jrocknyc

review: gazette | "dim" (2009)

2009-07-15T08:05:00.007-04:00

gazette
dim
¥3600 | 2009

Alright THE GazettEEE, you're up, and with the mood i'm in you have NO DISCERNIBLE CHANCE OF SUCCESS, GO.

Intro track: i dig the low grumbly rumble and -- unbelievably -- find myself rocking in my chair to the rhythm.

"Invisible Wall" sounds like guaranteed suck for its first few seconds, then actually starts for real and sounds great through these new AD700s, ballsy and twirly, but Ruki's vocals, and the vocal line, it's like the soggy Oreo I've always felt it to be. Slightly redeems itself at 2:05, with drumming that sounds like a wild horse tearing at the bit, dying to get free... mostly I just wish dear Rukester wasn't so mealy, I think it's the main cause of my want-to-like-'em-but-can't-ness.

Nice example of inexpensive awesomeness. (The intro red wall silhouettes.) It's a simple, memorable visual, but the body movements and the EDITS are what makes it truly killer. You could do it in your garage for $10! Take note indie bands!

"Moth" has a bass solo intro and I can't remember the last song that was improved by a bass solo intro, but it was probably of a Metallica album older than most college seniors. Has a nice groove at 1:36, but it repeats for too long. Great drumming struggling to break free of the timider vocals and only half-heavy guitars though.

"Leech" - was I annoyed by the female vocal inserts when this first came out? I cannot recall. Overall it's not as foreboding or heavy as it thinks it is.

"Nakigahara" is a seven-minute ballad that I lack the patience to make it all the way through, but I want to liken it to that Dir en grey dirge, "Ain't Afraid to Die" in its construction and this-is-a-good-time-to-leave-the-mosh-pit-for-a-quick-piss-and-a-beer-ishness.

"Erika" is 53 seconds of looped synth, kinda sounds like you're entering a bad but forgettable dream.

"Headache Man" is pretty poundy at first but then there's scratching and it gets a little too big for its pants, and the chorus don't fit in a good way or a bad way.

Gazette

"~~Koren~~" "Guren" - another ballad, more in the traditional j-rock band vein (acoustic guitar, strings, spoken voiceover, single-coil neck-pickupy solo... if there's a PV, red roses are guaranteed to make an appearance, also lots of longing looks up to the heavens and down at one's shoes.)

"Shikyu" - 43 seconds of distorted screaming, probably the least impressive thing one can put on record. At least feedbacking guitar features a ~note~.

"13 Stairs-1" sounds sorta Soundgardeny, slower and purposefuller with guitars tuned down to C. It changes up halfway through for something more modern, but I can't quite place the influence. I like it because it doesn't sound like every other Gazette song ever, but I doubt I'd spin it more than once a decade on purpose.

"Distress and Coma" - I sorta like the right-side guitars in the verse, while they're in the background pretending to be radio transmissions (~1:50), in reverse adn fading in and out, but that's mostly accidental coolness. The verse guitar is thick and does all the right chunking on the second and fourth bars, and the solo's simple but that can be rewarding sometimes and it is here, and even the backing "orchestra" is useful & interesting.

"Kanshoku" - sub-minute song #4... fade in, cue lonely single piano keys being struck, fade out.

"Shiroi Uutsu" is not quite a ballad, but the guitars and drums have no edges, no structure, no presence: they're just wallpaper for Ruki's voice to bounce off of. An overabundance of strings drowns everything.

"Chaos" gallops along chunkily, frivoliticiously, it's happy to be alive and so dangerously ignores speed limits and other street signs. It's also a tad simiplistic (I wish it had gotten a little proggy in it's last moments, to balance out the mild progginess of the intro) but what a great rock song. Would LOVE to be in the audience for a song like this.

Mourou is so cretinous I'm not even going to give it the distinction of quotation marks.

"Ogre" is like riding an escalator that has been lassoed by a speeding fire engine fleeing falling asteroid debris. Me likee!

And "Dim Scene" struck me as too slow at first, but there's a Luna Sea-meets-Dir en grey-esque quality to it's darkness. ~~Maybe~~ it ~is~ the echoing violin and the Edward Scissorhandy guitars trading off like an Arkhamized Inoran and Sugizo, the rolling drum attacks at the halfway mark that gradually builds into a Deggy avalanche.

This is an easy album to like.

rating: :)

guilty

2009-07-14T22:08:00.007-04:00

we live in a fairly nice place but last week a cute mouse died over near our shoe rack by the front door. i swept it into a box and that was that.

a few hours ago, kayo was nursing jackson while kate announced "i found a mouse!" i got home two minutes later and they were sitting in the living room watching a corner of the kitchen behind our recycle bin. a cute little baby mouse, its body the size of a grape, was scuttling around. i tried to trap it in an empty cheerios box but it skittered away.

so i went out for mousetraps, and the only kind they had were glue traps. my understanding of glue traps is that they are torture -- the mouse gets its feet stuck, then its FACE, it's nose, it's mouth, sealed in glue, and it spends a few minutes suffocating while it struggles against this foe it has no evolutionary adaptation against.

but it was that or the snap-traps, and i didn't want anyone's toes getting broken, so i got two glue traps, brought 'em home, set 'em up, then forgot about 'em.

five minutes ago, kayo whispered, "i think it's the mouse!" i jumped from my seat and yes, it was the mouse, but mercifully, only his rear legs were stuck. his tiny little front paws and panicked baby face (did he walk backwards into the trap? he must have) were scrambling and sniffing around the edges of the trap for answers to what was happening to him and why. i watched for a long time, maybe a minute. he looked up at me. he was just a baby! like jack! T_T

i didn't want him to suffer, and i felt that tossing him in a plastic bag and then down the garbage chute would just lead to long days of dehydration, starving, and frightened confusion.

so i gently placed him and the trap into a white plastic bag, then into another plastic bag, and as the bags crinkled cutely under his active nose and hands, i delicately walked over to my utility closet and placed the bags on the floor, heaved up a 40lb bag of planting soil to chest height, and SLAMMED it down upon the bags with a single, solemn thud.

No more crinkling. :(

bad first sentences o' novels, 2009

2009-07-13T21:34:00.001-04:00

I lol'd.

2009 lyttle awards:

The Zamboni doubled — nay, TRIPLED over in happiness-demolishing agonies.
Leon Arnott

This one wins a mention for "happiness-demolishing," which isn't quite as memorable as 2007's "unending holocaust of pain" but bears the same hallmark.

Speaking of taking a quick jaunt to the past:

I have the ability to go through time, he suddenly remembered while at a bus stop near a tree.
Adam Box

This is what we in the business call "painting a word picture." Setting is so important!

Sometimes painting that word picture requires the imperative mood, or the suggestion thereof:

Deep space. The silence of the void. Shh.
Anthony Hope

I try not to fall for the same gimmicks every year, but here are a few that do some of the usual things well. Unnecessary explanation:

Deborah walked briskly down the street with pants on her legs.
Susie Thai

A leg and part of a torso lay on the sidewalk — the remains of Alan Tompkins.
Mark Wells, quoting LaHaye and Jenkins's Left Behind

Mark notes, "Try imagining the scene without guessing as to which part of the torso." He also points out "the implication that the viewpoint character has just identified Tompkins from his leg and torso-part."

Dan Brown and LaHaye/Jenkins are among the bestselling writers of our era. We are all doomed.

J.H.'s Kanji is Chosen!

2009-07-09T18:23:00.003-04:00

Jackson gets sponge baths.

Kayo & I hadn't chosen Jackson Hiroki's kanji yet, though we have to register him at the Japanese consulate soon, so we googled the name, ended up at Wikipedia's "Hiroki" page, and had the following kanji to choose from:

Hiroki Aiba (弘樹)
Hiroki Azuma (浩紀)
Hiroki Endo (浩輝)
Hiroki Hokama (弘樹)
Hiroki Kikuta (裕樹)
Hiroki Kosai (洋樹)
Hiroki Kuroda (博樹)
Hiroki Matsukata (弘樹)
Hiroki Narimiya (寛貴)
Hiroki Suzuki (裕樹)
Hiroki Takahashi (広樹)
Hiroki Wada (弘樹)
Hiroki Yasumoto (洋貴)

I made my choice almost immediately. Then Kayo pointed to the same line before I even said anything and said, "These are the ones I was thinking about," and I went, "That's the pair I was gonna choose!" So we shrugged and went, "Done!"

Guess which one, and then guess WHY! Either you never will, or it'll be the first thing you think of.

review: gilgamesh | "alive" pv

2009-07-05T13:03:00.005-04:00

thanks cliff!

I hate this PV for the same old reason I hate the looooooong full concert dvd (Crazy Crazy Crazy) [cdjapan] this footage is ripped from: the high frame rate of the film and the relentless cuts and dizzying camera movement are like some sort of Clockwork Orange rehabilitation video, likely to induce oneself to vomit in one's own mouth.

I also hate this PV for a new reason: sticking already released live footage onto studio sound and calling it a PV is fuckin' lazy. Remember the awesome video of Gilg walking around a Chinese desert in those European monk hoods? Now THAT was a fuckin' cool PV. No vomiting required.

This "Alive" PV probably cost more, and delivers so much less. I understand you wanna show off your live chops, and that the DVD shoot was expensive, but at least temper TEH NONSTOPNESS with some cutscenes to girls in the woods holding dead flowers in slo-mo, c'mon!

The DVD pretty much exhausted my early admiration of Gilgamesh. Glad I caught 'em live when they were young pissers back in '05, with a setlist of six songs, because I'd never be able to endure TEH BATTERY OF CHUNKS they crank out in every song, and the same-ish singalongyness of all their choruses, for two-plus hours.

Base dunghill villain and mechanical, I'll have thy headphone this thy traitor's speech!

2009-07-03T19:14:00.009-04:00

Two years of daily use at the computer.

My Sony MDR-v6s -- which were great for games (excellent positional audio) and great for rock & metal -- bit the bullet today. The psuedo-leather cups were all rubbed off like a peeling tan, the foam pads were exposed after seems started to rend, and then finally the right ear went out. Jiggled the wire a couple times, got audio for split-second intervals, then nothing no matter how much wiggling I did, so they are now balled up and in a trash can. Two years and two months after I got them. Shame. :(

My next set was always gonna be Grados (60s or 80s), but looking at them, the way they sit on one's ear just flat like a coffee roll, and apparently not so good for games, and their Y-cordedness, I decided against 'em, and after much head-fi.org perusal, which involved checking out Sennheiser HD-555s (rocking, gaming, sturdy, but tight on larger heads) and some Beyerdymanics that were in the same ballpark, I settled on the ~~AKG~~ Audio Technica ATH-AD700s:

They're open-air, which means others will hear what i'm listening to, but also (hopefully) means I'll be able to hear other people (crying about poopy diapers, for instance) a little easier too. And the openness should mean less ear fatigue. And they're also supposed to be extremely comfy, and they're sorta purple-and-golden~mauve (the pic makes 'em look grey and bluish, but it's a lie, they look like something Prince might use). They also look easy to hang on a hook, freeing up desk space. And they're GIGANTIC.

At $83, they were about halfway between the $69 Grado-60s and $99 Grado-80s. I hope I made the right choice. Some people were like "not enough bass for rock! not good for gaming!" and others were like, "you won't be disappointed, they're fine for rock and gaming!" We shall see.

Someday I'll actually review the dozen j-rock CDs i'd like to review...

RoboGeisha

2009-07-02T17:37:00.001-04:00

pNSFW

via reddit

Narrated by Kamijo

IMG00094-20090702-0815.jpg

2009-07-02T08:30:00.002-04:00

lol sometimes i'm easy

edit: when i first saw it I assumed the intended message was "ASS POO" and thought (in my sleep deprived state) "is there any other kind?" and laughed... but the photo clearly shows "ASS POON" which lacks the depth and complexity of my initial interpretation. :(

Jack is Back

2009-07-02T05:24:00.004-04:00

Had to check Jack back into the hospital on Monday; he had jaundice, which isn't uncommon, but still sucks, as it requires blindfolding your kid and sticking him in a glass box for 24-48 hours.

These photos are like Bioshock II screenshots. (The special light breaks down the bilirubin in his blood into a water-soluble form that his liver can handle more easily.)

Neat fact: bilirubin is what makes yer poop brown!

He's back home now and doing great, back to normal and keeping us awake. He's become a lot more vocal since the treatment too, cooing and ahhing at us. :)

Kayo heard this from the kitchen and LAUGHED

2009-06-28T19:11:00.003-04:00

A totally out of context clip from Ronald D. Moore's new FOX show (already canceled), "Virtuosomethiny."

Optimus Prime & Megatron discuss the Palm Pre and the iPhone

2009-06-28T09:42:00.001-04:00

grab artemis's "atrium" (2009)

2009-06-27T17:18:00.007-04:00

Artemis on MySpace:

ARTEMIS
Visual / Rock / Other

Love and Peace!

BRONX, New York
United States

I haven't spun all of it yet, but the pieces I've heard definitely exude a Sugizo-like vibe, in all its many forms. And it's well-produced too, not demoey. :)

Look for "Here's the Atrium Album for download!"
[not directly linking to it here lest I mess up his stats]

I am embarassed to report that I had no idea.

2009-06-27T16:28:00.000-04:00

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev (since when?!) and Obama

New Russians | Foreign Policy:

The krizis, more than any other turn of events, has had a devastating impact on the country's sense of self. The nationalistic, anti-American harrumphing of former President Vladimir Putin's reign has subsided, replaced by a deep skepticism and a fear that Russia is on the verge of a 1998-style disaster that will destroy the ruble and wipe out personal savings.

russian nightclub

Moscow's nightclubs reflect these fluctuations nicely. A decade ago, American men were in great demand. Sometime about five years ago, there was a palpable shift, and expatriates acquired a reputation for being leeches preying on the city's oversupply of beautiful women. Now, Americans are popular again, and where it was once considered imprudent to speak English, it is thought to be chic.

Wait, what happened to Putin!? Apparently I missed an entire national election. :(

Also, "Is next, eveningvare" is part of my cultural consciousness so if I ever use it on you you'll know what the hell I'm referencing:

Sony may boost output of Michael Jackson CDs

2009-06-27T12:33:00.000-04:00

lol "may"...

China Post:

TOKYO -- Sony Corp., the owner of rights to Michael Jackson's music, said it may boost production of the late pop icon's CDs after receiving record orders today.

The company's music unit in Tokyo received orders for about 150,000 CDs related to the singer, according to Yoshikazu Takahashi, a spokesman for Sony Music Entertainment Japan Inc. “The amount is unprecedented for one day and we think we need to consider increasing the production of CDs that we plan to sell from July,” he said in a telephone interview.

Jackson's albums occupied all the Top 10 rankings for best- selling music at Amazon.com, Inc. as of 4 p.m. in Tokyo, according to the company's Web site.

I predict cashgrabby repackaginingness on a scale hitherto unimagined, even by Yoshiki!

Altho I think a week from now it'll be too late, everyone's just gonna grab mp3s, legally or otherwisely. (I recommend legally because that way amazon sends me some kickbacks and i can buy a nice kids book for Kate and a nice toy for Jack.)

Kate, Jack; Jack, Kate!

2009-06-27T07:58:00.000-04:00

holding him for the first time...

and looking adorable with her new 'do :)

elecdead master!

2009-06-26T21:30:00.007-04:00

I pumped my fist into the air upon Jimbo's big reveal!!

thx ryan!

The rest of the "film" (part 3 of 3 anyway, I didn't watch the others, because I still like myself) is the predictable bag of tired vampire tropes and awkward scripting, but the production seems lush enough.

That actor really earned his pay, but it's too bad they couldn't get Helen Thomas for the lead. ^_^

Okay time to attempt to return to some blogging

2009-06-26T19:41:00.006-04:00

First some too-true-truth:

Then some good things and some bad things, mostly the latter:

(We were always gonna call Jackson "Jack", but now even moreso.)

Introducing...

2009-06-24T17:16:00.002-04:00

Jackson Hiroki, arrr!!!
8lbs, 20 inches, he & mom are doing fine. ^_^m

We're here with Dir en grey and ehh yeah they're from Ja-pan

2009-06-21T22:55:00.008-04:00

Best answer: "I'll need a lot of alcohol."

I appreciate that they were trying to blend the Japanese & English answers together to cut down on the running time/boredom factor, but next time maybe they should use a split screen or ANYTHING LESS JARRING.

On another note, I totally remember meeting that translator a few times at shows in Japan, and now she's a translator for 'em, that's pretty cool!

And Joe (from Def Leppard) said there was no soundcheck either. That's kinda scary.

Japan eyes bigger military as tension rises: report - Yahoo! News

2009-06-21T20:45:00.004-04:00

The redhead's sleeve claims she's a Lieutenant! That's kinda hot.

Yahoo! News:

TOKYO (Reuters) – A draft of Japan's new mid-term defense policy guidelines is calling for the reinforcement of military personnel and equipment in the face of growing regional tensions... [saying] Japan needs to reverse its policy of reducing its defense budgets in light of North Korea's missile launches and nuclear tests, as well as China's rise to a major military power...

The draft also says there is a need to "secure options responsive to changing situations" of international security, indicating Tokyo's intention of considering if it should be capable of striking enemy bases, Kyodo said.

Japan's pacifist constitution has been interpreted as allowing a military only for self-defense and some experts say a pre-emptive strike doctrine would stretch that too far.

I was gonna try to make a Cheney-flavored "pre-emptive self-defense" joke, but can imagine too many scenarios where it'd be acceptable.

And I'm more concerned after posting the photo above about whether the SDF lets their officers dye their hair! Perhaps only natural colors? Perhaps it's never been a problem so there's no rule at all. Go purple FTW, Admiral Kaoru!

movie review roundup: gran torino, 1408, & push

2009-06-21T17:48:00.002-04:00

Gran Torino (2008) is apparently Eastwood's biggest-grossing movie, but what a hamfisted piece of work. At times it felt like a wholesome family sitcom or afterschool special, but infused with buckets of racist language, except the racism never felt real or dangerous. Its attempts to dig deeper into analyses of stereotypes and race relations and family relationships and manhood all fall flat to varying degrees. Most of the acting is high-school-play-like. And the climax is a disappointment. :(

1408 (2009) is pretty rough in the [spoiler!] ha ha we're gonna use your dead daughter against you sort of way. Too easy; it's like the horror equivalent of fart jokes. I also found the main character's mental leap from "it's just a room" to "omg get me da hellz outta heya" to be a little overhyped -- a window slides down on his hand, and then the clock turns to a countdown, and then the front desk calls to let him know they're be a ten minute delay with the sandwich he didn't order and ZOMG YOU WIN, ROOM! But I have to admit that I was watching it one night before bed and decided to stop and continue it in the morning; there's some neat psychological thrills going on. But I was not dazzled -- more like "well that wasn't a total waste of time"-ish. :\

Push (2009) is weird because it sets recognizable Hollywood stars up in Hong Kong style flick, causing causing some mental fibrulations (I wonder if Flame-On Man did his own stunts?)... it's also highly watchable, very fun, and made sense in the world in which it lived as best as it could, which is a world in which telekinetics, telepaths, and shadowy government types fight over MacGuffins. It's different, and sorta makes you wonder if this is the future of movies -- that non-Hollywood output will start to take over more territory and eventually be on an equal footing with the old great studios. :)

An observation

2009-06-21T07:30:00.002-04:00

Few activities are more satisfying and rewarding than taking a large, healthy dump followed by a hot, skin-eroding shower, is there?

review: "ghostbusters the video game" (pc) (2009)

2009-06-20T07:37:00.006-04:00

You know the old Twilight Zone line "It's a cookbook!"?

With Ghostbusters: The Video Game, your overeager assistant might scream "The video game... it's a fishin' game!" And not an especially good one!

It is not a first-person-shooter, as you might have supposed. Running and dodging is clunky to the point of undoableness. Shooting is just holding the mouse button down and then pulling on the tugging ghost, first with one stream (which causes your pack to overheat, so you have to reload-ishly "vent" your pack), then with another stream, that doesn't require reloading.

It's totally a fishing game and it takes FOREVER to catch a fucking ghost. So you're just standing there, holding the mouse button down, reading a magazine if you're lucky (my new issue of Dwell just arrived...) and/or just checking your watch if you have no reading material and wondering, "is this it?"

And my god, the cutscenes, constantly interrupting the flow, why do we have to stop the game for you to say "let's go here"? Why can't we just fucking go there? Oh, right, you have to jam the once-great (when I was in elementary school!) Ackroyd & Ramis's unfunny dialog down my ears! Dialog either cribbed from the first film (and not funny because we've heard it 10x before already) or childish ("He's into the occult. You know, the supernatural.") or just dumb ("It's a class 7 free roaming vapor!" but there's no difference between a class 3 and a class 7, is there? So why classify them?)

I will confess that going to reclaim Slimer at the Sedgwick Hotel again *was* a good choice for a first mission, though.

But seriously, I have to pick you guys up when you fall down? REALLY? (They fall down A LOT. It's like an escort mission.)

Ghostbusters ~could've~ been like L4D...
(the game is nothing like this image)

What this game IS is a vanity project/cashgrab -- I can only assume that they wanted to make a third movie, but being too old and fat to run around anymore, they opted to use avatars of their 80's selves to do it. And charge $30-$60 for a ticket instead of $8.50.

This game should've been a lot better. (No wonder there's no PC demo out!)

Still, it's sorta pretty, and not completely worthless -- overall it's just a so-so experience. Maybe if you have summers off you might find some time to kill lazily on some too-hot day, but I'd sooner not play any game at all than play this disappointment.

rating: :\

I Suspect Toshi & Yoshiki

2009-06-19T20:29:00.002-04:00

jbs.org:

Two men, alleged to be Japanese nationals, are traveling from Italy into Switzerland. Dressed like businessmen, they are carrying a briefcase. And in that briefcase is a secret compartment — containing $134.5 billion in U.S. securities.

...or Tetsuya Komuro and Kisaki. :)

New wave of 'history girls' wooed by warlords' masculinity

2009-06-19T17:40:00.002-04:00

Girls, warlords never looked like this, ever, and they would probably just as soon rape you.

Mainichi Daily News:

Young women are flocking to significant landmarks from the Warring States period, and college girls are buying up samurai-themed products. Sales of historical books are up, and there have been efforts to revive the publication of paperbacks on warlords. Behind this craze is the surge in 'reki-jo' or 'history girls.' But why now?

On weekends, Jidai Shobo, a bookstore specializing in historical books in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward, is packed with groups of young women. Most of the shop's customers were men when it first opened in February 2006, but by last year, half were women, of which around 90 percent are in their 20s and 30s.

Stationery and mobile phone accessories with family crests of feudal lords line the shelves, with figurines of Sanada Yukimura, the most popular of the warlords, and others also for sale. 'I like Kato Kiyomasa,' says customer Izumi Sekine, 34, of a warlord who served the shogun Tokugawa Ieyasu. 'There's an almost picture-perfect masculinity about him.'"

I guess they graduate from under-25 stuff like anime and VK to this?

How long until our favorite VK bands are dressing like shogun? (Or have they already? I'm trying to remember that cool D pv... and wondering if Kagrra counts for anything?)