Ran across another nice Japanese page of urban ruins images today. They are all taken with a very perceptive eye for composition and a marked warmth of expression. Click on “?????” (gallery) on the left for the photos. And click “???” (link/s) for a huge list of other great jp ruins sites.

I should probably make some image posts with my own shots of various places, but I’ll have to come up with a nice format for that type of thing first…

Update: 11/29/06 Added more links from other sites, great stuff.

[Link][Link 2][Link 3][Link 4][Link 5][Link 6][Link 7][Link 8][Link 9]

Artist: 101A
Song: Aerial
From album: one day
Genre: Spacegoth
[Buy CD][Website]

101A’s albums remind me at different times of a strangely wide range of artists –anyone from Hooverphonic to Switchblade Symphony– but through it all they are propelled by very personal emotional engines and a nebulous sense of inevitability.

This song sounds like some kind of shadowy epiphany after long gazing into the depths of the cosmic ocean from our insignificant shores. Something of mixed inspiration and abandon, awestruck resignation. It seems a natural reaction to a sudden realization of an enormous and hopelessly infinite beauty.

Artist: Muddy World
Song: Lilac
From album: Finery of the Storm
Genre: Pinprick lightstorm
[Buy CD][Website][Live Video]

Muddy World is my first treasure find from Mixi, the Japanese myspace equivalent. These guys make music that sounds somehow extremely different. It’s hard to explain, something about the sound of the instruments makes it seem that the notes are coming from ethereal counterparts not entirely rooted in the musical world of our experience.

Maybe I’m just overreacting; maybe I winced when I saw the name beginning with Mudd and the discovery that they were excellent made the relief more palpable. In any case, this album is great, fiery in that hazy way that feels like it’s floating in steam, and very, very talented.

Artist: Climb the Mind
Song: ????? (Chikyuu no kaori [Fragrance of the earth])
From album: Denaturization
Genre: Hotwind Rock
[Buy CD][Website]

Climb the Mind is a Japanese three-piece that makes songs of sonorous richness and scope. The guitars come in emotive waves of intensity somewhere between kicking down a door and setting a forest fire, and change mood and target like a restless sandstorm in open expanses.

Feels something like walking into a storm while safely wrapped in a warm, purposeful resolve.