Tokyo Blog, Tokyo Story
The blog of Stephen David Smith, Tokyo, Japan 2012
Now Viewing: All Posts in Music
The Journey
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.
WARP20
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.
Hobnox Audiotool
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!
Radiohead – All I Need
The beauty continues, this time in the form of another musical interlude. I give you Radiohead’s Epic, ‘All I Need’ with edited footage from the 1996 French nature documentary film ‘Microcosmos’.
Aphex Twin at Summer Sonic
Summer Sonic takes place this year in Tokyo, and on the bill is none other than my childhood hero Aphex Twin. I still think he’s one of the most enigmatic and uncompromising creatives in modern history. He never made anything for his fans or critics, only for himself, and thus his sound is pretty inaccessible, but I listen to it from time to time. Helps me think.
Tickets are a rip-off as usual, but if you want to see a truly rare performance from an artist responsible for shaping electronic music as we know it, break out your wallet.
Fez Title Track from BlipFest
6955 // Blip Festival 2007: The Videos from 2 Player Productions on Vimeo.
This musical interlude is from an old 6955 (Jason DeGroot of Polytron) performance. It’s a remixed version of the title theme for the long-awaited indy game title Fez. Jason used to be based in Tokyo and here he’s wearing a King of Games hoodie he must have picked up here – featuring Zelda.
Introducing The Blue Hearts
The Blue Hearts bursting out of the Shinjuku live houses and onto prime time TV in the 1980′s. I especially like the VHS tape glitches before they play.
Japanese Beatbox Boy
This is a Japanese kid, featured also on Japanese TV, who wants to challenge the wildcard spot in the YouTube beatbox champs – and he think he just might do it. He’s even better than the godfather of noise: Rahzel!
Toastgirl
Another musical interlude for you now, through which you can savour a slice of Japanese pop culture at its finest. This is the beautifully named Toastgirl who, if you visit her site, you can see using vacuum cleaners as rollerskates and so on. Most of her music videos, like this one for a song I’m not sure of the name of, feature her riding a piece of toast or sometimes toasting bread in a toaster she has mounted on top of her head (maybe the song is called Skip Edit No.2, I can’t be sure. She’s really underground and hard to dig up info on). Enjoy this.
Röyksopp – Happy Up Here
Happy Up Here from Röyksopp on Vimeo.
The norwegian electronic music duo Röyksopp have a new video directed by Rueben Sutherland. It involves pieces of a city coming together and arraying like pixels to form a game of space invaders in the night sky. Sweet.
Wylde File x Beck – Gameboy Homeboy
Beck “Gameboy Homeboy” from wyldfile on Vimeo.
Wylde File have created an absolutely insane, bad acid trip promo video for the 8-bit inspired remixes from Beck’s recent(ish) album Guero. This is intense!
Van Man’s Song
Van Man’s Song from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.
This is a recording of the song the driver of this small van sings as he slowly crawls around my neighbourhood. I think he’s selling hot Japanese potatoes, but I’m not sure. I can’t understand the lyrics.
The 5 O’clock Chimes of Kotobuki
5 O’clock Chimes of Kotobuki from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.
Since I previously showed you the 5 o’clock chimes of Takanawa in all their ambient glory, I thought I’d show you the more oriental, and slightly spiritual sounds of the 5 o’clock chimes of Kotobuki, my new area in Tokyo. I think this will be a recurring feature: whenever I move to a new neighbourhood, I’ll upload a recording of the 5 o’clock chimes every time. Tokyo is pretty musical like that. Did you know that the JR line stations in Tokyo each have their own distinctive jingle to subliminally inform their passengers when it’s time to wake up / get off?
The 5 O’clock Chimes of Takanawa
The 5 O’clock Chimes of Takanawa from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.
I shot this footage from the balcony of my apartment so I could capture the strange music I’ve been hearing every evening at 5 o’clock. When I’ve been walking in my neighbourhood, I’ve been looking up under the eaves of public buildings and at the pylons and powerlines, trying to work out where it comes from, but I can’t find the source. So everyday at the same time, you get this haunting melody drifting through the cold night air. Today it chimes out my last evening in the neighbourhood of Takanawa, Shinagawa before I move on to Kuramae near Asakusa tomorrow.
Salaryman Busts Loose
Japanese Salaryman – Virtuoso Performance in the Key of Awesome from Stephen Smith on Vimeo.
A Japanese Salaryman, wound up and overworked, unleashes a fireball of musical self-expression on a Friday night in Tokyo. I came to the conclusion that he is by far the coolest salaryman I’ve ever seen: he fell asleep on his keyboard during the interlude.
