Sunday, June 28, 2009

J-Punk, D.A and Droogs.


OK, so this is a post that almost has nothing to do with Seikima II. In any case, tonight I discovered that people on certain substances really enjoy songs written by Daisuke Asakura (He is a solo artist, in addition to writing the music for T.M. Revolution and Abingdon Boy's School, in addition to being one of the core members of ICEMAN).

Honestly I am not particularly surprised by this, as it seems like many of his compositions are written either being aimed towards the techno/industrial crowd. I was greatly amused by this however, seeing as I have recieved comments that said 'I would so love to listen to this when I was doing xxxxxx *drug*.'

Since my last post, I haven't experienced anything new that was actually worthwile, except many listenings to that new Cali=Gari pv's song :D

I did have a nice conversation with a youth, earlier this evening, about Japanese punk bands, which honestly.. I have no idea about, aside from Balzac (the Japanese Misfits), a few obscure 90's bands like The Blue Hearts and The Star Club. There are a few bands that I could loosely calssify as punk in the Visual scene, like the Piass for instance, but ultimately the Japanese punks would likely scoff at my taste.

My observation of "real" Japanese punks, of whom I have had plenty of exposure to, is that they listen to many super underground (unpleasantly noisy and underproduced) bands that I have never heard of, and seem to be MUCH cleaner and hygenic than American punk fans. Which is kind of ridiculous because I saw one of my Japanese punk friends lay a police officer the fuck out in Harajuku. (they are pretty hardcore when they're wasted!)

I guess my point is, that I see Japanese and American punk as very similar. I have a feeling that some kind of language barrier exists, keeping the Japanese punks from grasping what the true fundementals of punk music/culture is really like.

Regardless of how awesome these J-Punk bands might be, I cant get into the spirit, or relate to it in the way that I can about some of the old American punk I used to listen to frequently.

Often I find that the Japanese will emulate a foreign trend, and ultimately improve what it is that they are emulating...

Japanes punk is an exception to that rule.


Today's BAND OF THE DAY! is Seikima II (translated to 'end of the century') and their song El Dorado. Seikima II was a Japanese heavy metal band, active december of 1989 and actually broke up on 12/31/99 at minight on new years eve, informing fans that it was the end of the world. That was actually the premise of the entire band. But lead singer Demon Kogure still lives on..


P.S. I would like to apologize in advance for any rambling I may have done this evening :D
Enjoy your weekend, everyone~


Thursday, June 25, 2009

I reform, along with Cali=Gari~


OK, so I am officially back.

I was really un-inspired to write about Japanese music for a while. Seemingly nothing new or interesting was coming out.. I ended up creating 2 podcasts and distributed them to people I know personally, ultimately I got positive reviews from everyone, but got lazy and didn't upload it anywhere. I don't think the files exist anymore though.


I don't know for sure if that is still the case, there are a few things from mid-late 2008 that were pretty good, but not in a high enough volume for me to care that much.

HOWEVER!


Freakin' Cali=Gari has reformed.* (a month or two ago officially) They put out 'Cali=Gari no Sekai' (Cali=Gari World) which is a sort of best-of album with an update to Oto-Sex lol. But next month they are putting out a new single, coming in 2 forms '9 - To - Hen' and '9 School Zone Hen' I suppose these singles are a ~sequel~ to the actual '9' (Kyuu) Dvd which was of their "last" live performance.

But the icing on the cake is, they are releasing a full album '10' on August 26th.

*I would like to point out that my last blog entry, over a year ago made this prediction :3

cali≠gari/-踏-【PV】



To make up for my being away for so long, I will be uploading a song every time I post (which should be a few times a week) I will be choosing a BAND OF THE DAY! and sharing whatever song grabs me that day. So please enjoy and if you like it, check the band out more!


Today's BAND OF THE DAY! is Lynch.
They are releasing a new album called Shadows on July 8th.
Beautiful.