Today is Aurore of Mean Creek's Birthday. Dedicating to her. Revising this of one of my confidential previous works for music web site called INDIE NATIVE.com in Japan! Again, Happy Birthday, Aurore! Super excited to Mean Creek's next record coming out!!
and also their smash hit seven inch "The Comedian" 7" single is also for FREE Downloading now. (But the physical is supposed to be sold out in the US, I think. Check it out on googling for the distribution! *I write about it in Japan down in Japanese below!)
★Mean Creek / "The Comedian" 7"
I think I should review their shows more, I have couple of their brand new songs that I ipod recorded them such as they played with YUCK at TT and this below flyer's show. (This flyer is one of my best favorite flyer in this year! And I have kinda influenced by this to just rough sketch my MELTRICK ...something for my @MELTRICK twitter account pix.) Well, whatever I will do it soon!
MELTRICK on twitter! (Did I tell you I made the new account of MELTRICK before? haha.)
I think, She's a friend of Mean Creek and mine too. lol And one of my respectable friends in Japan JOE interviewed Colleen Green, is on his blog (in Japanese, but so I will post the English version soon)!!
I feel this song is exactly sad song, even crying. (Maybe not only this song from Gem Club.) Maybe that's because I did this job. But we may not have to look away from the sadness or might be more "can't" do it if we were experiencing or facing the sad moments. This is a part of our life. I may be not good at following new music anymore that before or whose else (which is not good to be a music writer professionally though). Besides the realization that I have, I'm going to trust myself to have new musics by my own way. This Gem Club is absolutely one of it, that I've been really into before I could see the live music and talk to them in person, from online world.
I met Gem Club in person at PA's lounge where we're living each. And talked to the band plus their visionary-jay (VJ).
★Gem Club - live at PA'sLounge
They're supper sweet. One of my music lover friends explains them like "His voice comes up from a deep forest and..."
TBC. (Live Report part)
*Finally I could start to rewrite this post but it's been already more than 2 years, even I still remember how beautiful their show at PA's was....
interviewed by @HILMONSTAH Japanese Translation by @Kennyy_MELTRICK
Poetry “In Wavelengths”:We’re in wavelengths for an evening. / I’m breaking up slowly. / See my face under electric lights / and hold me there in silver thread. / Lately I’ve been leaving. / No one has what they wanted.
They’re all over Pitchfork. They’re debuting videos on SPIN. They’re in the midst of finalizing a European tour, and they just completed their first festival run at the CMJ Music Marathon. It’s been awhile since a Boston band has hit buzz status with such a warm welcome as Gem Club, but for Christopher Barnes, Kristen Drymala and Ieva Berberian, it doesn’t mean the attention—or the music—necessarily came that easy. Just ask Christopher Barnes—
Barnes:It was amaaaazing. We had a really good time. We did some sort of off the cuff performances. We did one at this loft space in Brooklyn with some musical and visual pairings. I sort of wish we had had time to go and enjoy the festival because there was a lot of things I wanted to see there but I didn’t end up getting around to it.
So, your first festival’s behind you. What are you up to over the next couple of months? 今回、クリストファーにとっても初のフェスティヴァル経験だったわけね。それを踏まえて、今後の予定はどうなっているの？
Barnes: We’re in talks right now to go to Europe at the end of November. We have half of the tour dates settled but we don’t have anything set in stone that that’s going to be happening. We have all our fingers crossed. That’s the plan.
Has anything changed between you guys between this record and the last one? 今作（２０１１年９月に名門レーベルHardly Artリリースの「Breakers」）と、前作（２０１０年６月セルフリリースの「Acid and Everything」）との作品とで、メンバー間に何か変化はありましたか？
B: Ieva’s certainly a welcome addition. I feel like she’s an integral part of a lot of pieces on the record, and I feel like I can’t do those pieces without her performing them. In terms of collaboration, I’m looking forward to working with her more on upcoming releases. She’s a very creative person and I feel like she adds a very interesting dynamic creatively to songwriting.
Are there any songs that stand out on Breakers that were difficult to get through? Were pieces of the record more challenging than others? （「ブレーカーズ」の中の楽曲からの傑出で特に生み出すのが難しかった曲はありましたか？チャレンジングだった部分など。）
B: We sort of booked the whole thing backwards—I was like, “Okay, I’m going to book a studio session in February but I’m not quite sure what I’m going to bring into that.” “In Wavelengths” never would have made it on the record because that was the song I wrote the night before I had to go into the studio …
<a href="http://gemclub.bandcamp.com/track/in-wavelengths">In Wavelengths by Gem Club</a>
"It was something that never would’ve happened had I planned for it."
（「この作品は僕が意図して創作したものなんかじゃない。」）
B: It happened out of being a total wreck, like, “I don’t have anything to bring to the fucking studio tomorrow! I better write something at home.” In terms of songs that were difficult to write,
<a href="http://gemclub.bandcamp.com/track/252">252 by Gem Club</a>
I wrote that about my sister who’s diagnosed with cancer. That was hard for me.
What about playing live? If these songs were difficult to write, does that inform their performance? ライヴでプレイすることに関してはどうですか？ もしこれらの書くに難航した楽曲というのはライヴでパフォーマンスするのにも影響がありますか？
B: Yeah definitely. I don’t want to sit here and tell people what the songs are about, you know? It’s nice if people can glean their own meaning from the pieces. In a live situation, if I can go to the source and if we can get there together, I feel like I’ve done my job. I think a lot of times that’s difficult for us because we’re sort of thrown into these situations where there’s a lot of background noise and a lot of people out on a Friday night.
"As long as there’s one or two people listening, I feel successful."
（１人でも２人でも、聞いてくれる人がいれば、それで僕は成功したって感じるよ。）
Has anyone surprised you with their interpretation of or reaction to your music? Gem Clubの音楽を聞いた人のリアクションや解釈で驚かされた事ってありますか？
B: Definitely. I’m excited that people can take these songs their own way. People have certainly been off from where I’ve been, but it’s not insulting or stupid, you know?
Edited on [(Sat) Nov/12th/2011] Thru [(Mon) Nov/14th/2011] [(Wed) Dec/14th/2011] [Sun, Dec 29th, 2013]
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【本日の/Today's BGM 】
At this time for my regular BGM selection section on my blogs, would like to introduce just really newcomers in popular indie world in Japan. ちょっと日本のヤングなバンドマン達を？笑
トップのコメント、「イントロ透明少女」って！それゆったら！（たぶん、あかん！笑）
★caroline rocks / "白昼夢" (Promotion(Music)Video) (Title means "daydreams" in Japanese)
Whiteつながり。先月、the Naked and FamousとThe Chain Gang of 1974 のカップリングツアーのオープナーに抜擢されてて出会ったこちらUSの若手バンド。メンバーむっちゃええ人たちで、5人組のひとりの最年少は最近高校卒業したばかりの１８歳とか、ゆーてました！驚き！
★White Arrows / "Coming or Going" live at the Troublebar
同郷の盟友Radical Faceプロデュースのアルバム『You and Yer Good Ideas』で2003年にデビュー。インディーロックをルーツにしたヒップホップで数々のMCバトルやライヴによってアメリカ中でファンベースを拡大してきた米ミネアポリス在住のヒップホップ・アーティストAstronautalisことAndy Bothwell。3年ぶりとなる4thアルバムをCeschiのFake Four Inc.よりリリース。これまでの作品が歴史的なフィクションや過去や忘れ去ったことのドキュメントだったのに対して、本作は彼自身の自叙伝的作品となっています。グラミー賞ノミネートのプロデューサーJohn Congleton、Tegan & SaraのTegan Quinn、Radical Face (Electric President)、Midlake & The Riverboat Gamblersのメンバー、P.O.S. (Rhymesayers)やAliasまでが参加。アメリカで最高のストーリーテラーと称されるスキルは、ヒップホップでありロックでもあって、かつヒップホップでもロックでもない、この新たなポップ・ブルースでついにネクストレヴェルに到達しました。傑作。
若かりし頃はバトルMCとしても名を馳せ、音楽的バックボーンはロック・カテゴリーにルーツを持つ、シアトルのラッパー/シンガー・Astronautalisの3年ぶりとなる新作!参加アーティストは、グラミーにもノミネートされたプロデューサー・John Congletonの他、Tegan Quinn (Tegan & Sara)、Radical Face (Electric President), Midlake & The Riverboat Gamblers、P.O.S. (Rhymesayers)、Alias (Anticon/Sage Francis)、Cecil Otter (Wugazi)、Lazerbeak (Doomtree)ら、インディ・ヒップホップ界のファイネスト達が集結。叙情的なライミング・センスには定評のある彼だが、本作ではそのスキルと独特のキャラクターに磨きがかかり、ジャンルの枠を更に超越し幅広い支持を集めるであろう好アルバムに仕上がっている。
Album Details
The sounds and styles on Astronautalis's albums are an animal not so easily caged, and his latest release, This Is Our Science is no exception to that tradition of wild genre bending. Features Tegan Quinn (Tegan & Sara), Radical Face, (Electric President), members of Midlake & The Riverboat Gamblers all waltzing in time to the work of P.O.S. (Rhymesayers), Alias (Anticon/Sage Francis), Cecil Otter (Wugazi), Lazerbeak (Doomtree), and more of indie hip-hop's finest.
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では、本編、
今年２月配信開始の彼のデイトラッターの翻訳です！
Astronautalis
Debut Daytrotter session released February 22nd, 2011
As part of this session, Astronautalis' (or Charles Andrew Bothwell's) "Welcome To Daytrotter" tag features the voice of what sounds like a beleaguered man when he wishes us all the best, as he says, "I hope you are all well-fed, wealthy and wise." After hearing "Freestyle" and his prelude to it, telling us that he's been on the road for two solid years, we take Astronautalis as a man who's had enough of himself and of weariness for a great long while, and if he could, he'd try to get away from himself for a good, long break. It wouldn't be forever, but without a doubt, he's had enough for a while, been tapped out for some time now - and though it might actually be fueling a new deposit of sunken spirits, turned creative prose, it's not actually healthy at all. He hopes that we're all well-fed, wealthy and wise, but he hasn't taken any pains to wish the same things for himself and he's kind of a wreck. "Freestyle" is a dense song, filled with copious references to everyday things, feelings as they've been built up and have put the body and mind in question to the test. He sings about a life that has been made into an out-of-control parade of the zombie, of a man going round in circles - doing the same things, eating the same things, experiencing the same things, hating and loving the same things - or more, of a man twisting himself into the ground, like a screw. It's a scene that makes you feel as if you're suffocating, getting buried alive, even as you're drinking that good whiskey, even as you're doing what most regular people would consider the highest form of living: traveling, meeting people and playing music. The question that arises though is, at what cost does one allow themselves to be driven crazy? It all just blurs and Bothwell raps that he vaguely remembers what his sheets smell like, thinking that they smell like his father's used to smell like when he was the age that the son is about to be reaching soon. He thrives on the sweaty ideas that come in passing and in a simplicity that comes with moving along from one day to the other without many strings attaching him to any one stop. It can be liberating and horrifying, all at once. He sings, "I traveled around the country, living off of dumb buddies and good looks/High fives and handshakes is all you need to get by/Drink tickets and cheap beer is all I need to survive." He sings all in a sort of monotone but with a flare that makes him seem as if he would still bleed if he were sliced. He's not a corpse yet, even if he feels like one.
女の子に大人気なPhillyの若きインディーロック長髪野郎、Kurt Vile（カート・ヴァイル）がギタリストとして以前参加していたバンドとしても知られる、War on Drugsのデイトラッターセカンドセッションがリリースされました。
実は８月にライブを観ていてその後に昨年２０１０年のThe War on DrugsのDaytrotterセッションを発見したので翻訳していたんですが、未完なままで。ライヴ後、アダムともほんの少しだけ喋る機会があり、ライブはもちろん彼の雰囲気や物販で彼のご両親がついて回っていた感じなど、とても好印象でしたのでそのデビューの方のセッションを直後に取りかかる決意しておりました。
通り過ぎていく州が僕らに語りかける。僕らの旅の途中に骨の髄から血のまでを突抜けては、まるで肌心地ちの様に包み込んでくれる。そんな時、僕らはまっすぐ前を向く事すらに緊張したりする。まるで車を崖っぷちまで停めて覗いてるとか、突然の衝撃によってハンドルを右に持っていかれ、何かに正面衝突しコンクリートヴリッジの堤防に突っ込むような感じを抱き、終いには巨大な日の中、といったエンディングを向かえるのではないか、というような感覚を抱いている。時として、我々は悩み苦しみ、その苦しみから解放されることを望んでいたりする。それは喫煙スペースから抜け出して解放された場所で煙草を箱から抜いて一服する瞬間のそれと同じである。 それはちょっと眠れない罪悪感を感じながら田舎のバーへと一杯のナイトキャップ（寝酒）を求めに思い足取りで向かおうとするときのそれと同じである。ただ、このどれにも僕らがフィラデルフィア（Philadelphia）のバンド、ザ・ウォー・オン・ドラッグス（The War On Drugs「麻薬戦争」の意）のレコードに聞き入るときに思うことは当てはまりやしない。
The passing states work on us. They get to us and the travel through our bones and our blood, wrapping us up like skin. At times, we get too stressed out to even see straight. We feel as if we might just take the car over the cliff or a sudden impulse could just lead us to jerking the wheel to the right, ramming the thing head-on, directly into the concrete bridge embankment, ending it all in one gigantic fire ball. These are the times that make us suffer and rely on our releases. It's what brings us to thumping our packs of cigarettes to get the tobacco in the right place. It's what leads us to guiltily trudging down to the local bar for a lengthy nightcap. None of this is what we think about doing when we listen to the records made by Philadelphia band, The War On Drugs. As a matter of fact, we think very opposite things. As people, we often wonder what the appeal is for dogs thrusting their heads out of cars, as they motor down the road, whipping their head and neck fur back as the quick and cool air blinds them. We get closer to the answer as we listen to lead singer Adam Granduciel and band's latest masterpiece, "Slave Ambient." It's a salve to any high blood pressure times, to anything that might borderline on stress. It's a record that has us throwing our own heads out of the windows of moving cars and we can understand why it's done by our tail-wagging best friends. It makes our cheeks tickle and it lets us get smothered by the rushing fields and the bleeding colors, just swimming in the maelstrom of sensations and wonders that can get no closer to us than arm's length unless we decide to stop and walk around, which we don't do because then we'd never get to where we're heading. We can think about such a thing philosophically, accepting the conflicting ideas of arrival where we intend to go and the journey through the good stuff as it disappears forever, mostly lost to the scenic goodbye. Granduciel writes the way we feel when we're one sheet to the wind, in the middle of the afternoon. We're not drunk, but we feel good. We feel like we're settling in for a little bout of introspection that's going to do us a bit of good. We feel nostalgic for the things that just happened, things that we can't take back, things we'd love to live again - already -- and things that we know should be left behind, the artifacts of our fingerprints and our personal smudges. His songs are like the light kisses of fleeting thoughts and dreams we once had lying around doing nothing for the longest time, or doing nothing forever. The dreams sound half-cooked, those of a real dreamer's heart and yet the songs come across as a montage of a brilliant life filled with little that a biographer would ever find of importance, but that was the man and what he was and it was good.
Hi there, it's been a little while I think, I feel? I got moved recently and waited for being connected to the internet a while as well. It's school back season, new things coming up. But and And, I may be also getting re-chances by chance, so that at this point, for me, this is sort of important thing to translate even this February released session of Daytrotter by Blue Hawaii from Montreal, Canada. The female singer is also singing in her another band Braids. Both are too much beautiful. But I suppose I have known them Blue Hawaii first, some time in last year? According to the order. (Well, to get music, it might be "It doesn't matter" though.)
Blue Hawaii debut Daytrotter session released Feb 3, 2011
Words by Sean Moeller
Illustration by Johnnie Cluney
Recording engineered by Brad Kopplin
Recorded at Break Glass Studio in Montreal, Canada during the month of October, 2010 during the Pop Montreal festival Japanese translation by @Kennyy_MELTRICK
Tracklist:
Welcome to Daytrotter from Blue Hawaii
"Casstle of Clouds"
"Cect"
"Katie"
"Lilac"
*1). M-2"Castle of Clouds," M-4"Katie" and M-5"Lilac" from their first album "Blooming Summer"(2010) and M-"Cect" from sold out Casset Tape "Blue Hawaii / Braids Split"
＊1).M-4の"Cect"はソールドアウトのBraidsとのスプリットカセットから、それ以外の３曲はデビューアルバム「Blooming Summer」にオリジナル収録です。
*2). You can Download the entire album for FREE or Donation from their record LBL Arbutus Records here and also you can purchase the cd(? currently, used to be CT I believe... and I'm still looking for the tape though. lol)
＊2).カナダのArbutus Recordsから音源はドネイト式もしくはFREEでダウンロード出来ます。
ストラドレル-プリストンが「キャッスル・オブ・クラウズ」("Castle of Clouds")という楽曲内 で「雲で出来たお城に住む誰かを見つける〜」と歌っていれば、「セクト」("Cect")（僕らデイトラッターとしてはもっとそんな雲が分厚くその存在を知らしめている楽曲なのではないかとなだめかして導いてる）では、主人公たちが何処か決っして辿り着けやしない場所へと切望している様が描かれている気がする。それはスウィートでナチュラルで、僕らは基本的にはいつだって自然体で、それでいて固い強さを誇るような場所にとどまっているようでもあるし、この切望感にはそぐわなず決して辿り着けはしない場所でもある気がする。そんな空白だけど最高な状況下の中でマッサージさせられていて、盲目的になりそんな途方もなく揺るぎもなく、ゆがんだ地平線の反対側に位置するビジョンを観ている。僕らは邪魔されたり苛立っているわけではなく、むしろわくわくしていて、巡ってくる事はないチャンスのスターライトに恋いこがれている感覚だ。ストラドレル-プリストンの噴射される声はクッションのようにふんわりしてて、あわあわもしてて、天高く昇っていくようである。彼女はただそんなアングルへと火を灯し放とうとしていたり、彼女自身の体の一部を辿り着けない場所へと向けてカタパルトで放っているのである。
The chance only comes a few times a year when I can get out to one of the greater cities in America - San Francisco. Usually, it's only a few days and it's always a working trip, so time is limited, but when you're there, you gasp often. You get down to the wharf in the mornings or early evenings and you're in awe. You get out on foot, running through the wooded areas along the coast, and up through the dirt paths that pop you out into the neighborhood of some of the Zodiac killer's ghastly acts, out and up through the Presidio area and you're quickly in love, if horribly out of breath and feeling the nasty pangs of lactic acid buildup in your legs. You could go on and on, really, citing bits and pieces of the cityscape that can't be found elsewhere. It's a city that you keep coming back to, physically and mentally - the drizzle, the fogginess, the thought of what it must have been like to attempt to escape from Alcatraz island, the water and the general feeling that you can't go any further west, that it does feel like the last resort. While Alex Cowan and Raphaelle Strandell-Preston of Blue Hawaii, call a city like Montreal, Canada - which strangely shares some characteristics with the Bay Area - home, there's something about the slightly warmer, at the very least, Californian vibe of San Francisco that makes it easy to feel as if they are misplaced. It might be better to consider them misplaced, however, as the longing that exists in the duo's hazy electro gives us the strongest pull and if we imagine that we're listening, but wishing to be somewhere very different, it feels very appropriate. Strandell-Preston sings about "finding someone in a castle of clouds," on the song "Castle of Clouds," but what it seems like we can hear in that song and in "Cect" (a song that we somehow coaxed more of the clouds out of, even though they were thick and present on their own) is someone wishing for the elsewhere, wishing for some place that they cannot reach. It feels sweet and natural, as if we're all stuck between a rock and a hard place most of the time, never able to be where we really want to be. We are left massaging that void the best that we can, looking off and into the static of distance, seeing a distorted vision of what lies on the other side of the horizon. We aren't bothered by this, but intrigued by it, wishing by starlight for a change that might never be made. Strandell-Preston's outbursts even feel cushioned, foamy, as her voice soars to different heights. She's just trying to angle the shots fired, trying to catapult some part of herself to that place she can't be.
