Kingdom of Rust
I’m really, really excited about this record — and for once, it looks like my anticipation may not be in vain. I also downloaded the new Pet Shop Boys today, so we’ll see what I think of that.
Archive for March, 2009
Kingdom Of Rust
Some cool new stuff on JapanFiles
Strawberry Machine
I stopped by JapanFiles Sunday night for the first time in forever (well, possibly as far back as late December, anyway) and saw several newsworthy (if now a bit dated) things.
The big news for the site is undoubtedly that they’ve inked a deal with Up-Front Works to release over 150 albums by JPop giants Morning Musume and other Hello! Project groups on MP3. Which is pretty big news (you can read more details here), but what I’m more interested in is another, smaller label that they’ve recently added a bunch of music by, abcdefg* record. The label is home of Strawberry Machine, whom I’ve been wanting to check out for a long time, and has a bunch of other promising-looking groups in its roster. You can read more info here.
Also, it looks like new music on JapanFiles is going to be encoded at 320 kbps instead of 192 kbps, and they’re going through their catalog converting some older files to the higher bitrate as well. Even better, according to this, if you contact them with a list of recently upgraded files that you downloaded from them at the lower bitrate, they’ll give you free upgrades to the higher-quality version — which is extremely cool.
News
Catching up on my newsfeed backlog, so there’s some old-ish stuff in here:
- re: Ticketmaster and LiveNation, Billy Corgan is a douche, and Trent Reznor comes across as pretty cool. I think the last time I listened to a record by either of them was 1995.
- According to the Mirror via the NME, the Stone Roses are getting back together! … or, well, not. Maybe definitely not. In fact, seemingly absolutely no chance whatsoever. I swear, every time there’s a slow news week, the NME either quotes whatever nonsense Noel Gallagher uttered that week, or floats rumors of either the Roses or the Smiths getting back together.
- In crappy local news, the Parkway Theater — a beer and movie joint in Oakland — is closing after this weekend. Their sister theater, the El Cerrito, is staying open at least, but this is still really sad.
- Graham Coxon has a new solo record coming out in May, and you can hear one of the songs, “Sorrow’s Army”, here. Kind of reminds me of Arthur
-era Kinks. With maybe some of that early Billy Bragg fast-strumming sound.
Whine, bitch, moan
Posting, obviously, has been on the slow side the past month or so. I’ve been blaming it on computer problems — which is true, to a point (I finally reinstalled the OS over the weekend, and largely have things working again) — but the reality is, I’ve been in a bit of a music slump all month. No big deal, it happens to me from time to time — it’s just that nothing’s really managed to get me excited for any sustained period of time, and so other than posting news about my favorite groups, and the occasional YouTube video, I haven’t really felt like I had much to say.
One thing that’s sort of come out of this is that I’ve — belatedly — discovered the joys of running my Zen on “shuffle all” and listening to whatever happens to pop up. At the risk of sounding like an old man — like a slightly befuddled 55-year-old reporter trying desperately to grasp FaceBook — I never really saw the point of listening to everything in my library mushed together, even though I know several people who swear by it, because usually I like to listen to music from a single genre, or a couple similar genres (similarly, I’ve never liked the clichéd college radio approach of Beethoven followed by AC/DC — and I say that as someone who was a college radio DJ for several years). But as it turns out, when I don’t really feel like listening to anything in particular, having fairly radical stylistic shifts and odd juxtapositions between songs isn’t a bad thing at all. Sometimes you even pick up random facts you’d somehow failed to suss out up to that point (like just how many damn Replacements songs I have in my library, or that apparently I don’t know all the tracks on Nowhere
I seem to be mostly coming out of my slump now, so maybe posting will get back to “normal”, whatever the hell that means. Or maybe not. At least, with my computer fixed, I can get new music onto my Zen again (which reminds me, I’m overdue for a “new music” post).
Another Doves remix
Yet another Doves remix to download — this one is a remix of “Kingdom Of Rust”, courtesy of the NME from a week or so ago. (As a bonus, the NME also posted that Sub Sub video. They seemed a lot less somber in those days.) The remix is very electronic, cutting out most everything except the vocals, and burying all traces of the original version’s hooks — and in the process taking out much of the emotional punch. Kind of monotonous, actually. But what the hell, it’s not like they’re not giving it to us for free, right?
Speaking of Doves, picked up my tickets to see them in May at the Fillmore. Yay me!
Asobi Seksu @ The Independent, March 13th, 2009
I was really looking forward to seeing Asobi Seksu again, because now that I’ve heard and been disappointed by their new album, I thought I’d hear how the material played out live (when I saw them in October, I didn’t notice any appreciable difference in song quality between the new and old material, but then they only played a handful of new songs).
And basically, the new material held up quite well. The set was split about 50-50 between old and new, and I really didn’t feel that the new stuff was found wanting at all. And they didn’t even play “Glacially”, which is my favorite “rock” song off the album and likely would have torn the place up if they had (they did play “Blind Little Rain”, my absolute fave off the album). Otherwise, most of what I said about their October show seems to hold up pretty well — they sounded tight and did a credible job of recreating the sonics of their albums, and the new(-ish) rhythm section is excellent. And again, the set seemed a bit on the short side.
Alas, due to social obligations, I missed first opener Resplandor entirely — which really, really sucks, as I’ve heard great things about this Peruvian shoegaze band, and the songs on their MySpace page rock — and I only caught the last two songs by second band Bell. (I was also significantly more inebriated than I like to be at concerts, which might explain why my recollections of the show seem somewhat flimsy — “what I said six months ago!” etc.)
New Doves track
Stereogum put up a new Doves track yesterday. It’s not off Kingdom of Rust
August Heat
Sicilian mystery writer Andrea Camilleri is one of my two favorite current authors (the other is Alan Furst). The latest of his books to be translated into English, August Heat, just came out, and I read it over the weekend. It’s the tenth entry in the Inspector Montalbano series — which follow an aging (and larger than life) police inspector in the fictional Sicilian town of Vigata — and like the entire series, it’s a blast: funny, clever, and full of detailed descriptions of amazing-sounding food (it’s a cliche to say I want to eat pasta and drink wine whenever I read a Montalbano novel, but it’s also true). I’ve laughed out loud at least once while reading almost every book in this series.
In general, the books have grown darker as the series has progressed, but August Heat seemed a bit lighter in tone, perhaps because it came out in Italy in 2006, around the time when Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi — the target of endless mockery in the Montalbano novels – was voted out of office (temporarily, as it turned out). That’s just a guess on my part, though. The plot’s central crime — a six year old corpse found in an old trunk in a basement — is grisly enough, and there are plenty of nasty things going on in the book. At any rate, like it’s predecessors, it’s a quick, fun read.
As an aside, I also wanted to commend the always-excellent translations by Stephen Sartarelli. In particular, I’ve always appreciated his endnotes, which explain some of the more obscure Sicilian cultural, historical, and political references (though sadly, there seem to be less notes this time around).
Yuki – Rendezvous
As long as I’m on JPop, Yuki also had a new single out this past week, “Rendezvous”. A pretty good song, though not nearly as sublime as “Wonderline”. Here’s the video:
Sorry if the video quality seems a bit low — this copy is much better quality, but can’t be embedded.
New Scandal: Sakura Goodbye
Scandal’s second single, “Sakura Goodbye”, came out in Japan last week. This is the video:
I was a little disappointed in their first single, “Doll”, feeling that it was a notch down from their debut mini-album. But “Sakura Goodbye” is perfect, really catchy and energetic. And yeah, like I said before, b-side “Tokyo” is really different, very new wavey — jerky start-stop playing, robotic chanting — but while I doubt it’ll ever be my favorite track by the band, it’s good to hear them expanding their sound a bit and trying something different.
