Review: Pachinko in Your Head

The melding of music and environmental sound is nothing new. In fact, the so-called ambient and new age genres have been founded on the reduction of music to emphasize the combination of manufactured and found sounds over notes, harmonies, and melodies. Even in popular music, a sound form as distinctive and abrasive as scratching can be catchy enough for people to reproduce in oral form (i.e. "wicky-wicky-wack").

Deeper into this notion is pure environmental sound as music which is what Pachinko in Your Head: Non-Linear Music (PiYH) is based on. Recorded in 1998 at the Shinjuku Aladdin, a parlor that still stands near the southern exit of the Shinjuku train station in Tokyo, PiYH is one full hour of environmental sound. PiYH, in essence, is just a constant buzz of 8-bit melodies, machinery, yells, bells, bings, and whistles - the din of a parlor at what sounds like its peak time. It's doubtful that many will find value in buying this CD for this very reason and, to reflect that, it seems merchants on eBay and Amazon will practically pay you to take their shrink wrapped, mint condition copies off them. However, a release like this will always possess some sort of curious appeal to audio nerds who think far outside the box. Sure enough, upon extended listening, there is a sort of fascinating order to the chaos, a sort of din not unlike listening to a hive of bees at work (again, if you might be into that sort of thing).

I, myself, bought PiYH out of curiousity and nostalgia, both stemming from being a big pachinko player during my Japanese residence (more about that in later posts). Sure enough, there are sounds that I can pick out easily: the melodies of certain machines (the most dominant being that of Gingira Paradise), the rush of pachinko balls moving from storage zones into machines, the tell-tale ringing of small payouts, the crash of an attendant dumping someone's winnings into a counter, etc. Eclectic German producer Eckart Rahn actually did well in producing the sound of this disc as it never gets too abrasive and even has some dimension to it. Still, or those of you might still have some curious interest in this disc, what you're getting with PiYH can be replicated by looping the following video:



See? I saved you some money, so don't say I never gave you anything before.

A message from the Don

"Ain't it time you started posting in yer blog again, ya primitive screwhead?!?!"
(to be continued...)

Festivals On the Rise!

The one thing I love about living near a big city is the opportunity to check out large film festivals. Being a huge genre film fan, I have always been somewhat jealous of places like New York and Toronto that host big festivals which focus on films I like to watch. Then, there are places like Los Angeles that house theaters that I would pay rent to reside in, just so I wouldn't miss a single showing.

The San Francisco Bay Area, of course, is no slouch when it comes to film festivals and events. In addition, this area has its own slant to festivals; as the last link shows, they tend to focus on diversity as well as individuality. I was bound (pun intended) and determined to attend the "I Am Curious" pink eiga event at the Roxie last week at the San Francisco Independent Film Festival but was hit by the mutant cold that's been going around lately. Luckily, though, the San Francisco International Asian-American Film Festival is rolling through in a "hot on the heels" sort of way and has several showings during the Kiyoshi Kurosawa (director of Cure and Pulse[aka Kairo]) that I'm hoping to attend.

Tokyo Sonata, Kurosawa's latest, is at the top of my list. His first non-horror film in six years, it has been receiving very favorable reviews since its release late last autumn. It's also the first film he's done without his usual leading man Koji Yakusho in that long. This is a bit of a surprise since Yakusho, when not starring for Kurosawa, typically plays in family dramas like Tokyo Sonata. The spotlight will also feature many rarer Kurosawa films such as Eyes of a Spider and Serpent's Path, both meditations on violence and revenge and featuring another common Kurosawa leading man, Sho Aikawa (below), as well as 1998's dryly comedic yet human License to Live. Two other Kurosawa-helmed Aikawa vehicles that I'm hoping to catch are The Revenge: A Visit from Fate and The Revenge: The Scar That Never Fades, both V-Cinema yakuza flicks that will be screening one after the other. Direct to video yakuza flicks are typically pretty cheaply made on digital video and feature tons of ridiculous overacting, gunplay, and haircuts. If there's one director, however, who's proven that he can make V-Cinema stand for "very good" cinema, it's Kurosawa. I'm currently looking for people to see these last two showings with but, considering the rarity of the two films, I will go alone if I have to. Stay tuned for reviews of some sort.