Tokyo Blog

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’.

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.

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.

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.

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!

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.

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.

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 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.

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 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.

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.

Cinematic Orchestra with DJ Food. I HAVE to go to this event.

While we’re dealing with videos, I want to share this one too. It’s one of the tracks by Kiiiiiii I’ve been listening to a bit latley. I thought this was the remix, but I don’t suppose it really matters. It’s the version I like, and it’s pretty crazy.

Karaoke is better than I expected having done it twice now. Both times were after a night out and lasted until daybreak. You drink beer and sing a few songs with your friends. I did ‘I Want to be Adored’ by the Stone Roses, ‘The Way You Make me Feel’ by Michael Jackson (very difficult and a bad idea), ‘It’s so Easy’ by Guns n’ Roses, ‘Burning Down the House’ by Talking Heads, and ‘Should I Stay or Should I Go’ by the Clash amongst others. So you take one hangover and add stressed vocal cords into the mix for good measure.