Tunes

John Tejada - The End Of It All: resembles less Tejada's other original productions (that I've heard) than his remix of Télépopmusik, but mostly... you know those "orgel" music box re-versionings of Jpop hits? This is like an orgel instrumental version of Ayu Trance over a minimal house set-friendly bassline - the melody is very specifically early-00's Hamasaki Ayumi ballad, somehow, to the point where I was unsure at first if it wasn't a cover. Weirder things have happened. ^^;

It's a beautiful song. I said it was my favorite song for a week but now it has memories attached which is on another order altogether. It somewhat reminds me of "True Faith", actually, same stately pace and sense of perfect affirmation (despite the fact "True Faith" is about cleaning up, no more drugs and late nights etc. I suspect most people who saw the light in the shape of the morning sun (according to Barney Sumner) did so because they were dancing til 6AM >_>).

Some random promoters are bringing Tejada to the SAT in July, feel free to guess date, hint you cannot go wrong with "the night of the day the next SSBB is supposed to go up". It's become a tradition to have a launch party for the thing, even if only inside my head.

Michael Mayer and Reinhard Voigt - Transparenza: the latest Takumi and Keisuke Speicher from Kompakt Extra, my favorite song for the week before that. XD The first time I heard it I hit repeat five times in a row. Not sure why the a-WHUMP-pa-pa-pum, a-WHUMP-pa-pa-pum is genius and conductive to pure dansudansu it just sort of is (also, chuggachuggachuggaSIRENS, etc.). Actually this is the riddim that makes me think "Detroit techno", am probably a thousand miles off but all right.

Señor Coconut and his Orchestra - Behind the Mask (Ricardo Villalobos Remix): actually a cover of the Yellow Magic Orchestra classic (which you should all have, because I'm sure I put it on an FST). I never knew there were lyrics to this. XD The original (er, original cover) is intentionally cheesy brass band tropicalia lounge, always a summer favorite; Villalobos speeds it up a little and lightens the arrangement, makes it more sprightly and percussive. So it's nowhere tech house or minimal, but... it is 24MB. orz Señor Villalobos, and I don't mean this in a bad way or anything, but I get the sense he doesn't currently operate within the same space-time framework as most people. Either that or he believes God intends one side of a 12" single to last fifteen minutes (otherwise He would've made the diameter less, no? >_>). So the first seven minutes of this aren't really the song, they're an increasingly elaborate sketch outlining where the song is not. The song appears slowly and disappears nearly as slowly, leaving its grin hovering in mid-air.

I believe Señor Coconut has a whole album of Kraftwerk songs done like this.

I was going to post "Arquipelago" as well but I don't have it on this computer - I'll upload it with a couple of tracks from the albums I bought, once I rip them. (Yes, I lied when I said I didn't buy any CDs, I went back and got a couple on Saturday.) There's also the classical violin pieces, etc.

P.S. I really am sick, I think I've run a low-grade fever for most of the day (took a Tylenol and it made me feel better, so). Hope it improves overnight; while I could worm my way out of work it will only be more pain in the long run, since there's no one to pick up the slack. >_>

Catching up

Didn't actually mention that I went to the Beer Festival, on... Thursday I think it was? Sort of dragged Erin after work. ^^; I was planning to take it easy and drop by several days in a row for a couple of tastings but of course it had to be the same weekend as MUTEK so time-wise it didn't pan out. But I did try a few nice wheat/fruit beers (figured I may as well stick to what I liked), and half a pint of porter.

The trick to the beer fest is to buy a glass, or bring one from a preceding edition. You get more beer for your coupons that way, and a pint glass with a handle is much easier to hold than one of those dinky little plastic cups. Belgian-style fries are de rigueur (like mussels I really feel like the ones I've had in Montreal are better - maybe not so touristic). I also like those buffalo-meat sausage skewers even though they're expensive. :P

Although I love summer the weather's gotten very hot very suddenly and I haven't adjusted - I remember it was the same last June.

***

Okay, fandom news - I'd better get those Bleach FSTs up while they're timely. The problem with the "mixtape" is that I planned for two songs per character but I only have one for most, so I don't know whether to put it up as a short mix or what. ^^; The Ishida thing I haven't properly sat down and sequenced.

Will post some other music too, as soon as I can upload.

I have a gift certificate for Amazon Japan that needs to be used by the end of June and I'm pondering just ordering the last however many tankoubon of Stone Ocean and having done with it, because I need to be able to schlepp my reading outdoors. ^^;

Oh, and

Should I post summaries for the later parts of JoJo as I read? ^^; Like part 6 and SBR. I generally do it for other series I follow where the scanlations are stalled or nonexistent, like GetBackers (oh gawd it's ending finally) - I mean it's kind of odd to sagely discuss the implications of this or that when the only person who really knows what I'm talking about is jokersama, I think. XD I know Charmian is a h0 for spoilers but anyone else?

I... guess I should post this, huh

Giorno/Jolyne, neither particularly spoilerish nor particularly cracktastic - speaking of writing excessively normalized romance fic for shounen manga. XD;; In retrospect if I were going to take this source material and write a story about a boy and a girl going on a date I should've at least put in the pizza toppings conversation.

There's something insidious about this pairing that isn't quite accounted for by the fact that - combinatorically speaking - it's the only JoJo x JoJo possibility that's not completely wrong. >_> I wrote in the Author's Notes on Ka's archive that it's sort of the Eriol/Tomoyo of the nonexistent ficcing fandom, but now that I think about it... smart bisexual girl of good family + all-powerful dude perhaps not exactly as suave as he thinks he is? Yeah.

( Ariadne, 978 words )