Naoki Yamamoto - Believers


On a small island somewhere near Japan, three cult members have devoted themselves to the "Deserted Island Program". Calling each other by rank, these people (two men and one woman) have been chosen by their superiors to throw off the corrupt influence of modern society and "purify" themselves. But as time passes two of the members begin to give into human desire. Throughout the story there are just three characters. Each has a background of their own and each has ulterior reasons for this project. They are all wonderfully developed. This story pokes a lot of uncomfortable questions towards the modern day society. It also shows what kind of beasts people become when they are stripped of their so called advanced civilization. An truly wonderful manga and I recommend it to everyone who likes to read a bit more philosophical stories.


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Mohiro Kitoh's Short Stories - Zansho

A collection of Mohiro Kitoh's short stories, covering everything from his debut story to his more recent works. Some have supernatural elements while some don't, but all deal with young people learning about how unusual the world around them can be. Everyone has a soft spot in their hearts (even Hitler had, he named his dog: Blondie :3) and so do I (surprisingly). All these stories are touchy in a way. Recommended for fans of slice of life genre.

浅川マキ (Asakawa Maki) - Cat Nap


Asakawa Maki. Born in 1942 in Ishikawa-ken, Japanese female jazz and blues singer, lyricist and composer. Sang at US Army bases in Japan before getting her big break in a series of concerts. Maki’s first album recorded and released in September 1970 and came into being after an alliance with enfant terrible of the Japanese avant-garde Terayama Shuji (Tenjosajiki fame). Maki’s black clad and sugarless, petroleum dark coffee voice gets set against a folk-avant-jazz and psych backing. Stunningly fantastic female vocals and utterly rare.

Tracklist:

01. 暗い眼をした女優
02. 忘れたよ
03. こころ隠して
04. むかし
05. 新曲・B・
06. 夕暮れのまんなか
07. マシン (Machine)
08. 今なら


Check out the discography post for her albums.

Awesome



Album coming soon. ^_^

EF - I Am Responsible


EF is a five-piece band from Gothenburg, Sweden. It all started in May 2003, and soon they stood in a small basement and created quite heavy music. It didn’t take long for them to find that melodies, emotions and explosions were more interesting. During the first 3 years they recorded and released 4 CD-R demos and began playing in various locations around Sweden. In the summer of 2005 they were contacted by US label Raise The Red Flag. They decided to co-op, and a full length album was released during 2006. I Am Responsible is their 6 track EP released this year. The band has fully matured in their sound and it tastes delicious. It reminds me of that Doi album I posted ages ago. While this is supposed to be an EP it lasts for like an hour so it's definetly worth hearing. Besides the standard post-rocking riffs there are also trumpet instruments and various glitchy sounds and they all round up into one relaxing and great music for those bright sunny days.

Corrections: Its not ment to be a EP - its a full lenght album. And their debut wasn't released on or together with Raise the Red Flag...

Tracklist:

01. Soon (2:54)
02. Tvĺ (10:39)
03. Bear (15:47)
04. Thrills (6:49)
05. Appendix (7:01)
06. A Tailpiece (14:03)

Download.

Angantyr - Kampen Fortsætter


Angantyr is a Danish black metal band which started as a synth/ambient project in 1997. It quickly developed into a raw blackmetal band, and in 1998 the first demotape “Endeløs” was recorded. “Endeløs” contains 5 tracks of ear-mutilating blackmetal. The debut CD “Kampen Fortsætter” was recorded in the year 2000. The sound has improved, and the first song ever recorded “Stilhedens Larm” is included. Along with a re-recording of “Da frostvind blæste” from the first demo. In 2001 The second demotape “Nordens Stolte Krigere” was recorded in a small shed in the forest of Egebæksvang. This tape was made as a dedication to the Swedish band Domgård, who was imprisoned for their honorable deeds. In Oktober 2002 the CD “Sejr” was recorded, and supposed to be released on “Inner Evil Productions” in 2003.

Grrr :[

Tracklist:

01. Intro (Portene Åbnes) (05:58)
02. Stormen Fra Nord (04:46)
03. Landeplagen Skal Bort (06:51)
04. Intelhedens Larm (09:22)
05. I Der Knæler I Ynk (06:05)
06. Da Frostvind Blæste (04:54)
07. Sidste Kapitel I En Endeløs Fortælling (03:57)

Download.

Cowboy Bebop - OST, No Disc, Blue and Vitaminless


Sometimes I think, oh yes, I’d move to
Where all the shooting stars are gone
With all of our wishes
How could they bear, oh no, to carry
Around the stupid human hopes
So I’m gonna help, I will!

Give me a key to lock
The door to the secret paradise
There are so many queuing up
And I won’t let them in
Look at them
They are cheeky
They are never worthy to be saved

Sometimes I feel, oh yes, I could do
Almost everything I wanted
And it makes me cry

Lay your heart, lay your soul
upon my magic carpet
now we are flying
to Venus just to kill some time for tea, OK?
Remember, surrender
There’s nothing you can do ‘cause
Love’s such a joke
Like a little Jack-in-the-box, you know
A little Jack-in-the box

The lyrics above are from a song called Flying Teapot and this blog was named after this song.

The anime Cowboy Bebop is set in year 2071. Life on Earth has been demolished due to the fact the fucking Moon blew up! xD Because of that huge amounts of rocks are falling down on Earth (among other disasters that occurred because of this) making life on Earth almost impossible. Thus humans emigrated primeraly to Mars but also to other planets to and space stations. Most people now live on Mars in huge craters that are shilded by huge domes around it and the enviroment in these huge dome like buildings are shaped to look like life on Earth. That's the setting of the story, at least one bit. The story follows a group of bounty hunters who are on a ship called Bebop. The crew consists of 4 humans and one dog. Each character fills the weakness of another character so in whole they make an perfect team (non of them are able to get food it seems haha). I won't spoil much of the plot but just so you know the anime is episodic but the main plot follows here and there giving you just small bits untill the last few episodes where everything starts to unfold. Along with the series there's also an movie, two mangas, two video games (they weren't released outside Japan me thinks) and some questionable live action adaptations.

This happens to be my favorite anime of all times (seriously it is, there's no other except maybe Angel's Egg but that one is more for the soul) so I managed to collect most of the soundtracks and bootleg soundtracks that got out one way or another. I'll be posting 4 here and in the future I'll post some other ones (like the 5 cd limited boxed edition but that will have a post of its own because it deserves it!).

The anime has numerous refereces to jazz and most episodes are named after Jazz songs and similar. Naturally the soundtrack is like that as well. All soundtracks are made by a band called The Seatbelts led by the all popular Yoko Kanno who writes the music (she also did music for several other animes like Wolf's Rain). The music is quite diverse to say at least. For example the opening song is an wild and hectic jazz while the ending is an mid paced rocky ballad. While the main areas of music in the soundtrack is jazz and rock they aren't afraid to venture into other genres which gives this soundtrack an high replay value.

For now I uploaded 4 sountracks which are:

Cowboy Bebop Original Soundtrack


Tracklist:

01. Tank (3:31)
02. Rush (3:35)
03. Spokey Dokey (4:06)
04. Bad Dog No Biscuits (4:12)
05. Cat Blues (2:37)
06. Cosmos (1:37)
07. Space Lion (7:13)
08. Waltz For Zizi (3:32)
09. TPiano Black (2:49)
10. Pot City (2:15)
11. Too Good Too Bad (2:36)
12. Car24 (2:51)
13. The Egg And I (2:44)
14. Felt Tip Pen (2:41)
15. Rain (3:24)
16. Digging My Potato (2:22)
17. Memory (1:30)

Download.

No Disc


Tracklist:

01. American Money (1:08)
02. Fantasie Sign (5:20)
03. Don't Bother None (3:41)
04. Vitamin A (0:11)
05. Live In Baghdad (3:23)
06. Cats On Mars (2:47)
07. Want It All Back (4:02)
08. Bindy (2:19)
09. You Make Me Cool (3:11)
10. Vitamin B (0:11)
11. Green Bird (1:55)
12. Elm (5:05)
13. Vitamin C (0:07)
14. Gateway (2:58)
15. The Singing Sea (4:40)
16. The Egg And You (3:45)
17. Forever Broke (3:34)
18. Power Of Kung Food Remix (Tank Remix) (5:30)

Download.

Blue


01. Blue (5:05)
02. Words That We Couldn't Say (3:30)
03. Autumn In Ganymede (3:55)
04. Mushroom Hunting (3:19)
05. Go Go Cactus Man (2:38)
06. Chicken Bone (4:57)
07. The Real Man (4:01)
08. N. Y. Rush (5:05)
09. Adieu (5:40)
10. Call Me Call Me (4:43)
11. Ave Maria (5:50)
12. Stella By Moor (1:09)
13. Flying Teapot (3:33)
14. Wo Qui Non Coin (3:44)
15. Road To The West (2:56)
16. Farewell Blues (5:32)
17. The Real Folk Blues (5:56)

Download.

Vitaminless


Tracklist:

01. The Real Folk Blues (6:17)
02. Odd Ones (3:11)
03. Doggy Dog (3:17)
04. Cats On Mars (2:44)
05. Spy (2:04)
06. Fantasie Sign (5:01)
07. Piano Bar I (3:20)
08. Black Coffee (3:15)

No link available.
Just so you know apparently there's a new live action series in the make. Info here.

Mark of the Vampire

Year of release: 1935
Director: Tod Browning
Genre: Horror
Duration: 60 min
Language: English (English subtitles)

Imdb
Wikipedia

Ever watched old horror movies? Well I have a certain fetish for them, especially this kind of horror. Vampires, creatures of the night as I like to see them (not as some goth beats at rave parties where Blade slashes them with his uber cool katana -_-'). Elegant and morbid they walk among the mist scaring the shit out of everyone. There's something romantic in these movies. The black and white contrast and the charisma of actors who try too hard to emit certain emotions so that the audience gets shocked is just brilliant. It's something todays movies can never show and even if they did they would be a parody to something.

Sir Karell Borotyn (Holmes Herbert) is found murdered in his own house, with two tiny pinpoint wounds on his neck. The attending doctor Dr. Doskil (Donald Meek) and Sir Karell's friend Baron Otto (Jean Hersholt) are convinced that responsible for the murder is a vampire, specifically Count Mora (Béla Lugosi) and his daughter Luna (Carroll Borland), while the Prague police inspector (Lionel Atwill) refuses to believe. Now his daughter Irena (Elizabeth Allan) is the count’s next target. Professor Zelen (Lionel Barrymore), an expert on vampires and the occult, is sent in to prevent her death. At the same time, secrets are revealed surrounding the circumstances of Sir Karell’s death.

Part 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
Part 6
Part 7
Part 8

Subtitles (you might need them if you can't hear :D).

You need HJ Split to patch this back into one file.

Junji Ito - Uzumaki

First manga I posted from this artist was Museum Of Terror, and by the looks of it people really enjoyed it. It definitely had some amazing stories but there were also some crappy ones, art was medicore. Tomie came in second and it was one of his 3 most popular mangas. While Tomie is pretty good, Uzumaki will always have a special part in my heart. Partially because this was my very first horror manga and partially because it acutally managed to scare the shit out of me a few times and I practically read it in just two nights. Tomie had this atmosphere of a person that you would, at first, like to have around you but as time goes on you go insane and murder everyone and everything. While it did managed to achive a certain shock effect I didn't find the art in it very good. It was too simplistic, this takes a large role in my enjoyment of reading if it's a horror story.

As for Uzumaki, well take a look:

Something so great like this never appears in Tomie. Amazing is the only word I can think of now for this. :D

Uzumaki is a story told by a girl called Kirie. She invites the reader to enter her world and listen to her story of her town turned mad. The story is episodic in the first two volumes or so. This is something I really liked because each new story gets more and more grotesque and more horrifying as time progresses on. All these stories are linked to one thing and that is spiral shaped things. Spirals seem to appear everywhere and in every form. People become mad about them and slowly the town literaly starts to twist into this horror as each story resolves. The art is perhaps the best of all Junjis work. His trademark of facial expressions is here at its best. The lunacy of people here are portrayed so well that it gives such an awesome feeling while looking at their faces. The detail to the background here is far more better drawn from Tomie and Museum Of Terror which tells us that he really thought this out very well before drawing it. I could go on for hours writing about this masterpiece but I think it's best that I do not reveal all the wonders of this comic because it would destroy you the joy of reading. Enjoy this one, you won't regret reading it. :D


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Wish You Were Here



Happy new year everyone. I hope you aren't swiming in your vomit by now. ;)