The *other* meme

[petronia]

20 songs selected by the 'amp at random from an unscrambled list of 7723 tracks, with descriptions because I couldn't resist:

01. Hellsing OST1 - Gakuon Yuugi Nengemishou [rather interesting electro-prog-rock]
02. Depeche Mode - Dream On (Joy Remix) [bass-heavy bootleg cut-up]
03. Belly Dancing - Shik Shak Shok [exactly what it says it is]
04. Peter Paul and Mary - Day Is Done (live) [hippie acoustic choral folk]
05. hide - What's Up Mr. Jones? [Japanese thrash metal]
06. Kanno Yoko - Some Other Time [from GitS:SAC, oddly like an ethereal female-vox version of the 80's-inspired shoegazeyness I've been mainlining recently]
07. Faye Wong - Di dar [with Faye, if it sounds like Cocteau Twins it probably *is*]
08. Cat Stevens - Morning Has Broken [more hippie acoustic etc. yes, I listen to this schtuff more than I admit]
09. Yann Tiersen - Monochrome [pianoforte singer-songwriter alt-pop from the guy who did the Amélie OST, from the live Black Sessions]
10. Dire Straits - Why Worry [lullaby-ballad with gentle intricate guitars]
11. Amuro Namie - Respect The Power Of Love (New Mix) [Ah, Avex. ~_~ Just when you were in danger of respecting my taste]
12. Leonard Cohen - The Law [ain't complete without Cohen-sama]
13. Sekaha Ganda Sari, Bona - Kecak [Balinese gamelan music I gacked off someone newly on my flist, sort of acapella call-and-response storytelling/ethnographic beatboxing]
14. Tears For Fears - Pale Shelter [*good* New Wave]
15. Noir OST - Premonition [spooky instrumental w/ bells and cello and reverb]
16. GetBackers OST - Dubious Answer [lush minor-key orchestral track]
17. Xenosaga OST - Gnosis [HOOYEAHBABY uhh I mean, London Philharmonic doing ominous movie battle music]
18. New Order - Here To Stay (Full Length Vocal) [just as I was thinking that electronica was underrepresented...]
19. Pet Shop Boys & Kylie Minogue - In Denial (Aries Club Mix) [...we return to teh discoball with a vengeance]
20. m-flo - How You Like Me Now? (Edwards Radio FLO Remix) [Japanese electro-funk]

Apart from 18, which is currently on my MP3 player rotation, I haven't listened to any of these for ages. It's nicely representative of the kind of music I listen to, though, if you add a bit more Cpop, Kpop, and some actual rock music. In fact it would make a kick-ass mix up to, oh, #10 or so. Then it gets weird. FWIW #21 was the newest Bonnie Pink single, #22 was one of Taka-san out of TeniPuri's character singles and #23 is old-old-school French chanson by Charles Trenet.

In other news, I finished reading the second half of PMK #2. It took me two hours, because PMK is the sort of manga where I have to make sense of every other sentence with a dictionary, and then I have to understand what they mean. I planned for a night where I could get drunk and listen to thrash metal afterward.

Comments

[typhoid-mary.livejournal.com]

I've been wondering if I should buy PMK because I'm not sure if I could rea them. I had to give up on Five Star Stories because I couldn't -- is PMK really that much worse?
-Mari

Re:

[petronia.livejournal.com]

Know yourself, basically. ^^; I can't compare with FSS because I've never tried to read that in Japanese. However FSS in Chinese is difficult because of all the terms Nagano makes up out of whole cloth, whereas PMK is difficult more because of the language level itself. It's literate historical drama, meaning quite a bit of old-fashioned grammatical constructions and INTERESTING NEW KANJI. And lots of period references and political subtlety to go along with said kanji. And loads of dialect. ^^; It's not like in other series where you get the one guy who speaks Generic Osaka; here all the characters who aren't originally from Edo (i.e. about a third of them) speak Kyoto-variant kansai, which is vaguely different from Osaka-variant though I can't pin down how, and Akesato who speaks the hardcore Kyoto "geisha" dialect with the 'yansu', like Semimaru out of GetBackers. And Sakamoto Ryoma speaks Tosa dialect mixed with incredibly non-standard Engrish. ...And Saitou speaks this somewhat old-fashioned Japanese that has a whiff of the seventeenth century to it, but I think I've scared you enough for one day. XD;;

So yeah, it's hard. I'd still buy it, though, because even plain picture-reading the thing will tell you more about what God and the author intended this story to be than the anime does. Sad, but true. The anime is fun but completely fails to convey the masterful pacing and psychological subtlety of the original.

Re:

[re-miel.livejournal.com]

Not geisha.
Geiko, surely.
And I just have to mention here, that I *love* that dialect.
Mmm... Kyoto.... Mmm.... Gion...
Mmm... September. :((
I miss the sakura blooming in Kyoto, because of damn bureaucrats wanting stupid pieces of paper that will only get stamped out in July.
While we are on the subject of geisha accent - do yourself a grand favor and buy yourself 'Kurotsubaki' by Kawasou Masumi. It will 390 yen you will never regret. :))