Tokyo Blog

Just wanted to quickly mention for chillwave and dreampop lovers out there, that Washed Out will be playing at Liquid Room in Ebisu tonight. It’s ¥5,500 in advance, but it looks like tickets on the door will be the same price. i was really thinking about going down myself, but I really am too busy to go. If you do have time, I heartily recommend you go and catch this – starts at 7:30. Full details can be found on Liquid Room’s page for the event.

Personally, I don’t like to keep the same wallpaper on my desktop for more than a week, tops – so I was lucky to find this excellent collection of wallpapers by various creatives so I didn’t have to! I strongly recommend you check this out, but be careful as I spent far too long going through the entire category of posts looking at these. If you’ve found a desktop you like you should also check the mixtape section as it’s also really great. All you need to get on: a fresh desktop and an array of tunes to work to.

Summer is still very much with us here in Tokyo – it’s still hot and humid and free time is usually spent sitting in the park listening to music. You can however feel that Autumn might be on its way, so here is a new episode of Radio Tokyo to suit. I don’t really prefer any particular genre when it comes to music, but a phenomenon that pretty much sums up my summer of 2011 is the continued rise of throwback sub genres of U.S. indie synthpop, namely Glo-Fi and Chill Wave, Dream Pop amongst others. It seems like the rehash of the 80′s sound is set to continue and a few proponents of this mainly American sound seem to be channeling The Beach Boys (in a good way). This ties in pretty well with my summer because I’ve been getting more nostalgic in my hobbies and the way I dress and we’ve been playing a lot of old school video games in this ¥50 arcade in Shibuya. So without any further ado, click to listen below and check the playlist:

Playlist:

1. Despicable Dogs – Small Black
2. Slow Peels – Com Truise
3. Kim & Jessie – M83
4. Collapsing At Your Doorstep – Air France
5. Stay Close – Delorean
6. Burn Bridges – Dom
7. Please Stay – Summer Heart
8. Swimming Field – Memory Tapes
9. You – Gold Panda
10. David – The Radio Dept.
11. Midnight City – M83

View all podcasts in the Radio Tokyo series and download this episode here.

For the second in the Radio Tokyo series, we will be exploring soundscapes befitting the metropolis. Post-dubstep IDM with plenty of dark undertones and melancholic aural atmospheres in this decidedly city-centric episode ode to vacant plots, government housing projects and urban decay. Showcasing in Volume 2 will be mostly artists from Warp and Hyperdub imprints. Here’s the playlist:

1. Forgive – Burial
2. Digital Fauna – Zomby
3. Out In The Streets – Africa Hitech
4. Foil – Autechre
5. Flat Of The Blade – Massive Attack
6. Klavierwerke – James Blake
7. 124 – Photek
8. Midnight Request Line – Skream
9. Spicy Sammich – Flying Lotus
10. Gangslap – Africa Hitech

View all podcasts in the Radio Tokyo series and download this episode here.

Hello. Got some Polysics for you today. Enjoy.

A little foray into the art of Podcasting here. The first in a series of radio broadcasts / mixes. This first one is something of an experiment. Haven’t gotten used to the software yet, so not as well made as I’d like, but still; this first episode takes an aeronautical theme, inspired by the airliners that pass over my house on their way to the newly opened international runway at Tokyo Haneda Airport.

Playlist:

1. Blue Calx – Aphex Twin
2. Wing Body Wing – Four Tet
3. Amo Bishop Roden – Boards of Canada
4. Hilarious Movie of the 90′s – Four Tet
5. Genshi – Susumu Yokota
6. Circling – Four Tet
7. Cocoon – Bjork
8. Goodbye – Kevin Shields
9. There is a Number of Small Things – Mum
10. Pink Stones – Memory Tapes
11. Z Twig – Aphex Twin
12. Auto Pilot – Lusine icl

View all podcasts in the Radio Tokyo series and download this episode here.

This great music video for the song Nothing to Worry About by Peter, Bjorn & John features the Tokyo Rockabilly Club. People will probably know them as the guys who rock out in Yoyogi Park in Tokyo. Check it out – the guy’s got a motorcycle in his apartment!

This is a late notification that Four Tet will be playing at Club Eleven in Tokyo this Friday 3rd Dec. This is a big deal in itself because Four Tet is one of my favourite artists, but on top of that, Club Eleven is the newly reopened, legendary Club Yellow. Club Yellow closed down a while back but has recently reopened with some nice new touches inside. I’ve never been there but everyone I speak to says it was their favourite club in Tokyo. Surely this is a must-go-to event? Unfortunately for me, I have to get up early Saturday morning and I have the JLPT N3 language test on Sunday, so it’s actually a no-go, but please get yourself there if you’re in town. Failing that, get hold of the new album, There’s Love in You.

Musical interlude from BOC. The idea is with these posts is that you just click play and you have something to listen to while you read.

Tokyo rapper Chinza Dopeness’ unique style is new to my ears, but I’m going to get the album as a result of listening to this. Via Shane Lester’s Vimeo.

This is pretty goofy, but it’s a remix of the Family Mart jingle that you usually hear when you walk into one of their convenience stores. The guy’s pretty hot with the Korg too. The cheesy techno it descends into would usually be a turn off, but in this situation it suits the chimes perfectly! People in Tokyo will definitely recoginse it.

Musical Interlude. I couldn’t find any videos worthy of showcasing the fine electronic music produced by Susumu Yokota, so I made my own. The track is Azukiiro No Kaori by Susumu Yokota from his Sakura album. All of the footage was shot Autumn/Winter 2008 and Autumn 2009.

This is another musical interlude. No footage to speak of here, just Aphex Twin’s sublime remix of The Gentle People’s track ‘The Journey’. This track can be found on the 26 Mixes for Cash compilation by Aphex Twin on WARP.

Not only do WARP Records have a new site up, they are also celebrating 20 years of unparalleled excellence as a creative organisation in the form of WARP20. Possibly the only one of it’s kind to combine recording artists, video artists, directors, and visual design under one banner, the organisation from Sheffield UK is holding a series of events and is releasing a beautifully designed box-set of the cream of it’s back-catalogue. The Paris event was held in May, and there will be further events this year in New York, Sheffield, Tokyo and London. The Tokyo event will be held at Makuhari Messe and will feature live performances by Battles, Chris Cunningham, !!! (chk chk chk), Clark, Flying Lotus and others. I’m a big fan of WARP, so I’ll definitely be there. Shame there’s no Aphex Twin though.

Hold onto your hats, this is quite unbelievable. Some guys, who I think are German, have been able to put together an audio production environment that runs in your browser, called Audiotool. It obviously uses Flash, but I don’t know how this is possible! There doesn’t seem to be a sequencer, so it can’t really claim to give Reason a run for its money, but the visuals and the interaction design are pretty stunning. A nice tool to use to play with sounds, but not for finished tracks. Have fun, but remember to do some work!