Owner: Singing Pi, Collapsing Time, The Xenophile Wildstyle, and Other Song Stories URL:http://mog.com/Shinjuku_Zulu Join Date: Tue, 02 Oct 2007 10:47:43 -0500 Rating:0 Site Description: Stories behind & around the songs, with streaming posts, including "Speed Tribes & Slow Is the New Fast", "Repainting Mona Lisa & Scarborough Fair", "I (Large Hear) Music & Mrs. Major Tom", "Badminton &am Site statistics:Click here
Major Tom... and Mrs. Major Tom 2007-11-17 08:26:26 Due to requests, from time to time I'll be posting lyrics from the songs on the K.I.A. and Shinjuku Zulu releases.
Below are the lyrics for the song "Mrs Major
Tom" (at various places on the web and at iTunes HERE . This song (Major Tom Part IV?), told from the wife's perspective, expands on the story began by David Bowie in "Space Oddity" and continued in "Ashes to Ashes" (also by Bowie,) and in Pete Schilling's"Major Tom (Coming Home)".
Anyone interested in memes (the viral spread of an idea) might want to check out this Major Tom epidemic on Wikipedia
Vocals by Larissa Gomes...
You went up, so bright TomThought my love was rocketing you alongWhen you didn't come back, and didn't come backMy nova heart collapsedTo a black, black hole
Floating on sine waves in inner space
Sexy Booty Shaking and Freaky Body Morphing; Kafka, Barney, Koons... and Make Me Shake 2007-11-10 08:20:07 Here's the new music video for the song "Make Me Shake
(Gimme Some Crush Crush) by Shinjuku Zulu, from the Various Chimeras CD
The video casts allusions to Kafka's "The Metamorphosis", or Matthew Barney's "The Cremaster Series" in which the human body transmorgif-- ah fuck, forget it. I admit. It's a booty video. Just a sexy, scantily clad chick or two dancing and shaking their moneymaker(s). But they do it, you know, in front of fine art. (My remixable works , b.t.w.) So that makes it okay, right, Jeff Koons?
Recently posted, the Make Me Shake video is currently in the top 10 of the youtube charts, somewhat above Soulja Boy's "Crank That", Alicia Keys' "No One" and something by Avril Lavigne, but sadly, somewhat below "V is for Vagina Tattoo".
The video is directed by filmaker W Read more:Shaking
, Freaky
, Morphing
Britney Spears Beats Underworld to the Future... and SXYLV 2007-11-01 11:02:34 Perhaps I'm contrarian; I never liked Britney
's music, her press manipulations, her looks-- and found neither a sense of frisson nor schadenfreude over her recent, er, mishaps/crack habits... and by crack I mean
But now, now I have become her biggest fanboy.
I'm a new fan for this reason: she makes Underworld
sound dated. Let me rephrase that: Britney has beaten Underworld to the future.
Having recently purchased both Oblivion With Bells (Underworld) and well, at least some of Blackout (Britney) I gotta say that Kevin Fed's Ex is more avant-garde. Yes, the Oops I Did it Again chick has techno-smacked the Dubnobasswithmyheadman boys into the past. Oh how the world has changed...
Take a listen to Piece of Me by Spears
, and then Crocodiles or Faxed Invitation by Underworld, Read more:Future
, Beats
, Britney Spears
Jambalayan Mayans, Cholo Cherokees, Karaoke...& Shanghai Masai (Instrumental edit) 2007-10-28 10:58:09 Ahh... karaoke (FWIW, pronounced ka-ra-okay, not carry-oki). Admit it--just like watching "Dancing With the Stars", (Marie Osmond! Fainting! Live!) we've all done it at some point. (Even Sid Vicious did, for at least the first half of his version of My Way .) And who didn't enjoy Bill Murray doing Roxy Music's "More Than This" in Lost in Translation ?
So for those of you who want to test your dental dexterity with some multi-syllabic MCing, here's the instrumental edit of ShanghaiMasai
with lyrics provided below. (Sorry, there's no animated bouncing red ball to help you with timing). If anyone wants to do a version for youtube, hit me up with an email and i'll email you an mp3.
Email: info[atsign]nu4ya[dot]com
Good luck with the capoerin' pharoahs phrase...
SHANGHAI MASAI Read more:Instrumental
Multi-culti Marvelousness... and Dervish 2007-10-21 11:35:50 The song for this post is "Dervish", from the first Shinjuku Zulu release, at iTunes HERE
So yesterday (Saturday) morning I had a couple people interested in the art come over to my studio to look at my remixable and static paintings. I verbally bittorrented the ideas behind the work at them as I showed them around, because I had to start get the space ready for a video shoot later in the day. (Aside: one person bought a piece, one is considering.)
Then my wife Zanesha Gowrali, a fashion designer, had in an actress in who had just worn one of her gowns to the Geminis (Canada's Emmy Awards.) After that, she had a second meeting with a couple for whom she was designing some pieces. As her meetings went on, I remixed some of the large paintings so they'd function as color-fields for b Read more:Multi
Einstein, Oliver Sacks, John Donne & Brett Michaels... and She's All States 2007-10-14 12:10:57 Have a listen to the mp3 while you read. The song is “She’s All States
” from the K.I.A. CD “Sonorous Susurrus” (at iTunes HERE ) Vocals are by Eugene Spanier and Patrick Duffy. FYI , the lyrics lift a line from John Donne's poem The Sun Rising: “She’s all states/and all princes I”)
You can, apparently, tell a musician by the size of his corpus collosum. Now I know that for some of you-- the oversexed ones-- that phrase might seem like a euphemism for somethin' else, and like, may conjure images of Tommy Lee st/rutting around in spandex tryin' to get you drunk off of his man-mump, but xanax yourself-- the corpus callosum (now spelled correctly) is simply that tube part that connects the two hemispheres of the brain.
Anyway, for musicians, the corpus callosum (and th Read more:Einstein
, Oliver
, Brett
, Michaels
Courteney Cox Having Sex in a Limo... & Allelujah 2007-10-07 11:21:20 Forget past lives , brain entrainment, speed badminton, and out-of-body experiences. I know what you want.
You want sex. Particularily celebrity sex.
Preferably if it's done in a limousine.
And especially... if you can watch that limo-sex on your computer, while also listening to Last FM, Facebooking , shooting down cans of Red Bull , playing Sudoku , editing your wikipedia post on The Disclosure Project, while shopping on Amazon for an iPod Touch . Maybe even whilst playing Halo 3
Even better if that Courteney
Cox sex is: a) free to watch b) not so embarrassing if someone (the ever-present NSA, or your ever-present roomate) checks up on your web history.
So here you go:
Jump to about 3 minutes in to see Courteney Cox
make the-beast-with-two-backs.
She does i Read more:Having
, Having Sex
Past Lives Part 3... and Howdydaomaori 2007-09-30 10:40:08 This track is from the downtempo side of the "Sonorous Sussurrus" CD by K.I.A. (on iTunes HERE and also at eMusic, CD Baby, etc... Have a listen while you read...
Cont'd from Part 2
...In fact, she realized, all these decades along and many completed books later, that all the stories she'd written had been given to her-- once she'd learned her letters, she'd simply transcribed the words she'd always been hearing in her head. (The process of writing had always mystified her; it was more like she was reading not writing-- like she was holding a candle under a page to reveal the words already written in invisible ink...)
* *
So the above and previous Part 1 and Part 2 were told to me matter-of-factly, sitting on a shag rug in the dimly-lit basement of a suburban home. (I've ob Read more:Lives
Past Lives Part 2... and Coal Coal Black (Instrumental Edit 2007-09-19 12:47:13 Hmm. There'll have to be a Part 3 to the below post, which'll have the backstory. Listen to the song while reading, as a soundtrack. It's from the Instrumental
Edits CD of Various Chimeras by Shinjuku Zulu, at iTunes Here
Cont'd from Part 1
...and she began to share those stories-- neighbors visiting from a nearby homestead heard her read to the children and asked for a story. (She wrote one for them about a fish who wanted to climb mountains.) Other neighbors began to ask, too. (They got ones about words behaving like birds, and a man with four elbows, and...)
More-- there was a request to read to the ladies' social group at the new church. (Their story: a land where clothes were plucked fresh from the bush like a rose, and thrown away when old...) Then the schoolteacher asked Read more:Lives
, Black
Past Lives Pt.1... and One Come We (Instrumental Edit) 2007-09-09 11:16:36 As it's a little long, the post will be split in to two parts, with some interesting and illuminating background to the story coming in Part 2...
Listen to the track as you read the post. The song is from Shinjuku Zulu's "Various Chimeras Instrumental
s" CD at iTunes HERE
Hands with more cracks than a riverbed in a drought, shoulders muscled like a man's, brown hair sunbleached light from long days outside... all mostly from doing the laundry: lugging buckets, making soap, scrubbing clothes and then squeezing and twisting and slapping out the excess water. Laundry: on a farm with a husband, three children and a house made from the prairie itself (dirt floor, sod roof, wood and mud walls), there was always the drudgery of laundry, laundry, laundry.
And yet, and yet... when hanging Read more:Lives
Wikimusic and... Happiness Like Motion 2007-09-04 11:50:30 Who owns the past? History belongs to the victors, if you believe the old the saying. Any conquering Emperor-- and by Emperor I meant country, religion, corporation, etc.-- wants only their version recorded, only the good shit put down on that stone/papyrus/book/website. Don't mention the genocides/torture/devastation, planned or accidental, just the peace/spirtual salvation/progress since then... as in "Chemicals? Sold to? Nazis? Wha? Look, over there, don't you love this new wing we built for the University?" (Check out Dave Emory's radio show for a tsunami of info on all kinds of hidden history )
Which is why a wiki-world is so wonderful. The only way to get a fair and balanced perspective is to have multiple perspectives-- 5 blind men & elephant-- and wikipedia not only allow Read more:Motion
Samuel Jackson... and Segue 2007-08-25 12:06:28 The movie Resurrecting the Champ starring SamuelJackson
, Josh Hartnett, Alan Alda, Terri Hatcher, etc. features the Shinjuku Zulu song Segue, from the first Shinjuku Zulu CD, at iTunes HERE , in it's soundtrack.
The movie (opening this weekend) is getting good reviews, especially Jackson's performance...
"Segue" features an African chant by the Arctic Zulu Ensemble over breakbeats, and about midway through, the song morphs into a 4/4 afroelctrotechno-soaring-chorus thingy. In fact, that's almost what the Globe & Mail had to say about the track, in its review of the CD: "In Segue, a chain of syncopated gasps and a soaring African chorus changes a brooding bass line into the root of something earthy, sunny and intimate."
A couple other tracks from that first Shinjuku Zu
Exo-stomachs... and Freedom 2007-08-17 09:01:54 For the last year, give or take a few months, a good friend has been carrying around, in a bag, her stomach. She would eat normally, the food would move through her and at some point (I didn't ask where), get diverted through a tube and then into the bag, which she wore under her clothes. This bag has a little pump (grinder?), which helped her body process the food. She would have to empty the bag not too long after she ate, and a couple other times throughout the day.
I mean, think about it's one of those modern medicine = amazing things. You're carrying around a major organ outside your body! Maybe we're not too far from the brain-in-a-jar future of those Star Trek/Futurama imaginings. (Hell, we finally have video phones. And private space-travel is close...)
So back to my friend. Read more:Freedom
The Xenophile Wildstyle... and Shanghai Masai 2007-08-05 08:36:21 Hybrids, synthesis, mash-ups, grafting, genetic modification, fusion, collage, chimeras-- they are all words to describe the same function: bring one or two (or more) seemingly disparate elements together to create something new. It's a great (lazy?) way to come up with something unpredictable.
On my releases I've been doing gen mods mostly with the music (hear, at this earlier mog post, the song Dirty Liar" which mixes hip hop, blues, and banjos, or on this very early post Da Riddim Griffin , which mixes Japanese cheerleaders, disco, 1920s cabaret, electro, and squaredance,) but in the case of the track "ShanghaiMasai
" it was more about doing it lyrically, an experiment in throwing together words that rhyme but have different cultural or temporal references, and seeing what kind of i
Ayahuasca... and Yedayed 2007-07-25 11:34:18 Ayahuasca is a psychotropic drug used in South America by shamans in religious ceremonies to induce transpersonal experiences.
Some of the experiences sound wonderful (plants speaking directly to you, instant healing), some perhaps a little frightening (vomiting black snakes, and um, bug people)... but all are ultimately transformative. (Listen to this News For the Soul archived radio show on the topic; it's about a third of the page down, dated Feb. 15th, HERE )
In a recent book "Power and Somethingsomething" by Somebody Somebody (sorry I can't remember) the author asks a shaman about the ayahuasca process, and in particular why he seems to speak and sing strange words during the experience. He answers that he uses metaphors and oblique words-- for instance instead of using
O.B.E... and Chimera Hey Ya (Part Two) 2007-07-09 09:36:44 Those multicolored raindrops actually hit my skin ; that voice from the disembodied head resonated in my ears; the lace-light arcing tunnels blurred as I moved through them at great speed; and that heavy sensation of gravity (pulling me down in darkness into transition with the others) was as real as what you feel when your airplane suddenly drops due to turbulence. The descriptions in Part One of this post just can't convey how real the experiences in those dreams were.
I had a little epiphany in a giant bookstore. So I'm in Chapters a few years ago, and I pick up a slim volume about yogic practices. It explains the history and the how-to process of out-of-body-experiences (o.b.e). As I'm scanning it-- wishing there was a Mystical Experiences for Dummies quick guide-- I come across the Read more:Chimera
, Part Two
O.B.E.... and Rainbowbeau (Part I) 2007-07-02 09:29:09 I used to wet the bed. My pea-sized bladder was so full I'd awaken and quickly throw off the covers and clamber quickly out of bed. I'd feel the thick threads of the rug on my bare feet, and the little shock of static as I opened my bedroom door. In the moonlight, I'd pull up the porcelain toilet seat (cool on my fingers), and pee, the stream hitting the water loudly in the dead-silent house, parents and brother asleep in rooms down the hall. Finished, I'd start to fall asleep as I shuffled back to my room, but manage to get in bed and pull over my covers-- hearing little pops of static from the blanket-- before blackness.
And immediately awaken to wet sheets. It was always a mystery to me, because I knew I'd just gotten up to use the bathroom.
Sleep is a strange thing. I used to be
Dog Technology... and Shinjuku Zulu 2007-06-25 12:23:42 When European explorers encountered the Inuit, apparently northern Canada's indigenous peoples were fascinated not so much by the explorer's/exploiter's guns, but by their dog technology. The Europeans had trained their animals to perform all sorts of functions and understand commands like point, fetch, and so on, in ways that the Inuit hadn't considered, or considered possible. (Dogs can do....that? )
When the idigenous peoples of Central or South America encountered the first ship from Spain , they had a hard time seeing it, because apparently massive, wind-powered ocean-crossing ships were so far outside the realm of their experience didn't have the ability, or the neural-connections, to comprehend them. (According, anyway, to the writer who proposed this idea, whose name escapes me Read more:Technology
Badminton... and We Do Supersonic 2007-06-18 10:57:53 Faster is officially the new fast, (despite my earlier shout-out for slow ). How do I know this? Because now even badminton is an extreme speed sport.
I was recently contacted with a request to license We Do Supersonic for the inaugural Speedminton tournament in New Orleans. (They approached me because they'd heard of the use of that same song in a Fast Yoga competition.)
Speedminton, for those who don't know, is badminton on four-times-fast-forward. Here's how they breaknecked the game: the birdie is rubberized and it no longer has the same velocity-losing drag shape; there's no net in the game; the racquets are shaped differently; and instead of gatorade you gulp ice espresso.
But don't bother with Speedminton because it's already evolved; now there's Blackminton, whic
Stopping... and Sleep 2007-06-09 11:31:44 "Did you hear about those people who got killed at the bus stop?" someone at the table next to me had just asked me. The man was pointing with a tobaco-stained finger to the newspaper on his table. The lead story was about how a bus had gone out of control in the snow and had run over a father and his son.
"You know, I hit a deer once." He slowly lifted his cup and took a sip of his Dunkin Donuts coffee, and continued. "With my truck, on the highway. It was raining, nightime, all of a sudden there it was in front of me, couldn't stop." He set down his cup and clapped his papery hands together hard as he could, imitating the smacking sound of the accident. "It didn't even bleed, like you'd a thought." He reached in his pocket, took out a wrinkled pack of smokes, laid it on the table. Read more:Sleep
Collapsing time... and Hummingbird 2007-06-01 10:11:10 I was in an old building with large windows, right next to Naka-Meguro train station. It was a typical Toyko summer, super humid, and the windows were open to try and create a breeze (there was no air-con).
A bird flew in and settled on a desk before looking around. When it noticed its salaryman surroundings (shady, but sllim-food-pickings), it decided to leave. It immediately crashed into a closed window, then looped out and tried again, and then again, smacking into more and more invisible walls. As it grew crazier in its flight it drew more attention, and people were trying to open all the windows they could. They were also getting brooms and shaking newspapers and waving their arms to try and direct the little bird out. Nothing worked.
Eventually, after an especially loud thum Read more:Hummingbird
Eyeah!... and Allelujah 2007-05-26 09:03:28 For me, chants in music are the equivalent of abstract art; you rorschach yourself into a meaning and vibe. The vocal provides the human link, but the lack of lyrics allows you to bring your own experience or state of mind to the work (think audible ink blot.) The same track could resonate as being haunting/relaxing, sad/uplifting, or ancient/futuristic, etc., depending upon your mood, the time of day you listen to it, how much caffeine (or other substances) you have ingested, your location, whatever.
Of course I'm a big fan of words, and appreciate great lyricists like Sufjan Stevens-- Casimir Pulaski Day is such a great song-- and of course the obvious writers like Dylan, Cohen, and so on, but with a song with lyrics you're somewhat stuck in one emotion or human experience-- a met
Speed Tribes... and Slow Is the New Fast 2007-05-19 07:38:59 In Japan, there is a certain subculture who sci-fi their motorbikes and they ride them very loud and very, very fast. They are called the Bosozoku, which roughly translates into The Speed
Tribes.
But we in the west are the true speed tribes. In our tricked-out gogo gadget lives, not only is faster better, faster is the only option. Too much is not enough, and even faster is still too slow. (Ever felt impatient waiting less than half-a-second for a web page to load? You know what I mean.)
The other day I watched an elderly woman with a cane walk down a short hallway. It was like watching a special-effect sequence in a movie; everyone around her was a blur of movement, too fast to capture-focus; she stood out because she was so slow. It took her a few minutes to walk maybe 20 feet.
Repainting Mona Lisa... and Scarborough Fair (A True Dub of Mine) 2007-05-12 08:53:43 I wouldn't want to re-paint the Mona Lisa, or say something more interesting like Nude Descending A Staircase . They are fine as they are, and are perceived as even "finer" the longer history frames them. Why fuck with that?
But actually, it's not even that-- it's more: why recreate when you can generate? I make music from the perspective of a visual artist-- and the thought of painting another person's work is just, well, strange. To try to paint a copy would only end up showing the new version's flaws ("he didn't get the smile right"), and interpreting would only descend into parody, like painting "The Homer Lisa", or even worse, something I call philisophimilophical (faux thoughtful,) like painting Kate Moss smiling as she faints from hunger, calling it "The Bony Lisa", and explain
Fourth Dimensional Shadows... and Rise Up 2007-05-05 08:30:19 I recently read somewhere that singing might have predated talking in the evolution of human vocal communication. My first thought was not that humans eventually developed a more sophisticated means to interact like talking, but that we de-volved into a clunkier (but quicker) means of getting ideas across. (But perhaps that's a good thing; if I think of, say, George Bush singing a speech, it would probably sound like a combination of the cheesiest country-music-yodel mixed with a grandiose German opera ulullaton, a bit of male-cheerleader rah-rah-rahs, a Christian dirge, with more-than-a-smidge of Sanjaya (that kid with the hair from American Idol) pop cheese. So at least George talks his speeches. (Well, attempts to, anyway.)
Another metaphor for the singing-to-talking devolution is Read more:Shadows
Synchronicity...and Tombouctou, Adieu! 2007-04-30 11:28:09 So "Various Chimeras" (by Shinjuku Zulu) was finished; it had taken nearly three years to complete. Mixing and mastering was all done, and it was about to go to the CD manufacturing stage... when I came across some wax cylinders.
I don't sample-- I like to write songs that sound as if they've been sampled, and I'm particularily interested (at the moment) in mixing differing eras. I like the idea that in a sample-style song you are experiencing two or more different times simultaneously. (Kinda like a cubist painting, where you are looking at the front at the same time as you are looking at the profile of the subject.) I also like that in songs with samples you (aurally) inhabit different phyiscal spaces at the same time in the song, each with their own fingerprint sonics-- say the p
La la la, Woo-hoo, Hey heys... and Make Me Shake 2007-04-20 17:41:14 And sometimes, sometimes, you just want to write a La La La song -- with absolutely nothing to do with mathematics, fine art, dna, haikus or brain entrainment (see previous posts at left,) just... sex.
For the track Make Me Shake
from the Various Chimeras CD by Shinjuku Zulu, I wanted to write a song using only La La's in the chorus, Do Re Mi's in the verses, and as few as other words as possible. (But it still had to make lyrical sense.) As in "'Do re' me, on the floor/ La ti 'oh' me, at the door/get it up, go go low/ here comes an x-rated show/make me shiver, make me shake/ 'Do Re' me till I sing:/ La La, La La La, La La...."
I don't know if it's the Nelly Furtado Phenomena or the Fergie Effect, (as the song itself says, "Badness is good stuff") but the Make Me Shake track is cur
Remixable Art... and Rashomon (Part II) 2007-04-15 21:39:04 I began making visual art long before I started making music. I'd been working on collages for awhile, but various ideas hadn't crystalized until I had a chance encounter in Tokyo with Keith Haring. He was there for the opening of the Pop Shop. I really liked his work, which I'd first seen on the cover of Malcolm McLaren's Duck Rock . I loved graffiti art-- words as picture, the public/anonymous aspect of it, the tribal references, and of course the whole hip hop/breakdance scene with which it was associated, all appealed to me-- and I understood that Harring's success was due to the fact that his work was so instantly recognizable. As my medium was information (collage,) there was no 'gestalt' recognition of my style (as you had to read all the individual elements to 'get' the piece,) and
Remixable Art...and Downquark (Part I) 2007-04-08 10:51:36 Pointillism is the late 1800s compositional technique of using tiny dots ("points") of paint, rather than blending, to create colors in a work of art. From a distance, you see the colors of the paintings as solids-- the colors "blend" in your eye-- but as you get much closer you see the individual component dots. (TV uses this method as well.) It developed from the Impressionist style of using unblended brush strokes of color placed side-by-side. One of the most famous Pointillist paintings is Georges Seurat's Sunday Afternoon on the Island of La Grande Jatte
My own visual art is like Pointillism in the sense that my paintings are composed/constructed from multiple individual units whose aggregate froms a larger image. Works often use 50 to 100 panels (each panel being 12" x 18",) with
Frequency Following Response... and Uneunoia 2007-03-31 13:03:19 Frequency FollowingResponse
(FFR) or brain entrainment is a phenomena where the brain locks on to an external signal and begins to mirror it, or follow it, which produces a change in the brain's chemistry, which translates into altered behavior. ( Jose Delgado was studying this in the 60s, at Yale, where he found that a modulated radio frequency could alter mood.)
The dark side of this phenomena is where a device like HAARP and its pulsed radio frequency energy could be used, among more nefarious things, to stroke the ionosphere and broadcast frequencies onto a crowd to induce fear, a flight response, lethargy, even anger or other less coherent states. (Want that anti-war mob to disperse from in front of the White House? Dial it up.) Check out this video , at the 0:55 and 1hr 21 m Read more:Frequency
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