Since January 2004, ex-Number Girl bassist Nakao Kentaro has been a member of a new band named Spiral Chord. The band was formed in 2003 by Chikurin Gendou of Cowpers and Hera of 200MPH. Spiral Chord releases its debut album, Noonai Friction on April 27. The album includes completed versions of all five songs found on the band’s demo tape sold at its live shows. In addition to four new songs, Spiral Chord covers the Ramones’ “I Wanna Live”. Spiral Chord first appeared on the Rocket from the Crypt tribute album, A Case of RFTC Junkies, which also included Naht and BBQ Chickens.
The South by Southwest Music Festival announced its full schedule for 2005. Like last year, Carribbean Lights hosts Japan Nite 1 on Friday, while Elysium hosts Japan Nite 2 on Saturday. Here is the full-schedule:
Japan Nite 1
Carribbean Lights
Friday, March 18, 2005
8:00 — Titan Go King’s
9:00 — i-dep
10:00 — The Emeralds
11:00 — Noodles
12:00 — the pillows
Japan Nite 2
Elysium
Saturday, March 19, 2005
8:00 — The Hot Shots
9:00 — Suns Owl
10:00 — Zanzo
11:00 — Petty Booka
12:00 — Bonnie Pink
Of course, SXSW just wouldn’t be SXSW without a few scheduling conflicts. The remaining Japanese bands in the festival are spread throughout the schedule:
Well, I threw caution to the wind and bought myself an upgrade for my personal system. I’ve since turned my old system into an audio server, which means audio streaming and saving is back online!
I even went so far as to install the free version of RealNetworks’ Helix server, and I unearthed the old RealAudio content from an early version of the site. So now you can listen to 30-second excerpts of select artists in the directory without having to sign up for an account.
The free version of the Helix server only allows five streams at a time, so keep this in mind if you receive any errors.
Thank you for your patience during this down time. For Audiobin Basic users, your subscriptions have been extended by two months to accomodate for the downtime.
The good news is that I upgraded my personal system, and I’ve migrated my old system to become an audio server. All the server software is installed, and the site is ready to go.
Unfortunately, a series of recent automatic updates from Microsoft has resulted in system failures on that old machine. I’m currently sifting through each update to determine which ones have a detrimental effect on my server. As a result, I can’t launch it until I’m certain the updates won’t interfere.
I’m anticipating a launch date later in the week, if not in the first half of March.
Keep your fingers crossed!
P.S. Of course, all this technical work means no new reviews. It’s still pretty slow, release-wise anyway.
Jazz singer Ann-Sally releases a new album, tenatively titled Brand New Orleans, on April 27. The album is the first Ann-Sally produced herself, and she enlists a number of New Orleans-based musicians to perform with her. Ann-Sally became interested in New Orleans music during an extended stay in the city. A limited edition first pressing of the album will include a bonus CD.
I’ve been looking at the state of my finances, and I may be able to swing an upgrade of my personal computer, which means the machine I’m using now can be converted to a server. But any realistic change probably won’t happen till closer to April, when I have a better idea of what my raise at work will be. Still, the timely death of the audio server — and man, did it last longer than even I expected — gives me a really good excuse to upgrade.
Till then, I’ve made slight changes to the front page. I’m doing away with the Featured Review at the top of the page and going for a reverse-chronological format for all updates. And just so the page isn’t all text, I’m using thumbnails of album covers to distinguish reviews from other content.
But really, I want to move away from needing a review at the top of the page. My schedule isn’t going to get any lighter in the next few weeks, so I’d rather not have layout dictate content need.
I hope to have a better idea of when I can bring back the audio features of this site in the next few weeks. Sorry again for the inconvenience, and thank you for your patience.
After leaving Zazen Boys at the end of 2004, drummer Ahito Inazawa announced the formation of a new band named Vola and the Oriental Machine. Inazawa, going by the moniker Vola, takes on vocal, guitar and drumming duties for his new band. Inazawa’s bandmates include guitarist Aoki Yutaka (downy), bassist Arie Yoshinori and drummer Nakahata Daiki (syrup 16g).
In related news, Spiral Chord, featuring former Number Girl bandmate Nakao Kentaro, releases its debut album, Noonai Friction, on April 27.
It looks like the very old — we’re talking at least six years old here — audio server which has been powering Musicwhore.org is dead or dying. I haven’t figured out which yet. The bottom line is that audio streaming is officially down. I don’t have any extra computers to spare for a back-up, so all audio functionality has been disabled for the foreseeable future. Sorry for the inconvenience.
For songwriters, there’s music that inspires, music that evokes jealousy, music that invites ridicule, music that amazes.
And sometimes, there’s music you just outright steal.
A few weeks ago, I decided to continue building the home studio I was distracted from building a few years back. (Thank you, economic downturn.)
I reinstalled an old version of Cakewalk, fished out my MIDI interface and hooked up the keyboards collecting dust since I moved back into a bigger apartment to my computer.
My original MIDI workstation was stolen many years previous in a burglary, so I faced the daunting task of recreating work I did at least 10 years ago.
But in sifting through the one demo tape that survived the burglary, it struck me some of those songs could spun into an entire album of adult contemporary pop — jazz-pop for middle class housewives. (Oh, how indie.)
But I didn’t want to sound like Norah Jones on this project. No — I wanted to sound like ACO.
Particularly, absolute ego.
The albums which followed 1999’s absolute ego — Material in 2001, irony in 2003 — are far more adventurous. But this album fit squarely in the middle of ACO’s creative transformation.
On the one hand, absolute ego is incredibly melodic and deeply sensual. On the other hand, it’s also steeped in a dark atmosphere, sometimes contemplative, sometimes alien.
I studied absolute ego thoroughly — picking apart the elements that made this album such a rich listening experience.
There’s a simplicity to ACO’s writing on this album — the nearly same three chords used throughout “Spleen”, the uncomplicated bass line of “Yoroku Bi Saku Hana ga”. And there’s an economy to the arrangments — the embellishments that only hint at dub on “Intensity (You Are)”, the sparseness of “Ame no Hi no Tame ni”.
ACO could have gone for a more commercial sound with the material on absolute ego. The “Director’s Cut” of “Aishita Anata wa Tsuyoi Hito”, after all, sounds like it could have come off a ’70s R&B album.
But its the production of Sunahara Toshinori and Yamashita Hideki that sets this album apart. They bring out different shades to the songs that a live band may have colored another way.
Even the steady, snail’s pace of the songs aren’t a hinderance — never does the album fall into a mid-tempo homogeniety.
The more I listened, the more I realized — ACO’S writing combined with Sunahara’s and Yamashita’s production created a repository of good ideas.
Amateurs imitate, but geniuses steal. I don’t know where I heard that bit of wisdom, but I won’t use it to justify lifting entire bits of absolute ego for my own music.
Good ideas are good ideas, and absolute ego is the kind of music worthy of creative larceny.
(And just to be clear — the project I worked on ended up sounding nothing like absolute ego. Steal too much, and it becomes imitation.)
absolute ego is an album worth exploring. It’s a seductive work, single-minded in its intensity, but never overcrowded.
And it’s an album that doesn’t tire with repeated listens. If anything, it’s the opposite — it gets under your skin with each spin.
Here today, gone today. Chris Rock may have talking about late-’90s teen pop when he made that observation at an award show earlier this decade.
But it applies just as easily to rock music. In 2002, you couldn’t throw a rock without hitting a band that ripped off Television and the MC5. In 2004, that same rock hit bands ripping off Morrissey and Joy Division.
The Hives, by all conventional wisdom, should have been obsolete just as quickly as they became relevant.
Veni Vidi Vicious was a blast of an album, a behemoth crush of sturm und drang, straight from Sweden’s garage to God’s ears.
It was a fun diversion that fit well with the White Stripes’ blues revivalism and the Strokes’ 15-minutes of uninterest. They weren’t supposed to make a decent follow-up.
Yeah, well, fuck me.
Tyrannosaurus Hives is more than a decent follow-up. It’s every bit the compact energy of Veni Vidi Vicious filtered through a New Wave lens.
The robotic beats of “Two-Timing Touch and Broken Bones” and the pulsing riff of “Love in Plaster” kill two birds with the proveribal one stone by ripping off both the MC5 and Kraftwerk.
“A Little More for You” starts off with a bouncy rhythm this side of “This Charming Man” but wisely shifts to a less bouncy chorus.
Tortured strings augment Howlin’ Pelle’s barely controlled vocals on “Diabolic Scheme”, something of an INXS track that INXS never had the balls to record.
But these ’80s flourishes, while obvious, don’t overpower Tyrannosaurus Hives. The band does a fine job of that on its own.
Don’t listen to “No Pun Intended” during rush hour traffic — it may induce road rage. “See Through Head” jack hammers with its simple rhythms, while “Dead Quote Olympics” has the dumbest chorus in the very best sense of the word.
Expectations for the Hives were pretty high after Veni Vidi Vicious stormed through America, and it didn’t help that protracted legal wrangling after the band signed a new label deal cut some of that momentum.
But the Hives prove resilient, bursting forth as viciously on Tyrannosaurus Hives as it did on its last album.