Category: Miscellany

Vola releases an album, Zazen loses a member

VOLA & THE ORIENTAL MACHINE is set to release its first full-length album on April 11, so says Bounce.com. The album includes the pre-release single, "Hane no Hikari", as well as other songs used as commercial background music. A remix of the track "Yume Shindan" by Hayashi of Polysics serves as a hidden track.

While Vola prepares to release its album, ZAZEN BOYS is losing its bassist, so Bounce.com says as well. Hinata Hidekazu, who also plays with Straightener and FULLARMOR, joins Nakamura Tatsuya (Blankey Jet City, LOSALIOS) and Tabu zombie (SOIL & "PIMP" Sessions) for a new project.

A blip on the radar

One Christmas season when I was working at a record store, the personnel manager hired two black guys to augment the staff. One of my coworkers said it was nice to have a little diversity in the mostly white staff.

(Derail: I was one of two Filipinos employees, which is remarkable considering there are only 10 of us in the entire Austin metro area.)

"But what about Raymond?" I asked, referring to the only black staff member till that time.

My coworker replied in all seriousness, "Raymond isn’t black."

Raymond hangs out in punk rock clubs and listens to a ridiculous range of music, most of it of the indie rock variety. He would probably be described as a blipster, as the New York Times so schools us.

Offensive Engrish joke: If a black person is into Japanese indie rock, would that make him or her a bripster (ブリップスター)?

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Oh these kids today

As mind-boggling as Jay Greenberg’s talent may be, Philip Hensher adds his voice to the chorus of skeptics on Greenberg’s work.

I’ve been thumbing through a book titled This is Your Brain on Music by former record producer, now neuroscientist Daniel J. Levitan. He discusses Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, to which Greenberg has been compared. Levitan points out scientific research that shows it takes 10,000 hours of practice and work to master a skill.

Although Mozart began composing as a child, it was until he had worked and studied for more than 10 years that he began to produce works with a lasting impact today. Twenty hours of work every week for 10 years approximately equals 10 years.

Greenberg started composing when he was Mozart’s age. He’s about 16 now. In another 10 years, he should be doing marvelous stuff, if the booze, women and dope don’t get to him first.

X out of 5 stars

I have the technical skill to publish a database of my entire music collection online, but I don’t have the inclination to spend that much development time doing it. So instead, I’m letting Rate Your Music do it for me.

I spent the last few days pretty much putting everything online, including albums I don’t even own anymore. I even went so far as to include vinyl and cassettes, the latter of which I sold off nearly four years ago. As of this writing, 1,273 albums are listed in my profile. Yeah, that’s small beans compared to hardcore collectors.

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Oh! That’s where you went

I was wondering why I hadn’t seen an update from ArtsJournal in my feed reader, so I visited the site itself and discovered it had redesigned. And the feed? No longer RSS but Atom. The RSS feed just listed headlines. The Atom feed now includes article descriptions. Good job!

Mind you, I’m only pointing out the music section of the site — it’s got a number of others. What did I miss in this past week?

  • Roberto Alagna evidently having acid reflux. (Ashlee Simpson? Work with me, folks …)
  • A research report claiming iTunes sales have fallen 65 percent. Yeah, fuck you and the DRM you rode in on.
  • CBS not realizing the music industry is the last place you want to expand.
  • In Berlin, a lack of controversy where it was expected.
  • A fairly interesting article about buzz vertigo published on a site that doesn’t realize 10-point Arial font is so 1997. Hello, LA Times? Web 2.0? Part of me wonders why I don’t get solicited till I looked at my contact page and remembered — huh, I don’t like SPAM. I guess my crankiness preserves my integrity.

What a weird tangent

I’ve collected and lost a lot of music in the last 20 or so years, and the things I let go didn’t have much of a hold on me anyway. So I’m not sure why I spent time looking for some of that stuff this morning while I did some Christmas shopping.

I’ve been listening to some best-of collections of R.E.M., Siouxsie and the Banshees and the Replacements. In the spectacularly-off chance I might find some Replacements on eMusic, I did a search for the band. Nada, of course. But somehow, I started clicking on some random links from that search and ended up on a page for All About Eve. Wow. That’s a name I hadn’t heard in a long time.

I listened to the excerpts of Return to Eden, and it got me thinking of other bands whose music I bought around that same time.

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Quick links to Bounce.com news

Used to be, the moment I saw something interesting on Bounce.com, I’d write about it post-haste. My fascination with Japanese indie rock has cooled off considerably in the two past years, so there’s no onus on me to get that first scoop.

Still, it would be good exercise for my waning Japanese skills to pull out a translation now and then. So here are a few Bounce.com headlines that might interest long-time readers.

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