Sun Murder: The Best of Japanese Underground Hip Hop (International Transport Volume 2)

Note: I'm now blogging at Blownhorizonz.com.  It's more attractive, and it focuses more on cool stuff like music and fiction.  Check it out!

International Transport Volume 2: Sun Murder
(Re-upped May 14 - please right-click to download rather than streaming, this link has limited bandwidth.)

Over the course of three years digging into Japanese hip hop, I’ve discovered tons of amazing artists.  What I’ve also discovered is that, even in this amazing digital age, this stuff can be tough to get for people outside of Japan.  So, here’s my first shot to remedy that – a nearly hour-long mix of my favorite underground tracks from Japan.  I start it off a little easy on y’all, but most of these qualify as weird. Tracklisting and some pretty extensive notes after the break – maybe that’ll make things a little easier going.  (Also, if you have trouble with the link, please leave a comment – I’m still a bit rusty at this stuff.)

The Worst Best of 2010 List (Right?)

In making sure I hadn't missed anything particularly righteous in my music listening last year, I looked at a lot of year-end lists - and none of them was as smug, trendy, and lightweight as Stereogum's.  I genuinely like the site, mostly for its mass of information but also for good taste, so it's a little weird.  Here are the most odious of their picks, and their positions:

49. Small Black - New Chain: Not everything has to be "new" to be "best," but this recycling of New Romanticism was just about adequate regardless of innovation.  I gave it a 3/5.

41. Oneohtrix Point Never - Returnal: This is probably hair splitting, but putting this record this far down is fucking criminal.

26. Tame Impala - Innerspeaker:  A solid record, and it's good to know someone is following the legacy of late-stage Earth, but this feels like the token 'metal' pick.

23. Salem - King Night: This is where Stereogum really starts getting on my nerves - admittedly, along with everyone else who tried to hype this record.  It's bad, warmed-over dubstep/noise, or whatever, I can't even be bothered to invent a descriptive conglomerate.  They'd contribute more to society as full-time models.

06. Sleigh Bells - Treats: More of the same - really hip band, really overrated album bandwagoneering.  Not feeling it, and we're beginning to sense a trend.

01. Kanye West - My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy: Pardon me for being suspicious when an indie-rock blog puts a hip hop record at number one.  It's not that this is a bad record per se, but it's also crafty, 'artsy' crit-bait. The best album of the year should be something really revolutionary, something equally mixing inspiration and craft, crazy energy and crazy skill.  West has all the craft and skill, and definitely has the work ethic, but everything here is so calculated and careful, and none of it feels really new.

Kanye West at #1 is what really seals the verdict, but a look at Stereogum's whole list is important too - this is a painfully predictable list, and would be more accurately titled "50 Coolest Albums of 2010."  Dissapointing.

Top 10 Albums that Should Have Been on my Best of 2010 List

Feeling pretty lazy this morning, so finished up a little “Woulda Coulda Shoulda” – records I should have given props, but for a variety of reasons didn’t make it onto the top 25 I put together.  I admittedly could have done better if I’d taken more time crafting my list, but there’s also something inherently fallible about the process that deserves reflecting on – there are simply too many records out there to really give them all the time they deserve.

Up next, I’ll be posting a list of the records that probably shouldn’t have made my list, records that other people gave way more love than they deserved, and one site that gets particular mention for poor taste.

10. The Knife – Tomorrow, In a Year

Technically, this is both a collaboration and something closer to an EP than an album. But the Knife is maybe my second favorite band, and I still didn’t take the time to even listen to this album.  This shit is exhausting.

9. Crystal Castles – Crystal Castles (II)

For about two weeks this was on constant blast.  Then it just sort of wasn’t.  I still haven’t really revisited it, but . . .  hmm.

Life is Decay: Tinymixtapes' Top 25 Album Covers of the Year

A couple of days ago, the main website I write for put out their list of the best 25 album covers of the year. It's a bit of a methadone situation, because I'm anxiously waiting for TMT's best records of the year list (which I voted on and wrote a blurb for) to come out.  But the covers list is interesting in its own right, mainly because this year I really got back into music, and I feel really invested in both a lot of particular records and the general gestalt.  The covers list (which I wasn't involved in) forms an amazingly coherent statement about our life and times, even independent of the records in question, many of which I haven't heard.

oOoOO - oOoOO

The main theme that I was struck by was simply that of imperfection and limitation adding up to something very intentional and careful.  TMT is arguably the biggest site that really has a substantial focus on experimental and "noise" acts (a label that is quickly becoming, like "indie" and "alternative" before it, more about approach and attitude than sound), and the world that today's noise bands live in is one that is decaying.  There's not a more accurate way to try and reflect back the condition of the first world these days, which can basically be divided into those fighting decline (Europe) moping about it (Japan) and living in spirited idiot denial (America).  Either way, this mechanical bull is falling apart.

Teams - We Have a Room With Everything

But it's great to enter the worlds of (visual and musical) artists who neither deny that reality nor accede to it.  2010's best record covers show what's possible with primitive tools, with recycled images, with old aesthetics.  Things get weird, and wonderful, and point toward the possibilities of how to live a more enchanted life even if you have less to live it with.  It's something I struggle with - I just started making real money, and I know that I've foreclosed some portion of joy to get here.  It's a roundabout route to get back to it.

Small Black/Washed Out "You'll See It"/"Despicable Dogs" 7-inch

One way to try and reconnect with the possibility of being happy is to constantly search for the wonderful and strange in the everyday - or even to make it yourself.  I don't think anyone has ever really taken graffiti seriously enough, or done enough street theater, or spent enough time ranting like a madman on a street corner.  We all deserve to live weirder lives.  Some of us have gotten way too comfortable with the idea of 'going out' as this one very regimented way of having a good time.  I think about all this stuff because I've known people who live differently - have collage night!  and sewing circles! and just hang out and jam! and yet somehow I've never quite been that person.  I like to watch TV and play video games, and mostly to read and write.  Sometimes other people scare me.  But there's this amazing world in my head and it's great to see some suggestion that in fact it's in other people too.

Sometimes it's impossible to put our feelings into words - feelings of otherworldliness, of expansiveness, of infinite possibility.  Music is maybe the best way to get those thoughts out into the world, and give them form. But clearly, there are ways to do it visually, too.

Gatekeeper - Giza

The Kafkaesque Absurdity of Japanese Paperwork

I had a rather eventful weekend, the less positive side of which was having my nice bicycle stolen (apparently by someone with a hacksaw and quite a bit of determination) from Koenji late Saturday night/Sunday morning.  The upside of the crummy experience was that I got to feel quite good about myself after going in to talk to the police and rather uneventfully reporting the theft on Monday morning.  Everyone I talked to was quite sympathetic and very helpful.

That was, for all its shadows, the good story.  The bad one began when last week I decided to finally get settled back into a yoga routine, which I'd been letting slide.  I found out when I first got here that though a recent yoga boom made studios pretty common, many of them - particularly those associated with the Yoga Lava chain - are women only.  But, since yoga has proven so vital to me keeping on an even keel over the last two years, I decided it would be worth it to trek down to Shibuya a few times a week to the closest male-friendly spot (I was also planning to bike there frequently . . . oh, cruel irony!)

Tokyo Sound Catalog 1

Sounds You Will Not Hear in Tokyo:

• Arguments in the Street
• Catcalls
• Honking (Exception: Very occasionally, a taxi)
• Conversations between strangers (especially aboard trains.  The more crowded they are, the quieter).
• Apologies between people who have bumped into one another or otherwise violated personal space (Replaced by nods, bows, glances).
• Conversation on a crowded train
• Individuals’ music (e.g. boomboxes, loud headphones)

Sounds You Will Hear in Tokyo:

• Formalized routine sales pitches, recorded music via loudspeaker (in commercial districts)
• Loudspeakers blaring from moving trucks (in residential areas – electronics resale shops; in busy centers – right-wing hate speech)
• The rattle of passing trains
• The klaxons of train crossings
• Beeps (crosswalks, backing trucks)
• Happy chatter (only late at night, after patrons begin leaving bars and cafes)

Chinza Dopeness at Heavy Sick Zero, 12.4

My lovely Aunt Debbie got me an early Christmas gift when I was home for Thanksgiving - a new camera.  It's a lot more portable than my SLR, and has already proven invaluable.  Enjoy this video from Saturday's excellent show at Heavy Sick Zero, a major hub of underground hip hop conveniently located just a few blocks away from me.  The sound isn't great, and I'm not particularly convinced by the "HD" designation, but it'll do.  I also must say I'm very impressed by Flickr's video player.