LOST Premiere Party

I have decided to merge another one of my photo-blogs with sexyDEATHparty. For the season 6 premiere of the tv show LOST, my friends and I threw a LOST themed party to celebrate. This is the result...

Dharma food and fish biscuits! Om nom nom!

Our version of the New Dharma Recruits photo... the banneractually does say "NAMASTE NEW RECRUITS"!

VIEW MORE PHOTOS BEYOND THE CUT!

Japanese Feature // Shiina Ringo

Frontlady of 東京事変 Tokyo Jihen and sometimes solo artist, Shiina Ringo has made music that can only be described as avant garde. The J-pop star has challenged genres of music, by way of infusing her music with obscenely distracted melodies that ranged from distorto-rock to off-putting hybrids of ska and lounge jazz, starring Ringo’s ever-present pitchy, rolling vocals (1).

Ringo's work with Tokyo Jihen differs from her solo albums which have more melodic tones and less distracted melodies. In other words, not so much jazz. Less... mixture. [Less] cerebral musicality of Jazz mixed with the visceral groove of funk. - Howard Moon, (see what I did there? Sneaked in a Mighty Boosh reference.) Her album Utaite Myori is my favorite with a compilation of various covers such as The Beatles and Frank Sinatra in which she sings in German, French, and English. And she doesn't sound that predominately asian when she sings, unlike many other Japanese singers attempting to sing in other languages.

The video Killer Tune has been one of my long-standing anthems of reclaiming my independence after a certain bad breakup of a bad relationship. The words don't matter as much as the way it made me feel. I guess I found a lot of symbolism in emerging into the open rain then breaking into dance!

 ご覧、ほらねわざと逢えたんだ
季節を使い捨て生きて行こう

What are they working on now? Ringo is taking a hiatus from her solo stuff. They just released Sports in December, and they're releasing a new single this February. More info is all available for viewing on their official site (don't worry, it's available in English also)

1. http://www.stylusmagazine.com/articles/j-pop_will_eat_itself/shiina-ringo.htm

The Linguistics of "Baro Foro"

    Trans-Continental Hustle is the latest album of Gogol Bordello. The album was produced by Rick Rubin, under a different label (American Recordings) and somewhere in that shift of American and world-wide fame they lost some gypsy and gained more punk. This has resulted in the traditional instruments and group vocals that are basically the essence of the band to take a backseat to drums and Eugene Hutz's voice. And I LOVE Eugene Hutz's voice, but their sound as a band does seem somewhat altered. Do others think it delivers the same gypsy-punk kick as their previous album?

     HOWEVER, their new video Immigraniada is great, much better than the new Lela Pala Tute video (and I'm hating on it because I can't stand claymation, ALSO that it can't ever compare to Eugene Hutz's acoustic version of it; I'm anticipating the day they announce an acoustic album). It exhibits real experiences of the band members as immigrant workers, and it speaks to the sort of things that immigrants have to deal with when it comes to terrible immigration laws and cultural assimilation.

One of the most interesting things about Gogol Bordello is that they sometimes sing in Rromanes, a gypsy language (or rather, dialect, as gypsies are far spread throughout the world). While I also love their incorporation of Ukrainian lyrics, Rromanes has caught the attention of linguists and people studying linguistics. Portland State University has actually dedicated a class project to the analysis of the song "Baro Foro."

This link goes to a pdf file of such a study from the Portland State University, and also provides some links for a Rromanes online dictionary and grammar. It goes line by line and dissects the song into a rough English translation.

Cool right?! Maybe you need to be a linguistics nerd to really get into it...

Woo Roma Inclusion Act!