Spirited Away once again....

I was bored today so I decided to watch an old movie...

 Seriously, if you are a fan of anime... or a movie fan... or a fan of the fantasy genre... or anyone with a shred of sentimentally in you heart (or brain depending on your belief.), this movie SHOULD NOT be missed.

Nothing... and I mean NOTHING in the (now shithole) Japanese Anime Industry can compare to this. Not even Princess Mononoke... not even Suzumiya Haruhi... not even Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann... and definitely not shit like K-On or Lucky Star (urgh....).

Nothing that happens, is ever forgotten, even if you can't remember it.

                                                                        -Zeniba

This is the masterpiece of masterpieces... The best the industry can offer... The very PINNACLE of Japanese Animation (and movie music composition too...). If you decide never to watch an anime again... make sure you've watched this before you stop.

Still my favorite anime (and possibly movie) of all time...

Ok... Back to BlazBlue - Continuum Shift

Gadget Trial

 

Man... Izen is cute... and her voice actor is really good. Too bad Gadget Trial is a one-time not very popular game... Not much artwork circulation and no hopes of a sequel.

 Nobody knows wad I'm talking about anyway.....

The Future of Music!!!!!

Well... Here it is... The future of the music industry....



Pretty young faces with heavy auto-tuning, having a singing voice is optional. How nice...
(To be fair, there were some really good singers in there... but I still hate the song as a whole... Rap in "We are the World" just doesn't feel right...)

On the Asian side....



A good plastic surgeon, a set of killer dance moves.... and they come in a set of 9! Who cares if they really can or cannot sing, I'd never listen to their songs without the accompanying MVs anyway. Holy shit... how are they are even around the same height? J-pop can never compete with this.., (they only have relatively good looking singers, theses are...)

Btw my fav so far is still TTL...



Still... My fav bands and artist are seldom mainstream anyway. Lena Park still takes my top spot and now Stereopony (All girl Japanese rock-band without the plastic surgery) takes a close number 2. Five for Fighting has lost their Fav. english band/artist spot in my list and have been replaced by Paramore!!!! Too bad I can't catch their concert.... Songs of the week is Stereopony's Tsukiakari no Michishirube (ツキアカリのミチシルベ) and Tomatsu Haruka's Girls, Be Ambious (So-Ra-No-Wo-To's ED).

Lena Park

With a total viewship of 1! This blog really sucks... well, it'll get better eventually... Hopefully...

I've been also wanting to change the layout and background... But that will have to wait...

Anyho. I can't believe I'm still going to do a 3rd post... Here goes nothing....

Name: Lena Park (Park Jung-hyun 박정현)
Genre: (According to wiki) R&B, Korean pop, Japanese pop, Gospel.
(Personally I haven't heard her J-pop or Gospels....)
Age: 33 (March 23, 1976)
Active since: 1993
Born in Los Angeles but hails from Seoul, Korea (whatever that means...)
Website

~ Intro ~

In theory, I've known about Lena Park since her album Op.4... well... that's in theory. I still remember it was my 2nd sister who sent me her song "plastic flower" (and I love that song so much....), but at that time I wasn't really into pop yet (It was still my pre-anime/rock/pop period of my life in which I mainly listened to Final Fantasy music and Band pieces... yes, I know... that's kind of sad...). Eventually I lost that song together with the rest of my old collection of songs when I formatted my computer (or something... can't remember...).

I eventually forgot about the song and its artist as I blissfully spent my poly days listening to J-pop/anime songs. The interesting thing is that I never forgot the "plastic flower" melody even though I didn't remember the name or the artist of the song, but being the lazy person I am, I never bothered to go look for it. Years past and I entered army etc etc blah blah blah...

I heard "Plastic Flower" 's melody again one day from one of channel 8's adverts. I stupidly mistook it for a Japanese song and started a fruitless search of the song through my Japanese song library (I mistook it for Selenite by Rurutia and was throughtly disappointed when I found out I was wrong). I eventually gave up hope and resigned to the fact that the song would just become another beautiful but faint memory. But as fate would have it, I stumbled upon her name on a website while I was looking for new songs to download... *ahem* new albums buy... completely legally and all...

I now have become somewhat (only somewhat as I've only listened to 3 of her albums so far... and she has had a 16 year music career to date...) of a fan of Lena Park and have a new found respect for K-pop. I'll be blogging about the album which invoked my love for her music - Op.4.

What to expect:
- Powerhouse vocals.

- Passionate singing (seriously...)
- Somewhat old school American pop/RnB style of musics. (sometimes resembling Celine Dion/Mariah Carey)
- Wide variety of genres and styles.

Its a good break from Japanese music for me.

Op.4 (released on 15/06/2002)

Tracks (Song I like in Bold):

1. Plastic Flower (상사병) *All-time-Fav*
2. In Dreams (꿈에 (타이틀곡) )
3. Someone
4. Will Love Come (사랑이 올까요)
5. Life’s Discovery (생활의 발견)
6. Hated Duck (미운오리)
7. In The Beauty Salon (미장원에서)
8. What a Pretty Girlfriend (여자친구 참 예쁘네) *Fav*
9. Lazy Bones (게으름뱅이)
10. The Road to Parting (이별하러 가는 길)
11. Make Noise (떨쳐)
12. My Mother (나의 어머니)
13. PUFF

I should mention though, I love (almost) every single track in this awesome awesome album, but I picked out a few that I liked better over the rest.

Plastic Flower...what can I say... I love listening to "Nobody" by wondergirls... I loved "Abracadabra" by BEG... but "Plastic Flower" is by FAR my favorite Korean song OF ALL TIME (admittedly though... I don't really know that many Korean songs...). This song is the reason why I even listen to Lena Park in the first place, its a song that was deeply rooted in my mind for at least 6 years without fading. What I like about the song? I really can't pin-point it on anything - Maybe its the string section's emotionally provoking score, maybe its the hauntingly sad intro part of the song, maybe its Lena's incredibility passionate singing... All in all it comes together perfectly for me...

(So far nobody seems to share my love for this song... but nevertheless I still think its one of the greatest songs ever written... btw its the first song on my Box.net wiget on my blog's right section ->)

As for the other songs in the album, most of them are pleasantly nice depending on your mood and preference. I personally love What a Pretty Girlfriend (여자친구 참 예쁘네)  which is my 2nd favorite song in the album. The song really shows off Lena's vocal ability. Same can be said for In Dreams (꿈에 (타이틀곡) ) and In The Beauty Salon (미장원에서). PUFF is an interesting song and worth special mention... Overall the songs sound dated, but are still very enjoyable.

Recommendation level: 5 of 5

Now that I'm (somewhat of) a fan, anything less would be unacceptable. Lena is now tied with Shoko Nakagawa as my favorite artist...

(1976-0

School Food Punishment

First up! School Food Punishment,

Wiki-ed Info:

Genre: J-rock/electronica band (kinda minimalistic in my opinion)

Active since 2004
Vocalist and guitarist: Yumi Uchimura - Who also writes lyrics for the band's songs...
Keyboardist: Masayuki Hasuo - STF has many great piano parts and really addictive electronic riffs.
Bassist: Hideaki Yamasaki - Quite an amazing bassist IMO. Love his bass playing for several songs.
Drummer:  Osamu Hidai - Another drawing point of the band. Very interesting drum scores.
Band Website

~Intro~

Have been listening to this band for a while now, It all started with a friend introducing me to the band a lonnnngggg time ago.... Wasn't really interested in their music at their time though...

The song that made me take notice of them "Futuristic Imagination" which was the ED for Higashi no Eden or Eden of the East (which was an awesome anime btw). Their music tend to start off slow and slowly build up to an awesome chorus. I love almost everything about the band's music style... well.... for some of their songs at least.

What to expect:
- Great melodies. (especially the choruses)
- Awesome bass line.
- Sometimes interesting drum score. (My fav being the one from Futuristic Imagaination)
- Weird rhythmic placement. (prime expamle: snap from school food is good food)

~Their Music~

In my opinion, SFP's song can be categorized in to 3 groups : boring, weird and awesome. Most of the songs they released before 2008 would be grouped under boring or weird by me with a few exceptions...

School food is good food & air feel, color swim (mini-albums)(pre-2009)

Selected tracks:

pool - Strangely addictive song. Might be because of the riff they play thru out the whole song...
Sky Step - A kinda jazzy-electornica song. Awesome chorus.
Artline - This was my favorite song for a period of time. Boring verse but I loved the chorus. Generally a very electorica song.

These are however not the focus of my post. The main feature for today will be the post 2009 singles and mini-album. Starting from oldest to latest.

Riff-Rain (released 14/01/2009)

Tracks:

1. flow
2. feedback
3. egoist
4. killer *fav*
5. 二人海の底
6. over

I liked 4 out of the 6 songs in this mini-album (which is not bad). The band hasn't lost much of its favor but has somewhat improved on their rock/electronica style as compared to their previous album. My favorite song of the album is probably "killer" which has the best riff (by the piano) in the album IMO, admittedly though... don't really like the chorus that much; comparatively, flow has the best melody of the album but has a slow and possibly boring build up.

Futuristic Imagination (released 27/05/2009)

Tracks:
1. futuristic imagination  ***All-Time-Fav***
2. flat  

3. you may crawl -Takkyu Ishino Remix-

About a month or 2 back, futuristic imagination was my absolute favorite song of all time. I would listen to several times a day. It exhibits everything I love about SFP and more (Strings!!! Theres a string score for this song... what more could I ask for?). Till this day, I still can help but think this song is awesome - its music perfection. Flat is not bad... love the chorus; an example of strange rhythmic placement in the verse (IMO). I didn't like you may crawl in its original album, I still don't like it now that its been remixed.

Butterfly swimmer (released 22/07/2009)

Tracks:
1. butterfly swimmer *fav*
2. beer trip
3. futuristic imagination -AVALON Remix-

Well... singles are short. Butterfly swimmer is a nice j-pop (?) song but with SFP style electronica mixed into it. I like the remixed verison a lot better (featured in the next single) As for beer trip, I like the chorus's melody (and the weird electronic sound playing in the background). Futuristic imagination is a great song and all... but this remix sounds nothing like the original... seriously...

Sea-Through Communication (released 10/07/09)

Tracks:

1. sea-through communication

2. fiction nonfiction
3. butterfly swimmer -Q;indivi Remix- *fav*

Yup... I like every single track in this single.
The best single of the 3 in my opinion. Sea-through communication is quite commercial J-pop but with the awesome musical talent of SFP, its a very decent song. fiction nonfiction goes back to the fast-paced electronica style of SFP which I know and love; moreover, the build up and chorus is really addictive to listen to... The 2nd verse also sounds a bit trippy...
Finally, we get a remix of butterfly swimmer which I like a lot more then the original, possibly due to different chord progression. This version also sounds more main stream then the previous, making it more enjoyable to listen to (well.. that is if you're me).


And thats that. All in all School Food Punish is a good break from the usual fair of J-pop music I usually listen to. Their songs are worth checking out if you are into electronica but they do have some songs which are pretty mainstream commerical pop...

Recommendation level: 4 out of  5


Look out for their new single on 2nd Dec 2009!

Introductory

Introduction

Hello and welcome to my new blog ~Distant Avalon~ (named after the GSC Saber Lily Figurine). I know have not been a very constant blogger up to now since... well... I really didn't have to will power to commit 1-2 hours of my time every week to update a blog which, lets face it, no one will ever reads.

Then why then, why create a new blog you might ask...

Back-story

Well... It all started on a cold night in India one day when I was listening to my mp3 player. I had only brought a playlist of about 100 songs for my 21 day India trip and I was starting to get bored of the same old songs playing over and over again. It had then occurred to me that although I deemed myself a music student (of sorts), I didn't really know a wide range of songs at all. If anything, my personal library of songs was actually much smaller then that of an average consumer. I started to worry of course.... how could a music student be exposed to so little music?

So this is pretty much the solution i came up with. I would start a music sharing blog and attempt to get my friends to contribute to it. This way I could widen the variety of songs I know and at the same time would be able to recommend songs that I like.


So How It Works (or how it suppose to….)

I will personally try to post 1 album, artist and/or song recommendation per week. This way I can share with the rest of the world music I like and let them know what I am currently listening too. Hopefully other members of the blog will too do the same. If all is successful, I hope to create an active blog where different people post different types of music recommendations across all genres and languages, so we can all share, enjoy and learn to appreciate a wide spectrum of music and at the same time keep in touch with one another or meeting new people.