Nicely synchronized ferrofluid manipulation and music. A soothing liquid world of gently bedaggered monoliths.

[Link][Previous ferrofluid]

Artist: He
Song: Empty
From album: Further Shore
[Buy CD[2]][Website]

He plays super-tight indierock. He is from Japan. He has tuneful vocals and makes charmingly boisterous and sensitive guitar sounds and clicky crashy drum sounds. He is not boring to listen to. He is worth getting to know. He is fun to take with you on car rides.

Now that you know him, I hope you can enjoy your new life together.

Artist: Ayuo
Song: A Stranger
From album: Aoi
Genre: Gilded Spacyness
[Buy CD|Mp3s][Website]

This song is a giant golden Buddha statue floating above some foggy downtown neighborhood. It starts emitting shiny sound waves, making heads turn all over the city. Makeshift rope-ladders are improvised and flung in tandem. People climb through the air in pursuit of dance. A new landscape is discovered beyond city walls. They climb and sway and swing, in the sun and awe.

I’m not sure where or when I found out about Ayuo, but they are definitely interesting.

Artist: Vola & the Oriental Machine
Song: Principle of Machine
From album: Waiting for My Food
[Buy CD][Website][Song Lyrics]

Oh yeah, that blog thing….

Vola & the Oriental Machine is something of a Japanese indie supergroup, with a formidable lineup including Inazawa Ahito from Number Girl, Aoki Yutaka from downy, and Nakahata Daiki from syrup16g.

When their first demo came out it was completely different from what I expected and I couldn’t really get into it. I seem to have a habit of letting music sit for a while. You might call it marinating, or maybe decanting. Whatever happens in the interim, I often come back wondering what I could have possibly been thinking when I first put it away. Some of my favorite bands I had once put in the cellar to ripen.

Probably it’s only my tastes that ripen as they learn to keep an open mind and actively seek out an understanding and appreciation, rather than waiting around for a sudden bowling-over.

In any case, I like these guys a lot more now, with their second release, than I did when they first appeared. This album definitely has some great moments, and if I like them this much more from one album to the next, I can’t wait until next month.

Artist: Eksperimentoj
Song: Untitled
From album: Eksperimentoj
Genre: Igneous Rock
[Buy this CD (seriously!)][Website][On Myspace][Song Lyrics]

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Rock like this is what I’ve wanted to hear. – Aoki Robin
(downy, Dhal)

I couldn’t agree more. Eksperimentoj is quality music. Probably not since downy, has a band come out of Japan that I have appreciated as much so soon. I definitely recommend you check them out on myspace, and see their video for “note” via Ian’s blog.

The thematic tendons that run along the length of the album make picking it apart and isolating a favorite section very difficult. It’s like a complicated personality, having many surfaces of varying character, all of which hint at a larger, more monolithic something hidden beneath them.

When I first wrote about Eksperimentoj, the song “solaris” reminded me of a midnight storm in an ocean wilderness; but this album as a whole has a distinctly different ambience, and it’s rather hard to pin down. Even the mix of solaris here is not as huge and looming. It’s clearer, and much more personal.

The more I think about it, the more it seems like a person, whose thoughts form as music while he glides through the world. He sees with little color, but in great depth and richness, extracting meaning from every contour. Behind him, the shapes and shadows buckle and stretch, as the path of his thoughts unconsciously reforms the landscape in a spreading wave.

Life is but a dream.

Artist: BOaT
Song: Goodbye my Strange Number 28
From album: Listening Suicidal
Genre: Sedimentary Rock
[Buy CD(2)][Website]

Short on time, long on things to do. I’m drinking green tea straight from the pot, it’s like a giant mug of keep working. So this will be brief.

Here’s BOaT again. A song that piles up in layers like years of experience, and unravels like giving up all your grudges.

What does it sound like to you?

Artist: Uri Gagarn
Song: Resistor
From album: ? ? (no title)
Genre: Minimal Indie Impression Conduit
[Buy CD][Website]

To me this song, and to some extent the video, sounds like it was made underground; like it’s the bubbling internal conflict of a man imprisoned in solitary confinement with only trace elements of hope and a burning regret or uncertainty.

I’ve often wondered what it would be like to be in solitary confinement. We spend so much time scrambling for survival, to learn to work in order to make money to eat in order to stay alive in order to go to work again. In all this seemingly meaningful (pre)occupation we don’t have much time to think and ponder meaningfully. Our thinking comes in short bursts like automatic weapons, rarely in long trains of thought slowly meandering through the hills. I am tempted to think that it wouldn’t be so bad to have everyday to meditate on ideas, to think things through completely from every angle, in a sense to really know what I think.

Of course, for most people that end up in solitary confinement involuntarily there will be an element of internal conflict that could turn the time into torture. With no external input, no external answers, one can only look to oneself to find or create a meaning for things.

This song sounds like that to me: a struggle of the mind longing to find within itself an answer for things outside of it, and a reason for its place among them.

Artist: Number Girl
Song: Zegen Vs Undercover
From album: Sappukei
Genre: Id-Rock
[Buy this Album][Website][Keikaku Profile]

Number Girl is an absolute indie force.

It’s simultaneously tragic and liberating that some of the most profound experiences in life either require, or engender, a paradigm shift. They aren’t accessible to everyone, just those accidentally on the cusp. It’s my opinion that Number Girl, like Downy, and much underground music, has a similar, if not parallel requirement. To fully appreciate this [very great] album/band, you may need to acquire or bring with you a disillusionment with the pretenses of human conduct, and a willingness to burrow down into hotter, darker, and more membranous strata.

Good times.