Frilly Military: a homemade pop video

[imomus]

Well, after telling you yesterday that some of my new stuff is "hits in a parallel universe", I thought I'd show you. Here's a homemade pop video I shot yesterday in Kyoto, cycling through a shopping arcade on the west side of the city. It's for "Frilly Military", one of the songs that'll be on the new album. Click the picture to see it. It's 15.7MB.



The song (a big hit in a parallel shopping arcade, for sure) is a reworking of one I wrote for Kahimi Karie back in 2001. I recorded and produced it in Osaka this month, and John Fashion Flesh Talaga reworked it (especially the skippy buildy bit at the end) in Bay City, Michigan. And now it's everywhere at once (there's even a blocky-dizzy low-res version of it on YouTube).

Oh, "Frilly Military" is published by Sony Music Japan. And the video was made with iMovie. Love those cheap and cheerful effects! My "Ocky Milk" album is due out this summer.

Comments

[dzima.livejournal.com]

Nice song.

One thing that your video makes very clear is the human way that you can ride a push bike in Japan. You don't have to compete with mad cars, wear useless jock's helmets and cope with random people yell/throw things at you like in, we all know your favourite enemy, The West/America.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Yes. Sometimes it even seems like the pendulum has swung to much in the bicycle's favour in Japan, when you can't change directly quickly on a sidewalk for fear of gettin hit by the bicycle that's inevitably coming up fast behind you. But I think it's totally worth it. I love the Japanese bicycle culture. That mall was such a joy to ride through. Riding on a bike on a warmish day (yesterday in Kyoto it touched 15C) through a Japanese city is just the most brilliant thing you can do.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Given the choice I'd prefer the scenario where the people massively adopt bicycles and the government spurns them to the scenario where the government advocates bicycles and the people spurn them.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, by the way, thanks for the Cafe Sarasa advice. Great place!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Fingers crossed for Marxy-style demographically-powered termial decline, then!

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Oh, I'm very much with you on the bicycles issue. Of course I'd like to see popular support and government support for the bicycle. It's just that a theme I've been circling around quite a lot recently is that virtue is neither the result of freedom of individual choice nor of government legislation. Virtues like bicycle-riding, high-density living, communal living, bloat-free software, a bloat-free body-shape, organic food, slow life, ecologically-sustainable lifestyles, low-to-no emissions... these are better achieved by -- I won't say poverty, but by people finding their material affluence capped at a certain level, and adopting austerity measures. Some have suggested that the most virtuous income level is around $20,000 a year, and I tend to agree. That's exactly the right figure to make car ownership prohibitive, for instance.

[imomus.livejournal.com]

Bicycle friendliness is some complex function of population density, environmental surroundings, and urban design.

I'm sure Whimsy would like to join me in adding to that list aesthetics, morality and culture!