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He plays super-tight indierock. He is from Japan. He has tuneful vocals and makes charmingly boisterous and sensitive guitar sounds and clicky crashy drum sounds. He is not boring to listen to. He is worth getting to know. He is fun to take with you on car rides.
Now that you know him, I hope you can enjoy your new life together.
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This song is a giant golden Buddha statue floating above some foggy downtown neighborhood. It starts emitting shiny sound waves, making heads turn all over the city. Makeshift rope-ladders are improvised and flung in tandem. People climb through the air in pursuit of dance. A new landscape is discovered beyond city walls. They climb and sway and swing, in the sun and awe.
I’m not sure where or when I found out about Ayuo, but they are definitely interesting.
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Oh yeah, that blog thing….
Vola & the Oriental Machine is something of a Japanese indie supergroup, with a formidable lineup including Inazawa Ahito from Number Girl, Aoki Yutaka from downy, and Nakahata Daiki from syrup16g.
When their first demo came out it was completely different from what I expected and I couldn’t really get into it. I seem to have a habit of letting music sit for a while. You might call it marinating, or maybe decanting. Whatever happens in the interim, I often come back wondering what I could have possibly been thinking when I first put it away. Some of my favorite bands I had once put in the cellar to ripen.
Probably it’s only my tastes that ripen as they learn to keep an open mind and actively seek out an understanding and appreciation, rather than waiting around for a sudden bowling-over.
In any case, I like these guys a lot more now, with their second release, than I did when they first appeared. This album definitely has some great moments, and if I like them this much more from one album to the next, I can’t wait until next month.
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Rock like this is what I’ve wanted to hear. – Aoki Robin
(downy, Dhal)
I couldn’t agree more. Eksperimentoj is quality music. Probably not since downy, has a band come out of Japan that I have appreciated as much so soon. I definitely recommend you check them out on myspace, and see their video for “note” via Ian’s blog.
The thematic tendons that run along the length of the album make picking it apart and isolating a favorite section very difficult. It’s like a complicated personality, having many surfaces of varying character, all of which hint at a larger, more monolithic something hidden beneath them.
When I first wrote about Eksperimentoj, the song “solaris” reminded me of a midnight storm in an ocean wilderness; but this album as a whole has a distinctly different ambience, and it’s rather hard to pin down. Even the mix of solaris here is not as huge and looming. It’s clearer, and much more personal.
The more I think about it, the more it seems like a person, whose thoughts form as music while he glides through the world. He sees with little color, but in great depth and richness, extracting meaning from every contour. Behind him, the shapes and shadows buckle and stretch, as the path of his thoughts unconsciously reforms the landscape in a spreading wave.
Life is but a dream.
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Happy Lunar New Year, and a song by the Korean band Nell while I contemplate life, and the new Eksperimentoj album.
There’s a point in this song where it convinces me of its honesty. A juncture almost theraminesque and quite sincere, like the seaside escarpmental life of some wind-tossed ribbon. I’m sure you can spot it.
I’m honestly not sure what album of theirs this is from and what the Korean name is, since I got it on a home-made compilation cd with this name. If anyone knows, I’d be much obliged to learn. Thanks to Goldspark on youtube for album/song info.
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I found this song on a site that was hotlinking some of my african hip hop, which I don’t really mind anyway; and somehow it gives me an intense feeling of déjà vu.
The place it takes me is somewhere I’ve been before, somewhere in the real world of soil and bones. Somewhere faraway serene, alone, and piercingly gorgeous. Six Organs tread similar climes; but here, instead of wooded stream, we have island cliff. A solitary grove of eucalyptus; and in place of intoxicant mist, a molten sunset that lasts forever.
Standing in the channel of light, staring at infinity, it’s the kind of moment that makes people believe in god. No sound but wind in the leaves; the burning earth for you alone.
A dirge for the dying of the sun.
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Short on time, long on things to do. I’m drinking green tea straight from the pot, it’s like a giant mug of keep working. So this will be brief.
Here’s BOaT again. A song that piles up in layers like years of experience, and unravels like giving up all your grudges.
What does it sound like to you?
To me this song, and to some extent the video, sounds like it was made underground; like it’s the bubbling internal conflict of a man imprisoned in solitary confinement with only trace elements of hope and a burning regret or uncertainty.
I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be in solitary confinement. We spend so much time scrambling for survival, to learn to work in order to make money to eat in order to stay alive in order to go to work again. In all this seemingly meaningful (pre)occupation we don’t have much time to think and ponder meaningfully. Our thinking comes in short bursts like automatic weapons, rarely in long trains of thought slowly meandering through the hills. I am tempted to think that it wouldn’t be so bad to have everyday to meditate on ideas, to think things through completely from every angle, in a sense to really know what I think.
Of course, for most people that end up in solitary confinement involuntarily there will be an element of internal conflict that could turn the time into torture. With no external input, no external answers, one can only look to oneself to find or create a meaning for things.
This song sounds like that to me: a struggle of the mind longing to find within itself an answer for things outside of it, and a reason for its place among them.
Welcome to the Red Ruin blog archive. Through this site we wanted to share our discoveries with you. It isn't currently being updated, but someday that may change. We still monitor comments and emails, so feel free to participate.
The main purpose of this site was to facilitate the awareness and exposure of foreign music, art, cinema, and culture to a global audience. Through exposure, the artists will hopefully accumulate fans in places they couldn't have reached before, which will inevitably benefit them financially. However, if you are the copyright owner of any material displayed on this site, and wish it removed: Please contact me, and it will be done post-haste.
