Inviting photography from Sho Uchida with moments of intense stillness.

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It’s hard to imagine the amount of work that went into creating these tiny intricate carvings. It must take incredible patience and control. There are some very cool ideas.

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“Take-away shows” is a fantastic idea, and it’s brilliantly executed. A combination that warms the bosom indeed.

Basically you take high-quality cameras and sound equipment, find a band, and convince them to run away and play a mini-set in some randomly-chosen nearby urban locale. The results are simply fabulous.

For instance: Even if you don’t particularly enjoy The Arcade Fire, how can you resist the charm of an entire 8-piece band playing packed comfortably into a freight elevator. It’s really quite hard to miss the feeling.

There really is something for everybody.

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Artist: He
Song: Empty
From album: Further Shore
[Buy CD[2]][Website]

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.

Artist: Ayuo
Song: A Stranger
From album: Aoi
Genre: Gilded Spacyness
[Buy CD|Mp3s][Website]

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.

Artist: Vola & the Oriental Machine
Song: Principle of Machine
From album: Waiting for My Food
[Buy CD][Website][Song Lyrics]

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.

Artist: Eksperimentoj
Song: Untitled
From album: Eksperimentoj
Genre: Igneous Rock
[Buy this CD (seriously!)][Website][On Myspace][Song Lyrics]

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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.

Artist: Nell
Song: A Little Sad Story (??? ?? ???)
From Album: Speechless
[Buy CD ($11.99)][Website]

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.