‘ Jerry Lewis, the Sex Pistols and Quentin Tarantino’. Not to be outdone, Taiwanese bands Full House, Sugar Lady and Chicken Rice also hit the stage running, and played long and loud.
READ FULL ENTRY...April 18, 2005
News | More on Taiwan's Spring Scream |
Last week we posted a first report on Taiwan's alternative music festival, Spring Scream. Today Jennifer Roberts brings her pen and lens to the fest for this photo essay, pointing out the large showing of talent from the town of Taichung:
If Hedwig and his Angry Inch went on world tour, he would definitely make a stop off at the Spring Scream Festival. Is it a drag queen jamboree? Oh no. But Hedwig would fit right in alongside fellow unknown punk talent and mad fringe performance artist-musicians. Angry fairy grrls, boys in animal suits crowd surfing, and guitarists sporting tighty whitey’s below their muddy bums is just the icing on the cake. The trendy Taiwanese crowd carries an atmosphere of creative cool rarely seen on the island of Formosa, while the foreigners cover every character from a backpacker hostel. The eclectic range of music seems to traverse time and space simultaneously. From Mandarin Rockabilly to Kung Fu 70’s Funk Revival to mystical Brooklyn hipster duos, the mind swirls at the global mish-mash.
April 10, 2005
News | Taiwan's Spring Scream 2005 |
Kenting, Taiwan's Spring Scream has become something of a subcultural institution. When I went to the first one, over a decade ago, it was more like a big party than a small music festival. Much has changed--now some 3,000 to 4,000 local and expat rockers migrate to the southern beach town each year for a fest that has nonetheless stayed true to its non-corporate roots. We'll have a couple of reports on what went down at the Scream this year, starting with this overview by Taiwan-based writer Leonie Sanderson:
April 07, 2005
News | 60s Links & Shin Jung-Hyun | Various
Big thanks to my friend and inveterate record collector/researcher Stuart Ellis for sending me links to some Asian 60s music pages.
http://progressive.homestead.com has some deep pages on Japanese folk and psych, which feature links and band names a plenty. I also like the Southeast Asian page with its many pictures and links (including one to a review of my own). But the coolest discovery for me on the site is the extensive information on a genre I knew almost nothing about: Korean psychedelia.
In particular, the story of the diminutive band leader Shin Jung-Hyun (seen dwarfed by a Gibson SG in this photo) is fascinating. Shin began his musical career in 1955 and went on to make something like 100 records in various groups. His group Add 4 is said to be the first Korean rock band. Jang Hyun and the Men, the only Shin group I've heard (thanks again Stuart), sound a lot like "Nights in White Satin"-era Moody Blues. Great stuff.
April 04, 2005
News | Oakland Fourth-Grader is Budding Chinese Opera Star | China
An African-American fourth-grader in Oakland, California has impressed Chinese Opera aficionados with his ability to sing roles in Mandarin. Tyler Thompson, a member of Oakland Chinatown's Great Wall Youth Chorus, has even performed solo for millions on China's CCTV network during Chinese New Year. The Bay Area's CBS 5 TV has posted video and a transcript on its website.
March 26, 2005
News | Press Release: Chinese Percussion in San Francisco |
The internationally acclaimed master percussionist from China, Wang Wei, will be presenting a concert on April 3rd at 7pm, along with didjeridu player, Stephen Kent, renown tabla player, Jim Santi Owen, African percussionist, Ken Okulolo, and Beijing Opera jinghu player, Edward Young. This performance will feature traditional Chinese percussion pieces from various regional styles such as Beijing Opera, Hunan, Shaanxi, and Zhejiang, as well as, collaborative pieces with instruments from India, Africa, and aboriginal Australia. They will present their unique percussive traditions and combine forces to create a unique blend of Chinese, African, Indian, and other world influences.
SUNDAY, APRIL 3, 2005; 7PM
ODC THEATER
3153-17th Street
San Francisco, CA 94110
February 04, 2005
News | Choying Drolma + Steve Tibbetts Tour Dates Announced |
Today Six Degrees records announced US tour dates for Tibetan Buddhist nun/vocalist Choying Drolma and Minnesota guitarist Steve Tibbetts. The pair will hit the road in late March and continue through April in support of their recent release Selwa. The dates are as follows...
READ FULL ENTRY...January 17, 2005
News | Guitar Wolf Announce Next US Tour | Japan
Hard rockin' and hard tourin' Guitar Wolf will soon be back in the Statesnext month. No strangers to these shores, the Japanese band has a reputation for energetic shows that border on the chaotic. I'll try to catch the Chicago stop for a review. Guitar Wolf's tour dates are:
January 15, 2005
News | Music from Tsunami Areas |
Some reporters and radio programmers have expressed interest in finding music indigenous to tsunami-affected areas. I've compiled a list of releases mentioned by the experts on a couple of world music mailing lists. Some folks provided interesting details about the cultures and genres involved. I've included all of this information, unedited.
READ FULL ENTRY...January 07, 2005
News | Rough Guide CDs Benefit Tsunami Victims |
Here's a message from worldmusic.net:
In the month of January, with any online purchase of any of the following Rough Guides: the Rough Guide to the Music of Thailand, the Rough Guide to the Music of Indonesia, the Rough Guide to the Music of India and the Rough Guide to the Music of the Indian Ocean, World Music Network (UK) will donate £5.00 (about $9.00) from the sale to the Oxfam Tsunami Crisis Fund.
I believe this only refers to purchases made on their site. These are good collections, so this is a no-brainer if you don't already own them. You can get more information and buy the CDs here.
January 03, 2005
News | Thoughts on Giving to Tsunami Victims |
The joy of our Western holiday season has been diminished by the knowledge of the ongoing misery in Asia. This first entry of 2005 can't be about anything but helping the victims of the earthquake and tsunami. Giving money is a way to strengthen the bond between hemispheres, aiding those who suffer and empowering us who helplessly follow this tragedy from afar.
I'm donating to an Indonesian Muslim group, IMAAM, who in turn distribute funds to the Indonesian Red Crescent, MER-C and PKPU, groups currently on the ground working in Aceh and other localities.
My choice of this group was informed by several things: Idonesia suffered the brunt of this disaster and I have personally enjoyed the kindness of its people, so it made sense to me help there. It is my strong belief that the people of the region know best their own needs, so I wanted to donate to organizations run by "locals." Finally, while my own nation of residence, the U.S., is doing so much to exacerbate conflict between Muslims and non-Muslims, I want my donation to be a small gesture of goodwill to followers of Islam.
The fourth pillar of that religion is zakat or "charity," often expressed by year-end tithing at Ramadan, when Muslims are asked to contribute 2 1/2 percent of their annual income. I find this a very enlightened and helpful way to think about giving. What percentage of this month's income can I afford to contribute to help those in need?
Some Asian Embassies in the U.S.:
Indonesia: http://www.embassyofindonesia.org/
Thailand: http://www.thaiembdc.org/
Sri Lanka: http://www.slembassyusa.org/
India: http://www.indianembassy.org/
December 14, 2004
News | Flying Daggers Soundtrack Released | Japan
Angel Romero's World Music Central brings word that the American soundtrack recording for Zhang Yimou's House of Flying Daggers (buy it) is in stores. The composer is Shigeru Umebayashi:
Once the leader of Japan's legendary new-wave rock band EX, composer Shigeru Umebayashi began scoring films in 1985 when the band broke up. He has more than 40 Japanese and Chinese films to his credit and is perhaps best known in the West for his score for director Wong Kar-Wai's In the Mood for Love (2001). Umebayashi is also scoring Wong Kar-Wai's long-awaited 2046, scheduled for release this year.
December 08, 2004
News | Ten Thousand Taiwanese to Toot Flutes Together |
As your source for hard-hitting Asian music news, we bring you word of an attempt in Kaohsiung, Taiwan to make music history. According to a government source, the fathers of said southern city "[plan] on holding an activity on December 18 in which over 10,000 people will simultaneously play ceramic flutes." In an attempt at a new Guinness World record, the myriad musicians will play a specially designed flute:
The flute is in the shape of the island of Taiwan and there is a place that protrudes from the flute that is equivalent to the location of Kaohsiung in Taiwan. This carries the significance that Kaohsiung is sounding out to the world. It is seen as a great marketing tool for the city and many are promoting the flute.
We will, of course, keep you up to date on the latest developments.
November 28, 2004
News | A Very Petty Christmas |
Just got this note from Audrey at the Benten label:
Aloha & Konichiwa ~
Greeting from Tokyo. I hope you have lovely season.
The Ukulele duo, Petty & Booka are coming back to US soon!
Please come and see Petty Booka and tell all your friends you know in these area. This trip is mainly for Dan Hicks show opening act, they will come back to US (other states) next year again. I will update the schedule. Come to check our web site occasionally.
Read full entry for December West Coast tour dates...
READ FULL ENTRY...November 18, 2004
News | Indie Labels Crack the Majors' Hegemony | Japan
What a difference distribution makes. As any millennial indie band knows, recording and pressing your own CDs is a cinch, but getting them in the stores isn't. The Japan Times' Suzannah Tartan reports that indie labels in Japan have increasingly gained access to all-important domestic distribution. The surprising catalyst? Tower Records:
"Years ago it was difficult to find independently released records outside of a few shops in Shinjuku or Osaka's Americamura," explains Keith Cahoon, former president of Tower Records Asia and now president of music publisher Hotwire. Tower Japan was one of the first chain stores to stock independent labels, following the example of its American parent that had traditionally supported the indie scene.
November 13, 2004
Damn, Giant Robot is already ten years old! The California-based magazine started by Martin Wong and Eric Nakamura captured the zeitgeist of a new generation of skatebording, video game playing, indie rock listening, Asian-American hipsters while also serving up fascinating articles on the culture, sounds, flavors and gadgetry of East Asia. The latter gave the magazine instant appeal to slacker English teachers and backpackers of Asia (like me) who were thrilled to see colorful and often hilarious articles on our favorite found oddities. But I think another important reason GR has made the ten-year trip from zine to glossy is that it bursts at the seams with creativity and soul--always eye popping, but never pretentious.
November 11, 2004
The China Daily has a nice article on the attempt to preserve the musical form known as nanyin.
"Nanyin is a traditional opera sung in the Minnan (south Fujian) dialect. Closely tied with imperial and Buddhist music, poetic rhythm and drama tunes from Central China, Nanyin is accompanied by a band of erxian, a two-stringed vertical instrument, sanxian, a three-stringed plucked instrument, dongxiao, a vertical flute, nanpa (bent-neck pipa) and paiban (clappers)."
The form has migrated with the Minnan people to Taiwan, Hong Kong, Malaysia, Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Europe.
November 07, 2004
...At least for now. Due to an overwhelming amount of comment spam, I've had to turn off the interaction around here. I tried a couple of solutions, but to no avail--gambling and erections kept rearing their ugly heads in the comments area. I tried a couple of fixes, but them spammers are crafty, I tell ya. We'd still love to hear your comments, however. Email us at contact at far east audio dot com.
October 28, 2004
News | Interview: Paul Fisher |
As a writer for fRoots magazine, a D.J. on London's Resonance FM, and a compiler of the Rough Guide CDs for China, Thailand, Okinawa, Japan and Indonesia, Paul Fisher has spent well over a decade leading new listeners to East Asian music--particularly that of Japan. Fisher first visited Japan in 1990, a trip that wound up lasting into 2001. He spent the time well, creating Far Side Music, a company which, among other things, runs the best East Asian music shop on the internet. I contacted him in the UK to ask him about the music of Japan and get some expert picks of new releases.
READ FULL ENTRY...October 11, 2004
News | New Kids on the Tatami | Japan
It's not every day you can write the words pin-up and shamisen in the same paragraph, but the PR guy for the Yoshida Brothers gets to do just that:
"Still in their early 20's, Ryoichiro and Kenichi, also known as the Yoshida Brothers, are the newest sensation in traditional Japanese World Music, achieving pin-up status with an ever-growing legion of fans. The brothers play a Tsugaru-Shamisen, a three-stringed instrument resembling the banjo and with a style originating from northern Japan with intricate and fast picking."
Like Chinese female counterparts 12 Girls Band, the brothers have hit it big in Asia with their contemporized traditional sound and are trying to do the same in the US with their second release. Hit the link below for dates on their current US publicity tour.
READ FULL ENTRY...October 07, 2004
News | "A Pinoy rock thing" | Philippines
This week the Manila Times has a long piece on the legendary Juan de la Cruz Band. While the Philippines was still under the Marcos regime, the band began performing heavy psychedelic music and singing in their native tongue, Tagalog--neither of which was the norm in Filipino pop. An original copy of the band's Up in Arms (re-released in 2003 on Germany's Normal records) now fetches $1,000 from psych record collectors, but in a typical rags-to-rags tale, the members don't have much to show for their efforts. They've never won an award in the Philippines and their occasional reunion gigs take place in bars rather than stadums.
September 29, 2004
News | You've come a long way, Taipei. | Taiwan
In a room on the second floor of Taipei City Hall resides an exhibit on the history of pop music in Taiwan. It's not the flashiest thing, but it's significant nonetheless considering the long history of government suppression Taiwan pop has withstood. As the Taipei Times' Chris Fuchs describes it, The Song: Taipei and Me ranges from the Taiwanese folk song that became a Shanghai silent film hit in 1932 through the strict controls of the Japanese occupation to the Chinese Nationalist government's own strict controls, which lasted into the 1980s. Of course, today Taiwanese pop music is free to say what it likes, as evidenced by Taiwan MTV and the enormous popularity of videos questioning patriarchy, homophobia, free market capitalism and... o.k., just kidding!
September 28, 2004
News | Forrest Gump on Gamelan | Singapore
A recent edition of Singapore's Straits Times newspaper features an essay by a former writer of that paper who has moved to London to pursue a doctorate in ethnomusicology at the School Of Oriental And African Studies. Her focus? The folksong of Taiwan's aborigines.
"And why are you going to ang moh London to study Asian music?" Tan Shzr Ee asks herself rhetorically. "I HAD to go to London because I couldn't study what I needed to study in Singapore itself." Singapore is blowing academic and touristic opportunities, she explains:
Today, contingents of gamelan enthusiasts bypass Singapore and flock to Australia instead as 'the gateway to Indonesia'.
Meanwhile, at home, well-meaning 'gamelan conductors' at Singapore Youth Festival competitions continue to urge their students to mangle Javanese gongs with the Forrest Gump Theme transcribed for 'an Indonesian orchestra'.
Hmm... Call me sick, but I'd rather like to hear that!
September 27, 2004
News | Searching through Time for Tone | Hong Kong
If you're in the market for a new pipa, ruan or liuqin, you may want to stop by the workshop of Yuen Shi-chun. As reported in this AP article, Yuen, a principal musician in the Hong Kong Chinese Orchestra, is obsessed with finding the perfect sound. Dissatisfied with the tone of today's traditional Chinese instruments, he traveled to Osaka, Japan to examine the world's only surviving Tang-Dynasty-era ruansand pipas, which were purchased for the Japanese emperor 1,200 years ago. When asked about the state of music today, Yuen gives the curmudgeonly response of the true purist: "The younger generation grew up on TV, electric pianos and guitars and pop songs that have very fake sounds. They've lost the ability to appreciate real music."
September 20, 2004
News | Japan's Mono on N. American Tour | Japan
The Japanese band Mono, who list Sonic Youth and Beethoven as influences, began a month-long United States tour on the 15th of this month. Most of the dates were to be shared with Montreal's Fly Pan Am, but apparently the drummer of that band fell off a ladder, forcing them to cancel. For the full list of dates, hit the full entry link below.
September 15, 2004
News | Yat Kha Tour Cancelled, Member Leaves | Tuva
I was checking out the Yat Kha site in eager anticipation of their show this Friday at Chicago's Old Town School of Folk Music when I read this:
The US tour is cancelled from visa problems
Passport theft was followed by theft of the suitcase with all the pedals and gear
Radik has decided to go on paternity leave for the forseeable future
The STORM over ASIA project has temporarily been suspended by REALITY Film because of the above...
Storm Over Asia is a 1928 silent film to which Kat Kha was adding live accompaniment, making this a particularly interesting tour. The Tuvan rock band is known for its heavy touring, but should also get recognition for "family values": Radik is the third member to go on paternity leave.
September 12, 2004
News | 'Music from Japan' kicks off 30th Year | Japan
Music from Japan, the leading presenter of traditional and contemporary Japanese music in the U.S., has launched its 30th season with a concert of traditional and contemporary gagaku works at Zankel Hall in New York City. A concert will also be held today at 3 p.m. at Hertz Hall, UC Berkeley, CA.
Gagaku is the 1,200-year-old music of the Japanese Imperial court. To learn more about gagaku and Music from Japan, go to www.musicfromjapan.org.
September 08, 2004
News | Mei Han and Randy Raine-Reusch | China
Mei Han and Randy Raine-Reusch, creators of 2001's Juno Award-nominated album of modern Chinese zheng compositions, Distant Wind, will play with Japanese ichigenkin masters Issui Minegishi and Ichiyo Saito on September 29th, 8pm at the Vancouver East Cultural Centre in Vancouver British Columbia.
The ichigenkin is a rare Japanese one-string zither said to be "the essential expression of Zen." Randy Raine-Reusch will perform on ichigenkin, biwa and zheng, and Mei Han on zheng.
Randy informs us that "Mei Han and I will also be performing a concert tour of Vietnam, Singapore and Pakistan in Dec 2004, Jan 2005." For more information, check out www.asza.com.
September 06, 2004
News | Japanese Music on the Beeb | Japan
I was planning on pointing everyone toward BBC Radio host Andy Kershaw's amazing musical journey through North Korea, touted as the first radio documentary done in that country. Alas, the audio link has been taken down.
As a consolation, here is this BBC Radio 3 Guide to Japanese music. Although it exemplifies and promotes the myth among World Music types that the only interesting modern Japanese music is that which mines the nation's musical traditions (how they remain oblivious to Japan's global influence on electronic, indie, noise, improv and experimental music I'll never understand), this show is a great introduction to recent mods on indigenous sounds.
One particular standout is Ainu (native Japanese) musician Oki (track 7).
August 19, 2004
News | NPR Review: David Darling & Taiwan's Wulu Bunun Singers | Taiwan
In addition to considerable buzz on world music sites, David Darling's new collaboration with the aboriginal Wulu Bunun Singers of Taiwan has scored a glowing review on National Public Radio's All Things Considered.
If you're not hooked up for audio on your computer, here's a rundown on the new album from worldmusiccentral.org. Check back here for our own review in the coming weeks.
August 06, 2004
News | Who is this man? | Taiwan
Taipei, Taiwan blogger William (Robot Action Boy) came across this photo of a 1967 album by Wong Ching Yian. I've never heard of him, but my guess is this platter is full of cha-cha-a-go-go goodness. What sweet cover!
July 27, 2004
News | "Eleki" links: Terry Terauchi | Japan
Fancy Mag has the most thorough article I've ever seen on Takeshi "Terry" Terauchi, the Japanese surf guitar god. In 1962, the Ventures toured Japan for the first time, planting the seeds of a Japanese surf genre known as "eleki". Terry Terauchi stood out from the thousands of new electric guitarists for two reasons. First, he was a monster player capable of the speed and aggressive edge of Dick Dale. Better yet, he applied surf guitar arrangements to ancient Japanese tunes usually played on the shamisen. Some of these arrangements are way out and have to be heard to be believed!
READ FULL ENTRY...July 19, 2004
News | God save the Sultan! | Brunei
According to a newspaper account, a foreign moral scourge is infecting the youth in the Sultanate of Brunei.
Ya got trouble!
Right here in Bandar Seri Begawan City!
With a capital "T" and that rhymes with "P"
And that stands for PUNK!
Yes, you only have to change a couple of words of the the song "Trouble" (from the classic musical comedy The Music Man) to turn it into a summary of this alarming report from the Borneo Bulletin. It seems that punk and hip hop are corrupting the emerging mall rat class in upscale Brunei...
READ FULL ENTRY...