ortsz

aidiera:

My bff ortsz made me a j-pop themed mix. You might like it.

01. こんな私でよかったら ~~ 吉川友
02. ロッタラ ロッタラ ~~ Buono!
03. 渚のシンドバッド ~~ W
04. Beginner ~~ AKB48
05. 不自然なガール ~~ Perfume
06. ここにいるぜぇ! ~~ モーニング娘。
07. アイ～ン！ダンスの唄 ~~ ミニモニ。

Download.

Also my fault (especially the title). I was limited to only seven tracks, so I fairly hastily threw together some straight-up idol music (though the idolness—idolatry?—of Perfume is debateable, the mix needed some electropop), eschewing the likes of Utada Hikaru, pop/rock like Do As Infinity, art pop like Shiina Ringo, anything Shibuya-kei, etc. There’s a pronounced Hello! Project / UFA bias to the mix (it goes without saying that I could have happily made the whole thing nothing but Morning Musume), but AKB48 is in there as well, because it’s only fair to represent the biggest idol group in the land and also Beginner is a kind of a killer song. The mix also happens to consist entirely of songs from the last decade by female groups/artists. The last track is a bonus in as much as Minimoni can ever be considered a bonus (though without the PV it’s nowhere near as sublime).

Of course, the target audience for this mix would not have understood any of that paragraph, so I guess they should just try listening to it.

aidiera:

My bff ortsz made me an indie pop mix about a month ago, but I think it’s worth sharing.

01. Landslide Baby ~~ Beulah
02. No Escape ~~ Rubik
03. Parachute ~~ Shugo Tokumaru
04. Blackout City ~~ Anamanaguchi
05. Gene Autry ~~ Beulah
06. The Interventionist ~~ Rubik
07. Daha Mutlu Olamam ~~ Mor ve Ötesi
08. Beach ~~ Mew
09. Death To Los Campesinos! ~~ Los Campesinos!
10. 幸福論 ~~ 椎名林檎
11. Am I Wry? No ~~ Mew
12. 156 ~~ Mew

Download.

Guilty as charged.

Questions:

1. Kilocycles is an obsolete synonym for which modern term?
2. ::1 is the IPv6 version of which IPv4 IP address?
3. Which country has the only single-colour flag in the world?
4. How many French emperors were named Napoleon?
5. By what name, originally pejorative, were members of the Women’s Social and Political Union known?
6. Which British news magazine was founded in 1843 to campaign for the repeal of the protectionist Corn Laws?
7. Which legendary animal is found on the royal coat of arms of the United Kingdom?
8. In which US state is the micronation of the Conch Republic located?
9. To which country does the Isla de la Juventud belong?
10. Which sea known for its islands was traditionally known as Archipelago?
11. Name one of the four main maritime republics of the Middle Ages, the Italian and Dalmatian city-states known for their navies and trade networks.
12. Which soft drink was invented in Nazi Germany in response to ingredient shortages caused by a trade embargo?
13. Which food, now a delicacy, was once so poorly regarded in North America that some employment agreements for indentured servants specified that they would not be forced to eat it more than twice a week?
14. Which of the following is not a type of pasta: conchigliette, faggotini, gigli, lasagnette, quadrettini, radiatori, stringozzi, or stronzetti?
15. Who was the hype man for the hip hop group Public Enemy?
16. True or false: Fat’h Ali Shah of Persia’s official royal title included “Most Formidable Lord and Master of the Encyclopædia Britannica”.
17. The Yuan Dynasty of China was established by which Mongol leader?
18. What was the northernmost frontier barrier of the Roman Empire?
19. Which of the following was not one of the three principal dramatic forms of classical Greek theatre: tragedy, comedy, history, or satyr play?
20. Which document, made in the 11th century, depicts the events leading up to the Norman conquest of England, including the Battle of Hastings?

Answers:

1. Kilohertz. (Kilocycles per second, or kilocycles for short, were replaced by kilohertz after the introduction in 1960 of the International System of Units, which adopted hertz as a unit of frequency.)
2. 127.0.0.1. (localhost)
3. None. (Formally, Libya had a pure green flag. After the overthrow of the Gadaffi regime, Libya reverted to its 1951 flag.)
4. Three. (Napoleon Bonaparte was the first and most famous; his son, Napoleon II, briefly became emperor as a toddler on two separate occasions after the abdications of his father; Napoleon III was Bonaparte’s nephew and heir, and was elected president by popular vote before later seizing total power and becoming emperor.)
   
5. Suffragettes. (The term was coined by the Daily Mail.)
6. The Economist. (The Corn Laws were repealed, by Prime Minister R. Peel no less, in 1846.)
7. A unicorn. (Since a free unicorn is considered to be a dangerous animal, the unicorn on the Royal Arms is chained.)
8. Florida. (As a form of protest against a Border Patrol roadblock that inconvenience travellers and hurt tourism, the mayor and council of Key West, Florida declared independence as the Conch Republic.)
9. Cuba.
10. Aegean Sea. (Archipelago literally means “chief sea”; the sea gave its name to the modern meaning of the word.)
11. Amalfi, Pisa, Genoa, or Venice. (Other lesser-known maritime republics include Gaeta, Ancona, and Ragusa.)
12. Fanta. (Coca-Cola were unable to import the syrup for their signature product and so created a new product using only ingredients that were available in Germany at the time.)
13. Lobster.
14. Stronzetti.
15. Flavor Flav.
16. True. (He amended his royal title after reading the entirety of the Britannica’s third edition, which he was given in 1797.)
17. Kublai Khan. (Genghis Khan’s grandson; he conquered the Song Dynasty and unified China in the 13th century.)
18. Antonine Wall. (Not Hadrian’s Wall.)
19. Satyr play.
20. Bayeux Tapestry. (Despite the name, it is an embroidered cloth, not an actual tapestry.)

Questions:

1. The four primary nucleobases of DNA are adenine (A), cytosine (C), guanine (G), and thymine (T), which form which two standard base pairs?
2. In RNA, uracil replaces which DNA nucleobase?
3. Which congenital disorder is also known as trisomy 21?
4. True or false: it is impossible for males with this disorder to father children.
5. Which logician and mathematician, best known for his two incompleteness theorems, would only eat food his wife prepared for him and starved to death after she was hospitalised and could no longer prepare his food?
6. True or false: Camilla, Duchess of Cornwall has a wild pig on her coat of arms.
7. The Principality of Andorra is ruled by two co-princes, one of whom is the President of which country?
8. Which African nation defeated Italy in 1895-1896, becoming the only African nation to successfully resist European colonialism?
9. The states of Tanganyika and Zanzibar united in 1964 to form which current African nation?

Answers:

1. A and T, and C and G.
2. Thymine.
3. Down syndrome. (Trisomy 21 refers to the cause of the condition: the presence of three rather than the normal two copies of chromosome 21.)
4. False. (There are three recorded instances of males with Down syndrome fathering children.)
5. Kurt Gödel.
6. True.
7. France. (When the Principality was formed in 1278, the French co-prince was the Count of Foix, an independent fief; the last Count of Foix became King Henry IV of France, and since then claim to the title of co-prince has been held by the leader of France, be they king, emperor, or now in republican times, president. The other co-prince is the Bishop of Urgell, a Roman-Catholic diocese. The co-princes only met on Andorran soil for the first time in 1978 for the celebration of the nation’s septicentennial.)
8. Ethiopia. (However, Ethiopia lost the second Italo-Abyssinian War in 1935-1936.)
9. Tanzania.

It is very, very clear that this collection of music was never intended to be heard on its own as a standalone album. There is little of substance contained within its fifty-one minute, thirty-three track length. Setting aside the worthless ambient sections and the truly appalling industrial electronic excursions (also there are congas), there are perhaps three unique pieces of music on this entire soundtrack, each appearing in various slightly different arrangements.

There could well be value in the idea of an album made out of recurring themes and motifs in various permutations, if it were properly explored, but clearly that was neither the intention nor the case here. These pieces are at best forgettably average string quartet soundtrack fare and are not interesting or substantial enough to warrant this sort of treatment.

This music may work well as a soundtrack to the film, and so it feels unfair to rate it harshly simply because it fails at a purpose it was never intended for. Still, I listened to this as a standalone work, and I am reviewing it as such, and so I must pull no punches: as an album, the Requiem for a Dream soundtrack is of very, very little merit.

Reviewed for the Album Swapping Society.

Right from the opening track, a spacious and languid number where strings swell around a compressed beat, plinking piano, and meandering resonant synths and guitars before making way for odd processed vocals, I’m struck by the similarities between Rings Around the World and the work of a certain band from Oklahoma. Now, in writing this review, I didn’t want to over-emphasise the Flaming Lips comparison, since more than anything it is simply a product of them being the only other band in this style I’m familiar with, but then I saw a photo of Super Furry Animals’s frontman. He has clearly stolen Wayne Coyne’s beard.

This album certainly has more of an alternative rock feel than anything from The Flaming Lips post-Clouds Taste Metallic, but not to the extent I would have liked. I say this not out of any particular affection for alternative rock but rather because this album could have done with a few more up-tempo songs. As it is, Rings Around the World suffers from a lack of energy, exacerbated by a sequencing which places the few truly rockish numbers all in the first twenty minutes of the album. A couple more songs in the vein of Sidewalk Serfer Girl, which opens with acoustic guitar and saccharine vocals punctuated by very welcome blasts of electric guitar, would have gone a long way to balance out the many slower songs. This would have also helped draw some attention away from the frequently unfortunate lyrics (representative lines: “turn all the hate in the world / into a mockingbird / make it fly away / yet as our hair turns grey / it’s far from a-OK”).

It’s easy to criticise (fun, too, to quote Homer Simpson), and the bottom line is that Rings Around the World is an enjoyable album with a few tracks in particular that I’ll be coming back to, and I will be looking into the rest of Super Furry Animals’s discography. If you’re into The Flaming Lips or neo-psychedelia in general—well, you’re probably already well familiar with this band, but if not—you should certainly give this album a listen. However, the promise shown by the first half-dozen tracks—whose eclectic and playful mix of alternative rock, sixties pop, and experimental electronica also reminded me a little of the more rock-oriented side of the Shibuya-kei movement—was unfortunately undermined by the rather wearisome second half.

Reviewed for the Album Swapping Society.

Questions:

1. Who is widely considered to be the first existentialist philosopher?
2. By what name is the Decalogue better known?
3. Which spiritual figure had stretched ear lobes?
4. Where is Eurobeat music most popular?
5. True or false: the Diet of Japan held its first question time on November 10, 1999, and the first question asked was “Prime Minister, what did you have for breakfast this morning”.
6. Which US president grew a beard after an 11-year-old girl wrote to him saying that he would look better with one?
7. Which cigarette brand launched in the 1920s as women’s cigarette and was later repositioned in the 1950s as a men’s cigarette?
8. Which British actor and comedian was the first man to appear on the cover of Playboy?
9. The title of “managing director” in Britain is equivalent to what in America?
10. Which Queen’s husband establised the principle that the British Royal Family should remain above politics?
11. True or false: After the Great Famine in Ireland, in which one million people died and another million emigrated from the island, Queen Victoria donated only £5 in aid and on the same day gave the same amount to the Battersea Dogs Home?
12. By what name was the k.u.k. monarchy better known?
13. From which country do Gurkhas mostly originate?
14. Which of the following is not one of the 32 major physical characteristics of the Buddha: eyes like a goshawk, thighs like a royal stag, a jaw like a lion, or eyelashes like a royal bull?
15. Hyperdontia is the condition of having more teeth than usual; what is the most common location in the mouth for a supernumerary tooth?
16. From which sport does the expression “going the distance” originate?
17. For most of the 20th century, in professional boxing the distance was 15 rounds. In the 1980s, the championship distance was controversially changed to what length?
18. The word “not” was mistakenly omitted from which of the Ten Commandments in the so-called “Wicked Bible” published in 1631?
19. Which distilled alcoholic beverage is made from sugarcane juice or by-products?
20. What causes sourness?

Answers:

1. Søren Kierkegaard.
2. Ten Commandments.
3. Gautama Buddha. (When he was a wealthy prince, he wore heavy earrings as a status symbol, permanently stretching his lobes.)
4. Japan.
5. True.
6. Abraham Lincoln.
7. Marlboro. (The 1930s even saw the addition of a red tip designed to hide lipstick stains.)
8. Peter Sellers. (April 1964. Sellers died of a heart attack in 1980, six days before he was scheduled to undergo heart surgery.)
9. Chief executive officer.
10. Prince Albert, husband of Queen Victoria. (Prince Albert was an innovator and reformer, and amongst many other things, championed free trade, modernised university curricula, and espoused science, including proposing a knighthood for Charles Darwin.)
11. False. (This was a myth; Victoria personally donated £2000 to famine relief, more than any other individual donor.)
12. Austria-Hungary. (“Kaiserlich und königlich”, meaning “imperial and royal”, as the Habsburg monarch ruled as both Emperor of Austria and King of Hungary.)
13. Nepal. (Some also come from north-east India.)
14. Eyes like a goshawk. (Other characteristics include finely webbed toes and fingers, graceful and curly body hair, a well-retracted male organ, and a fleshy protuberance on the crown of the head.)
15. Between the maxillary central incisors (right in the front of the mouth). (It’s known as a mesiodens.)
16. Boxing. (To go the distance is to fight a full bout without getting knocked out.)
17. 12 rounds. (Safety concerns were behind the change, sparked by the death of South Korean boxer Kim Duk-Koo in a 1982 match against Ray Mancini; Kim’s mother and the match’s referee both committed suicide months later.)
18. Thou shalt (not) commit adultery.
19. Rum.
20. Acidity.

Questions:

1. Which of the following companies, all originating from the eighteenth century, is the oldest: Twinings, Moët & Chandon, JPMorgan Chase, Christie’s, or Faber-Castell?
2. The Häagen-Dazs ice cream business was established in New York by immigrants from which European country?
3. The once-popular import of Scandinavian donor sperm into the US was banned because of the risk posed by which disease?
4. Vinland refers to an area of North America explored, centuries before Columbus, by which people?
5. In 1960, archaeological evidence of their settlement was found on which North American island?
6. The Islamic Courts Union was an organisation that once controlled much of which country?
7. Which author, best known for his science fiction, wrote 1913’s “Little Wars”, a set of rules for playing with toy soldiers and an early example of miniature wargaming?
8. True or false: sexual and violent content in Hollywood films has steadily increased ever since the introduction of sound.
9. What sport is also known as pugilism?
10. The Mechanical Turk was fake automaton constructed in the late 18th century which, while purporting to be purely mechanical, actually had a human operator hiding inside it. What game did the Turk play?
11. The era of video game consoles in which single or flip screen graphics gave way to scrolling graphics began with the release of which console?
12. Which soft drink introduced in 1985 was overwhelmingly more popular than the existing Coke and Pepsi drinks in taste tests?
13. Which over-proof rum made by Bacardi named for its alcohol content features a flame arrestor built into the bottle?
14. What is most notable about the species of snail Helix pomatia?
15. True or false: the oil from the red velvet mite is known as Indian Viagra because of its alleged qualities as an aphrodisiac?
16. Are tornadoes most likely to occur at 5 am, 10 am, 5 pm, 10 pm, or none of the above?

Answers:

1. Twinings. (Thomas Twining opened Britain’s first known tea room in London in 1706; Twinings still occupies the same location today.)
2. Poland. (The name, intended to sound Danish, is entirely fabricated.)
3. Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (commonly called the human form of mad cow disease). (The ban is not specific to Scandinavia. Many countries do specifically ban blood donations from people who spent time in the UK from 1980 to 1996 because of the risk of CJD, which is spread by misfolded proteins called prions and could have an incubation period of many decades.)
4. Vikings.
5. Newfoundland.
6. Somalia. (The ICU lost almost all of its territory in late 2006.)
7. H. G. Wells.
8. False. (Particularly, after the introduction of sound in the late 1920s but prior to the enforcement of the Motion Picture Production Codewhose censorship guidelines governed most Hollywood films between 1934 and  1968, films featured much more violent and risqué content than they would for the next few decades.)
9. Boxing. (From the Latin word for fist.)
10. Chess. (The hoax was only completely revealed fifty years later.)
11. Nintendo Famicon (NES). (Or, the lesser-known Sega SG-1000, released on the same day in 1983.)
12. New Coke.
13. Bacardi 151. (The high alcohol content of 75.5%—or “151-proof”—makes it a popular component of flaming beverages.)
14. It is farmed and eaten as escargot.
15. True.
16. 5 pm. (Late afternoon is the peak time for tornadoes, although they can occur at any time.)