Marshmallowscopy
Feb. 2nd, 2006 12:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
imomus
After the Berlin sessions with Rusty Santos, I've continued recording my 2006 album -- now entitled Ocky Milk -- here in Osaka. I've just finished a number called "Count Ossie In China" which details the adventures of the reggae pioneer in the orient. And since this is the third installment in the "Stories of O" trilogy (Oskar-Otto-Ocky), and because he's a sound genius, I've got faithful collaborator John Talaga working on the tracks. I couldn't be more delighted with the results. This time I've asked him to "take the solos" and do some kind of King Tubby dubby thing in them, cos the album is somewhat Jamaican (if Jamaica were in Tibet). Well, Fashion Flesh has just finished the first song, cutting a subterranean cave system into "Permagasm". I love it!
With collaborators of the calibre of Santos and Talaga I don't really need to go shopping for sounds. But I'm heading to Kyoto today to visit this amazing place that I read about on Roddy Schrock's blog. What you see above is Oto Kinoko (literally "Sound Mushroom"). It's a shop where you can buy individual sounds. Oto Kinoko is the dreamchild of Kazumichi Fujiwara, who used to run the Sound Museum on cult Japanese kids' show Ugo Ugo Lhuga. I appeared on the show back in 1993 as "Sampler-San the sampler man", demonstrating how to collect sounds with a video camera and turn them into music in an Akai sampler. The brilliant Toshio Iwai was involved in Ugo Ugo Lhuga, and I believe he's involved in Oto Kinoko too.
Fujiwara says his sounds have been collected all over the world: you can download from his friendly sound machines (a mixture of box-robots and marshmallowscopes, he calls them) the sound of "wind, animal farts, the blinking of frogs, insects fucking, etc". You can enjoy them, buy them, and take them home. I have no idea how much they cost, or quite how you take them home (I'm assuming you leave the store with a CD). I'll report more in the comments section later when I've actually visited Oto Kinoko. But I just want to say "Isn't this completely great?" Only in Japan...
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(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 02:40 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 02:42 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 02:51 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 03:27 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 03:30 pm (UTC)Fascinating
Date: 2006-02-01 05:04 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 05:53 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 06:31 pm (UTC)By the way, does 'Ocky Milk' have a certain meaning? Or is just a name of sort?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 10:02 pm (UTC)So Oto Kinoko is still there? I've been meaning to check that out for years, but someone never get around to it.
Does today's post imply that Tibet is part of China, or have I mis-read something?
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 10:26 pm (UTC)Re: Fascinating
Date: 2006-02-01 10:30 pm (UTC)Re: Fascinating
Date: 2006-02-01 11:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 11:36 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 11:37 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 11:41 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-01 11:44 pm (UTC)And that someone was you!
Does today's post imply that Tibet is part of China, or have I mis-read something?
No, there's no connection between Ossie being in China in the song and Jamaica being in Tibet in that passing remark. The Jamaica Tibet thing is really just because I noticed certain similarities in the way the two countries use colour.
Colour
Date: 2006-02-02 01:19 am (UTC)Care to elaborate?-Jed
Re: Colour
Date: 2006-02-02 01:52 am (UTC)Last year when I was stuck in Hokkaido I watched, over and over again, a video of the movie Rockers (http://www.reggaemovement.com/Reviews/dvd/rockers.htm). During his adventures riding around Jamaica selling dub plates to indie record stores, Horsemouth wears bright colours and passes through a landscape of bright colours. In the depths of the Hokkaido winter this was a kind of vitamin C for me.
Later in the year I saw a documentary on Arte about life in a Tibetan hospital. Something about the Buddhist use of colours in Tibet reminded me of the Rastafarian use of colours in Jamaica. Some lack of chromophobia they shared. That's all. No science involved, just one of my cranky hunches.
Re: Colour
Date: 2006-02-02 02:12 am (UTC)* Fyfe talks about the fuchsia jeans he almost bought at Helmut Lang. He's gay, isn't it? (Hmm, not ascertainable from this (http://www.bombmagazine.com/contribsp02.html).)
* "Chromophobia" sounds very close to "homophobia".
* The same people who hate colour hate gays.
* This book, and this review was written before 9/11. The colour cause was doing better before 9/11 than after.
* Aesthetic appreciation of colour is associated with women, gays, cosmopolitans and liberals. The battle for colour is a battle with both cultural and political dimensions.
* Yuki's blog (http://kissui.net/) talks a lot about colour, as does Jean Snow's (http://jeansnow.net/). Marxy's (http://pliink.com/mt/marxy/) doesn't, although he's studying marketing, and you'd think colour would be very relevant to that. But Marxy is more interested in power, and specifically cartels.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-02 02:19 am (UTC)I thought, when I saw the link on Roddy's blog, it might just have opened, and therefore they'd have a year or so of grace (and bank loans) to sustain them. But apparently it opened in 2003 (there were over 2000 people at the launch party) and has already run its course. The idea is great, but probably commercially unsustainable, just too marvellously whimsical to make it as a viable business. Especially in a small city like Kyoto. I doubt they could even survive as an internet-only business, selling sounds. But it would make a great educational facility. Maybe they could get museum status, and grants. Fujiwara, by the way, is 60.
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-02 02:22 am (UTC)Fujiwara also invented the Fujiwara binaural recording system used by Cornelius on "Fantasma". And he's used it to make porn videos! (Maybe of "insects fucking"?)
(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-02 02:25 am (UTC)Re: Colour
Date: 2006-02-02 02:49 am (UTC)Rap is text music, reggae is texture music. 00s America is a Thanatos culture (war), 90s America an Eros culture (consumerism, peace). Capitalism can accommodate to either culture.
My work at the moment is more about texture than text. Often people want me to go back to stories, but I see stories (a certain kind of story, anyway, even if it's satire, a text critical of the dominant text culture) as part of the problem (http://imomus.livejournal.com/169292.html). And, of course, finally there's the idea that texture is a form of text, just a much richer and more tactile text. (This is sort of what lies behind the idea of field recordings as ambient music. Notate those crickets!) And text can be a form of texture: ask graphic designers.
A: Not likely
Date: 2006-02-02 03:54 am (UTC)Re: Colour
Date: 2006-02-02 04:21 am (UTC)This is a very important issue that is too little mentioned; I agree that Puritanism is to blame, but Christianity and Islam are guilty of the same to a lesser extent.
What most bothers me is that so many walls are white; and what makes me even angrier is that landlords don't let me paint them. I fell like I'm going through life living on a blank page that I can never quite fill. I'm worse than teenagers, trying to cover up my walls.
That's another thing I liked about Japan; there was less white wall space to hide.
No matter what, there's always too much white. And the frames here are only available in one color: black. Maybe I'll take the time to paint them one day.
Re: Colour
Date: 2006-02-02 04:59 am (UTC)Re: Colour
Date: 2006-02-02 05:09 am (UTC)Re: Colour
Date: 2006-02-02 05:32 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-02 07:09 am (UTC)What have I got?I've got my glasses on.
Date: 2006-02-02 10:06 am (UTC)Re: What have I got?I've got my glasses on.
Date: 2006-02-02 01:06 pm (UTC)Re: What have I got?I've got my glasses on.
Date: 2006-02-02 01:11 pm (UTC)Re: What have I got?I've got my glasses on.
Date: 2006-02-02 01:35 pm (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-02 02:08 pm (UTC)Re: Fascinating
Date: 2006-02-02 03:25 pm (UTC)Re: What have I got?I've got my glasses on.
Date: 2006-02-02 06:22 pm (UTC)Re: Colour
Date: 2006-02-02 10:20 pm (UTC)You didn't travel high enough.
Date: 2006-02-03 12:34 am (UTC)The last one is a perfect contrast revealing the Puritanism of western culture.
If there's a need or desire, you can learn how to build your own. (http://www.woodlandyurts.co.uk/Yurt_Facts/Build_Your_Own.html)
And this Tibetan nomad is more stylish than any of us!!!
Re: Colour
Date: 2006-02-03 10:09 am (UTC)Re: Colour
Date: 2006-02-03 10:10 am (UTC)(no subject)
Date: 2006-02-03 10:24 am (UTC)The average person I encounter on the street appears to have been outfitted by the wardrobe department of television's Rosanne. I sympathize with your observations. At the same time, the arbitrary nature of our preferences strikes me just as sharply as the ugliness of my neighbor's sweatshirt. I've always been much more interested in the point in space at the top of the pendulum string where there is no motion at all. This swinging back-and-forth between material judgments is really, as you've pointed out so many times, just perpetuating the game. Equal and opposite reactions. Like becomes dislike and dislike becomes like. Even this assumes we know and understand all that we survey.
Really you're just saying, 'share my taste!' Fortunately I do, for the most part.
colors yes!!
Date: 2006-02-03 12:12 pm (UTC)Re: Colour
Date: 2006-02-03 05:30 pm (UTC)All traditional cultures are conformist; but conformity is often just fine with me, except when it's unethical, tasteless, or boring, and it often isn't.
album meanings
Date: 2006-02-07 06:58 am (UTC)infinite (8) mothers milk
icky milk (japanese allergy to milk)
otto spooky:
palindrome (AC-DC?)
money machines called OTTO
two o's acting as ASCII eyes o t t o
auto spooky like automatically spooky
auto spooky like car spooky
haven't thought much about oskar tennis champion yet
AGhhH!!
Date: 2006-08-10 04:32 pm (UTC)Re: AGhhH!!
Date: 2006-08-10 04:52 pm (UTC)Re: AGhhH!!
Date: 2006-08-10 08:16 pm (UTC)