Previously I mentioned that Toe‘s photographer Yoshiharu Ota was exceptionally good. Then Martine told me that he was brother to the singer of the band Envy, which I’ve long enjoyed. So now, I found more of his stuff and indeed, continue to be impressed.

In his band photography especially, he manages to extract moments of particularly potent visual lyricism from the maelstrom of a live show, and presents them in single slices of radiant time. The more I look at them, the more I realize that they don’t “feel” silent. Or rather, their stark silence belies, in shocking contrast, an atmosphere with sound at its core. It’s impossible to imagine the scenes without inferring a feeling of aural energy permeating that place and time; everything is drenched with it.

Check out his website, “scape for us” and blog for more of Yoshiharu Ota and his excellent work.

[Link][2][3]

Artist: Radwimps
Song: ???????????????????
From album: ??????????????
Genre: Poppunkcore
[Buy CD][Website]

I don’t have much time on me, but here, have a fun video of a little girl destroying a city with a whiffle ball bat. Her energetic, catchy soundtrack could very well fit in on one of our “edgy” American radio stations.

Artist: Apogee
Song: ???? (Yakan Hikou [Night Flight])
From album: ????
[Buy CD][Website]

This video “Night Flight” blends Apogee’s silky synthpop with a nicely edited milieu of cosmical and mythological yet whimsical imagery; and to quite a charming effect.

Not much pop catches my ear these days, but this song and video have something special. The album link is to their first full album “fantastic” which has a newer version of the song. The original is from their single of the same name.

Very interesting stuff here, you may have seen already. Dust art from Scott Wade, who erodes his artwork into the dust layer on his minicooper’s rear window. Very talented, rendering even such classics as the “Mona Lisa” and “Girl With a Pearl Earring”.

Lots of great images in his gallery.

[Link]

Artist: Toe
Song: Everything Means Nothing
From album: The Book About My Idle Plot on a Vague Anxiety
Genre: Instrumental Subsequent Rock
[Buy CD][Website]

I should have posted Toe a long time ago; they have stood out as one of the best Japanese instrumental bands I’ve heard since I started looking. They have an unfading talent for constructing glittering twilight braids of melody that twinkle and flow in swaying coils.

I’ve also been pleasantly surprised by their website, and most especially by the photography section which strikes me as containing some of the absolute finest band photography I’ve seen anywhere. Foremost among these are the photos by Yoshiharu Ota which are worth a post in themselves. The photo-viewer on Toe’s homepage is big and beautiful, the photos saturated with color and movement; and it has a nice elegant interface too, whose concept I might appropriate and adapt for myself at some point.

So, I’m sortof back now, and I’ve got this nifty new video player with me. It has been in the works for a while, being built up from scratch, and will probably be refined a little more before it’s fully implemented. Please feel free to mess with it, try to break it, give me feedback, and let me know if it does anything odd. It fits the scheme more, and it’s now extra-simple to plug stuff into so it’ll be easier to do videos in the future.

I realized recently that I have been doing this for over a year now and have made an average of around 1.3 posts per week. It’s neither here nor there, but I think I’ll try to increase that to at least 2 per week on average in the coming year, starting now.

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.