enyx

I actually felt like the 2nd track '地図にない街' was a bit of a stylistic regression as well...or rather, I felt like it was more of a refinement of some of the earlier styles they've played.

To be honest, I agree with you. Although I found the title track to be the most notable case of this, I do feel that the single as a whole is a bit more of a refinement of previous sounds than say, reflection was. ブラインド is the most 'fresh' sounding song on the single in this regard, but even that doesn't sound as different to their previous works as mirror did when it kicked off the previous single. But like I tried to get across in the review, that really doesn't stop this single from being a great entry in their discography. 

This video is so spot-on that I had to post it here.

ハイスイノナサ - 変身

01. 変身

02. 地図にない街

03. ブラインド

The Japanese indie scene is a treasure trove of interesting, quality music; particularly in the genres of math and post-rock. Of all of the quality bands to have surfaced within these scenes in the last ten years, perhaps none are as entrancing to me as ハイスイノナサ. Their utterly brilliant soundscape is comprised of guitar, bass, piano, synth, drums, soft female vocals, and occasional electronic aspects. These elements combined with phenomenal compositional ability, atypical song structures and odd time signatures all come together to form a sound like nothing else out there. It’s hard to adequately describe ハイスイノナサ to somebody that hasn’t heard them before, but if you’re into technical, rhythmical brilliance and also happen to have a love for ostinatos, then this band has you covered. For all of their merits, however, one aspect of this band does leave something to be desired: the rate at which they release new music. Their last single, reflection, came out in the middle of 2013, and since then only one new song has managed to creep out of the woodwork as a part of last year’s Zankyo record Compilation vol.4. It should come as no surprise, therefore, that 変身 was one of my most anticipated releases of the year so far, but how did it stack up?

The single kicks off with the title track. Initially I was somewhat underwhelmed by this song. It bears all the hallmarks of a typical ハイスイノナサ track; complex rhythms, a constantly repeating phrase that persists throughout the majority of the song, and increasing instrumental layering as the song progresses. Where 変身 disappointed me, however, was not in its compositional qualities but in its apparent stylistic regression. ハイスイノナサ have always had a habit for changing their formula in subtle but effective ways over the years, but 変身 doesn’t feel all that different from what has come before. Despite that initial disappointment, however, I’ve slowly warmed up to the song over the last month, and I have to admit that, due to its iterative nature, it’s actually quite a good track to introduce somebody to the band with. It may not be the most experimental or unique song in their discography, but it has all of the core elements of a quality ハイスイノナサ song.

We then move on to 地図にない街, which so far is my favourite track from the single and probably one of my favourite songs by the band as a whole. Whereas the title track opted to utilise Ai Kamano’s vocals as more of an additional texture than as a method of lyrical delivery, 地図にない街 brings her to the forefront. Kamano has always been one of my favourite vocalists despite her somewhat limited range as her understated delivery is often an effective contrast to the rhythmical chaos that tends to lie beneath it. 地図にない街 is an interesting case in the sense that the song gives off a very chilled, relaxed vibe despite clearly still possessing a considerable degree of instrumental complexity (which is particularly noticeable between 1:47 and 2:17). It is this juxtaposition between these two elements that makes this song so enamouring to me, and I can comfortably say that this is one of my personal favourite songs of the year so far.

Finally, ブラインド (blind) constitutes the final song on the single. Anybody that’s been paying attention to the review team’s Best New Tracks of March 2015 thread will have already seen CAT5’s own impressions of this track, and in many ways I concur with his general sentiment.  ブラインド is one of the most catchy, accessible songs in the band’s discography. Yet despite somewhat streamlining their sound in order to achieve this, the song doesn’t feel lacking in its finesse. Quite the opposite, in fact, as it’s this change in sound that helps the song to stand out from the rest of their discography in a way that the title track struggles to do. Kamano’s subtle changes to her vocal delivery, singing in a lower register than usual, also helps to give the song its own distinctive flavour.

It’s been a long wait for ハイスイノナサ’s  変身, and though it may only have been a three track release, I think that the wait was worth it. This is a band that simply doesn’t release material unless they have something worth releasing, and it is for that reason that I get much more mileage out of their music than I do out of most other bands’. Though the single as a whole may be a bit of a stylistic regression for the band (noticeably, the IDM elements introduced on reflection have pretty much disappeared from this release), it’s still very much a worthwhile release that currently stands tall as one of my favourites of the year thus far. ハイスイノナサ, esoteric as they are, may not be for everyone, but to put it simply: no other band does what they do as well as they do it.

If there was one good, unsolicited piece of advice that I could give you, it's to not let the news affect your emotional well-being.

 

Negativity is a powerful emotion capable of altering your thoughts and feelings without you even realizing it. The news has been centered around reporting tragedies and drama for a long time. I think there's two reasons for this. One is that a lot of people don't want to read about good things that happen to others because it makes them jealous. The other is that tragedies naturally make for better news stories. Coming to this realization won't make the media change their business practices any time soon. I came to this realization as well a few years ago and discovered that all focusing on the media too much made me depressed and angry. I hated how the media focused on negativity but failed to realize how much I focused on the media focusing on negativity. I couldn't walk into a store without my eyes glancing across the newspaper, and then getting saddened at something bad that happened somewhere, and then hating myself for letting this negativity get into my life. I was getting nowhere fast and I wasn't happy.

 

Then one day I decided to try ignoring it for a week. Sure, it doesn't change the reality of what's being reported on but that doesn't mean that I need to know about it, right? And I have to say my mood improved for that one week but I had no idea what was going on around me and that's no good either. That's when I decided to pick a middle ground: I would stay aware of what happens around me but the minute I felt my mood going sour I would stop reading/thinking about it and do something else. After all, reading about people dying in a plane crash is sad but that doesn't mean I need a psychological breakdown of the perpetrator moments before death, you know?

 

I would try that and see if it helps.

I don’t think I said anything to suggest that need ‘help’ or indeed even that I care about sensationalist morbid media stories in themselves; quite the opposite in fact, since my initial post was me stating that the plane crash story is essentially a non-event to anyone not directly involved - which I’m not. The thing that aggravates me is people’s morbid obsessions with stories like that, which is less a case of the media in itself and more fundamental human nature. The two are holistically linked, media influences social perception, social perception encourages and ‘validates’ the media, etc. I’m well aware the reasons behind it. Some of which you stated yourself.

I appreciate the sentiment of your post but it seems to be a bit of a misunderstanding of what I was trying to get across; a sort of moot point considering that I already ignore the vast majority of “hey look somebody died let’s talk about it constantly” news stories. Once again, I have to repeat that my post wasn’t about me being depressed by the news, it was about me not understanding why other people care so much about such stories. 

Anyway, I think this has derailed the thread somewhat, sorry about that. I guess just PM me if you want to carry on?

I think I actually orgasmed at 3:00. This band...

I despise mornings. It doesn't matter how early I go to bed, I wont wake up until about midday the next day unless I have an alarm set. Any time I need to got to work or attend a lecture in the morning I'm basically a walking zombie. Despite that, though, I'm not really a night owl either (depending on how you define the term, anyway). I always get tired around midnight, but the weird thing is that I wont fall asleep for a good 2-3 hours after I go to bed, so typically between midnight and about 3am I'm in this weird state of feeling too tired to do anything yet seemingly unable to fall asleep.

Plane crashes usually don't come as a big shock on anybody (at least not over here), but it's still tragic as fuck and deserves plenty of media attention because of all the lives that got lost. But this time it was in fact shocking, as some guy most likely decided to crash the plane and kill 150+ people. How on earth could that not shocking?

Because people kill people all the time. Whether it's a school attack, civil war, terrorist attacks, gang violence, genocide, etc. It happens. It will continue to happen. It's beyond tragic for everybody directly involved, but it's irrelevant for humanity at large. Just another large scale killing to join the billions of other examples throughout human history that simply wont stop because the cause is inherent within human nature. 

I'm aware that I'm probably coming across like an insensitive asshole here but that genuinely isn't my intention. I've just always found this strange morbid obsession with death in the media to be rather disturbing. You even stated yourself that it "deserves plenty of media attention because of all the lives that got lost", but why? Why does a higher death count increase the need for news outlets to descend upon the story, sensationalise it, and leave the privacy of the victims and those grieving compromised? I've experienced the premature death of a loved one and not once did it feel like a sensational experience that I felt everybody needed to know about; quite the opposite, in fact. Death is one of the very few certainties in life (if not the only one), every single person on this forum will die, so will everyone we know, just as the billions upon billions of people that have preceded us all did. I feel that it's something we should all just acknowledge already, and just accept that when it happens, particularly in a sudden incident such as this, it's better the leave those directly affected to grieve and stop turning the entire world's attention to it. 

Sorry if that seems overly fatalistic and gloomy. It's never my intention to be depressing with this sort of stuff; I just think that it would be a disservice to sugar-coat the reality of topics like this.

Yeahhhh. I feel the same way. Aesthetically, they're legit, but their music leaves so much to be desired. It makes me wonder if they're trying so hard to appeal to a certain crowd/image that they've unwittingly sacrificed their sound along the way? I usually like for bands to maintain some level of rawness, but I feel like tricot would actually sound better with a bit of pop refinement.

Other bands that I think fall into that whole "aesthetics > sound" trap are kinoko teikoku, indigo la end, and even though she's not "indie" (not anymore at least), Seiko Oomori.

As I told you before, I agree wholeheartedly with regards to teikoku. I'm not too familiar with indigo la end or Seiko, though, so I can't comment there. It's a shame really, I think that too much of a focus on aesthetics can result in a rather narrow/closed music taste, which is why I feel that a lot of 'indie' communities tend to develop rather elitist, anti-VK/pop/etc sentiments.

Speaking of female-fronted bands, here's a new all-girl band that one of my pals is into. They'll be releasing their first mini album in a few days. Nothing special or amazing, but still promising considering that these girls are only 17. My friend said they sound like a young/old-school akai-koen, and that description is accurate!

I've never understood the sheer amount of media attention that plane crashes get. If you send thousands upon thousand of planes into the air, eventually one or two will crash here or there; same thing with cars, trains, etc. As tragic and unpleasant as it might be, it shouldn't really be such a shock whenever it happens.

I had a sex dream. It was... interesting.

I've used the name 'Phoenix' (or some variation of it) on forums, video games, and the like for years. I don't even remember why I first chose it, I think I just liked how it sounds. Anyway, I started getting tired of it after a while (particularly since it was spelled as 'Pho3nyx' on here) and pretty much everybody started calling me 'Pho' after a while, so I changed it to that.

Welcome. Always nice to see another Sigure fan

I have to second the opinions mentioned here when it comes to both fox capture plan and tricot. The former just sound like a less-interesting version of jizue in my opinion, and even jizue has a habit of just sounding like background/study music to me. The latter sounds like nothing more than an average run-of-the-mill indie band with some math elements; and let's be honest, math isn't exactly uncommon in the J-Indie scene these days. It's funny that Cat mentions their vocalist as a weak-point though, since I consider her vocals to be one of tricot's only (somewhat) distinguishing elements. So yeah, I don't really get the hype behind either of these bands. 

Come to think of it, I tend to find that it's not uncommon for some bands to generate massive amounts of hype in the indie scene despite seemingly lacking any particular flair that separates them from everyone else. Sometimes I think that this can simply be the result of effective promotion/exposure (such as performing an anime opening, etc), but sometimes I wonder if it's also largely because a lot of people tend to be far more into the 'indie aesthetic' than the quality of writing itself. Has anyone else thought this before?

I typically don't buy live DVD's these days but I'll admit that I'm rather interested in this one. I think that sukekiyo's music tends to lend itself quite well at a live setting.

Aha, you can tell that they're pretty much all thinking "Man, this tour seemed like a much better idea in my head" xD

Generally speaking I don't have a preference. I do tend to listen to more bands with male vocalists, but I think that's just a side effect of the fact that I tend to stumble across more of them in general. Typically, the most important things for me are a band's compositional qualities; instrumental & vocal melodies, rhythmical synergy and interplay, song structures, etc. The aesthetics of the band and their range of timbres tend to be secondary to that, so the sound of a vocalist's voice doesn't tend to play a huge part in how I feel about a band unless I feel that its significantly at odds with what the band as a whole is trying to get across.

Interesting. I'd always assumed that this was more of a group project but, judging from those credits, it's predominantly kazuhiro's work with only a very small degree of involvement from yukihiro and 345.

I have a habit of getting lost in musings that feel rather sisyphean in nature. I don't consider myself to be a 'depressing' person, but I do find that there are certain depressing realities that tend to go largely ignored by society in general that I just can't overlook. I think that the last year or so has seen me trying to find a way to deal with these realities. I'm still working on it.

I'll be there at approx 20:00 UTC. I'm in a bit of a visual mood today...

Kojima has constantly stated that every MGS since MGS2 would be the last in the series, and he hasn't exactly been shy about the fact that he wants (and has wanted for some time) to work on other IPs, but Konami obviously doesn't want that and hence the series has been dragged out time and time again. This is all pretty much common knowledge nowadays to be honest.

^Yep, it seems very likely (basically a given at this point) that Kojima is leaving Konami after TPP. Konami are already hiring new devs to work on a 'new' Metal Gear series. Here's the Gamespot article that explains a lot more about the situation, and here's more info on Konami's search for new Metal Gear developers.

EDIT: This also means that Silent Hills is either dead or, at the very least, going to need a new director.

Well, Hideo Kojima appears to have either departed from or had a major falling out with Konami and it looks like Kojima Productions as a brand name is dead. There's a summary of everything here, but here's some of the key points:

• Hideo Kojima has been removed from Konami's list of executives effective April 1st.
• The Kojima Productions website has been taken down and it now redirects to an MGS portal.
• All of the "A Hideo Kojima Game" taglines and Kojima Productions logos have been removed from Konami's websites, and even the games' boxarts.
• Konami's job listing webpage has renamed Kojima Productions Los Angeles to Konami Los Angeles Studio.

I guess this is technically more than just an MGSV story, but since the Kojima name is pretty much synonymous with Metal Gear I decided to post it here. He's always been known for crazy PR stunts but this seems pretty excessive to just be a marketing trick.

EDIT: As Eurogamer has pointed out, Konami has recently enacted a new company restructuring centred around making 'Konami' the focus of all of branding and production efforts.

I just started watching Psycho-Pass. How did everyone feel about that one? 

I'm really out of the loop on anime, but I was interested because it has a Ghost in the Shell feeling about it. 

I feel like I'm in the minority here but I feel as though Psycho-Pass (the first season, at least, I haven't seen the second) is okay but vastly overrated nevertheless. A lot of the people that I know tend to consider it to be an extremely intelligent dystopian anime but I've never been able to quite understand why. It tends to be one of those shows that has all the dystopian aesthetics down to a T but lacks the subtle philosophical & socio-political undertones that makes for a great dystopia. I was never able to fully believe that the world that it presents could ever realistically come to be, which tends to be a prerequisite for a really great dystopian work in my opinion. It's kind of like the anime equivalent of The Hunger Games; decent for a piece of light entertainment with dystopian overtones and some social commentary, but dumbed down to the level that a 13 year old could understand and it suffers as a result. At one point it actually compares itself to the works of Orwell, Gibson, and Dick (seriously), and that really rubbed me the wrong way. 

Aside from that, the animation, visual style, music, and the like are all pretty solid, and it's not like the story is bad per se, I just don't think that it's anywhere near as great as a lot of people that I know seem to insist. It's still worth watching, though.

I kinda feel as though both eiheartx and beni totally deserve some appreciation of their own for keeping this thread going in the way that they have.

I actually quite liked her clean vocals. Wasn't feeling the harsh ones so much but it wasn't enough to completely ruin the song for me or anything. I think this band could have potential so I'll keep an eye on them.