Katsuhiro Otomo - Visitors

As much as the front page and the name associates the plot with ghosts it has nothing to do with ghosts. This one shot isn't really focused on the plot, it's much more focused on the experimental narrative approach. The whole thing is drawn from the perspective of a person. You can't hear his (yours) words or anything, only reactions to his (yours) reactions. The plot can get a little confusing if you don't pay much attention because it shifts from retrospective to present a lot. All in all it's a fun ride, if it was longer it would get annoying.

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Ring 0 Original Soundtrack

I posted this a long time ago on TNA, twice, and the links died out pretty fast. I was never really bothered to reupload it because afterwords I felt that this is a little out of touch with the blog. That's why I'm posting it here with some additional thoughts and interesting (I guess) experiences with watching the Ring series. The soundtrack related text starts at the bottom of the second picture.

I was fairly young when the first remake got out in Europe (I was about 12). I found out about it through some trailer that was on a video tape of some other movies. When I saw the trailer I was kinda glad that I don't really need to watch this movie because I thought it would freak me out a lot. Then a few weeks later I was surfing through the local video store with nothing really gaining my interest. And then this little interesting tape caught my eye. "Hey it's that movie... uhh should I watch it or not?" and yeah I did.

It's interesting how can something influence a persons psyche and subconsciousness so much by just showing a series of moving pictures also known as movies. A story that practically had nothing in common with my life and yet it had everything I was afraid of. Especially the "cursed tape", every fucking scene of that tape had a thing that I was afraid of. Mirrors (I am disgusted by them, I can barley look at them for some reason), that stare, black and white color, cliffs, dark water and yes, I am actually afraid of ladders (I'm unable to climb more than one step of ladders, I freeze and can't move -_-). Another interesting anecdote I had with this movie is that upon the first view of this movie I completely kicked out the final legendary scene out of my head. I had no idea I watched it. I only realized it when I watched it for the second time about a year after. I'll never forget the moment when I completely freaked out screaming "THIS DIDN'T HAPPEN THE FIRST TIME" while watching the scene and having flashbacks of me watching it for the first time and completely erasing it from my memory.

After that second watch I decided to avoid the Ring franchise because it didn't really affect my mind in a good way. It took me about 5 years to force myself to watch it again. I found all the movies and even the Korean one (which was terrible actually). I watched them all, twice, in hopes to flush out my silly fears. Yeah; that didn't really help.

Among all the sequels, remakes etc. there stood just one more thing I didn't yet watch and that was Ring 0. In all previous movies the girl was portrayed as something unhuman, unnatural and vengeful over mankind. This movie showed her human side, in this movie she was the victim and people were the monsters. It showed her fragile and natural side which was something something I never really expected when I watched it for the first time. It was at that time when I realized that she was actually human before and that there's a good reason as to why she became after what she was.

The soundtrack is naturally quite fitting, the opening and ending tracks were made by a visual kei band (larc en ciel, something like that). Both of those songs were very uninteresting and I can't really tell that I listened them to more than twice. The rest of the soundtrack on the other hand is quite good. It was composed by Shinichirou Ogata (he also did one Ghost In The Shell soundtrack, can't remember which though) and it mostly orchestral music. But there are ambient and some noisy passages that make this soundtrack very fitting for the whole setting of an somewhat Shakespeare plot. It's funny how one track gets to be sad and melancholic flute arranged piece and then all of the sudden the next track falls deep into ambient and sort of eerie sound. I like that, it never gets boring that way. It brings you the sad mood of a tragic, inevitable violent death of a person that was just simply born that way.
I don't need to watch Ring movies anymore, the people and the places appear in my dreams on regular basis ever since I watched it for the first time.

Hako Yamazaki - ハコのお箱

This was originally posted on the Abstract blog I used to visit but apparently it was closed down for (surprise surprise) legal issues. Looks like Carmen Maki didn't really like the idea of foreigners sharing her albums.

Anyway, I posted Yamazaki's stuff before and it received a lot of downloads so I guess you guys/girls/hermaphrodites might want some more. Since she never really gained any popularity outside Japan (or even in Japan I think) there's not much info about her albums. This one isn't even on discgos. It seems like a compilation of her songs done in an acoustic arrangement. Previous album I posted had all the instruments that the usual acid folk singer in the 70s needed. This time it's just one wooden guitar and a bit more matured voice for the most part of the album. Terribly underrated imho.

Tracklist:

01. 望郷
02. 橋向こうの家
03. ヨコハマ
04. 歌いたいの
05. 白い花
06. 冬の東京
07. 気分を変えて
08. 綱渡り
09. 水車の都
10. 織江の唄
11. 夢
12. 私が生まれた日(サウンドトラック・ヴァージョン)
13. 呪い

Link.

Sun Ra - Lanquidity

Sun Ra has a huge discography and while this is great it is also very bad at the same time for those who wish to start listening to Sun Ra. Lanquidity is one of those albums I would certainly recommend to a casual jazz listener to check out if he never heard of Sun Ra and I would also recommend it to those who heard his other works as well. So why is this album exceptional? I love Sun Ra and all that but there are some albums that just drift too much in the noise sphere or sometimes are just plain swinging jazz we heard in the 40s and 50s. Sometimes on albums there are few calm songs and a 20 minute experimentation which can ruin the mood. Lanquidity on the other hand has that perfect balance. It's not exactly straight forward jazz experimentation yet it's not total random bollocks he sometimes did. It has that special things of his I can't really explain exactly.

Tracklist:

Lanquidity	8:19
Where Pathways Meet	6:30
That's How I Feel	8:09
Twin Stars Of Thence	9:30
There Are Other Worlds (They Have Not Told You Of)	10:58

Download.

Tetsuya Saruwatari - Riki - Oh

Oh wow.

Uh, this guy has a huge star of David on his hand and he goes around; beating the shit out of everyone. He was also shot 5 times. Not exactly 50 cent tough guy type but close to it. :D

A long time ago when I was out (by out I mean in my room; alone and on the internet) hunting for manga and I saw this peculiar story. Tried reading it but everything was in Japanese. Not so long ago I found it again, translated! So yeah I started reading this. The story at the beginning goes something like this. A guy comes into a jail and he's tough. If you look like you have concrete not muscles under your skin you are bound to get in trouble with someone. And so I was reading and yeah, it was belivable. Then after a while he did something to which I kinda said "yeah I guess this is could pass in real life". Few volumes after a bad guy installs an electric device in our protagonists heart so that it electrocutes him if our hero does not obey. Then our hero takes a machete, rips his stomach and pulls out the device attached to his heart with his hands. Few moments after while he bleeds all over the place he kicks someones face so hard that his hand goes through his head making a hole in his face. By then I was fairly convinced that this isn't very realistic. The manga tries to be serious but it just can't. :D

There is a plot and there are a lot of characters. There are some interesting ideas but the main thing in this manga is fighting. And there's a ton of fucked up fighting and lucky for us the violence isn't censored at all so you'll see blood, bones and such splattering all over the place.

THERE ARE ALSO KILLER KITCHENS


In short it's all good fun and gore. The plot is there but it's not exactly original. The manga also steals some bits from others but you won't care. Art is ok, nothing exceptional or over the top artistic but it delivers. The story is also very politically impolite. You'll be seeing a lot of swastikas and stars of Davids combining and such. :D There's so much manliness here that it's leaking out everywhere.


Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5


There are also two unrelated stories included.

Texas Pandaa - Days

Back to business after a while!

Well it's autumn and everything is kinda blurry so I'm listening to a lot of jazz and uh blurry music so here's something from the blurry department. Blurry as in dreamy and post rock~ish. There are vocals as well so it's not straight forward post rock but it's not actually that far from it either, there are a lot of instrumental sections. Sometimes it switches the pace so it doesn't get boring and repetitive very fast unlike some post-rock bands that I could mention (but I wont >:|).

In any case, if you like dreamy music you'll like this.

Tracklist:

1. Intro
   
2. Days
   
3. Blind
   
4. Old Times
   
5. Dry Me Up
   
6. Sway
   
7. Inside the Sad Cafe
   
8. And What Flows
   
9. No Recall
   
10. Blind (meow version)

Download.

We've met before, haven't we?

Been preparing for exams that will be this week etc.

Once I dislocate my spine from studying I'll do some posting. I collected a bunch of interesting things so it should be fun.