And here’s the opposite of that - me playing at the Chikushikai biennial get-together / concert / hangout thing in Osaka.

Some photos just came in of my performance with Daisuke Fujiwara at SuperDeluxe in Tokyo. Thanks to Cal Lyall for taking these!

January 2nd I woke up at 4am I’m checking out Kool A.D.s new “highly “anticipated”” mixtape The Palm Wine Drinkard 2012 let’s do this.

i’m readjusting to new york a little faster than I’d prefer

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Raub / Horaflora @ Club BART in SF

Esther Chlorine same deal

i visited Ram he’s got a cat now he’s hella into it

then I went to Japan and had a facial body removal

my name in lights

then i went to shanghai and it was cray-z

i crossed the street it was dangerous as fuck

that’s all!

my hotel room is bigger than any room I’ve been in for the past month

thx Yumiko for the photos!

I’m pretty slagged! I’m surprised at how much last night’s show in Kokubunji took out of me. 3:30pm feels more like 11am to me. I’ve been a late riser the past couple years, but never quite this bad, ha!

Christmas is not such a big deal in Japan, which is nice, as my family is all on the other side of the ocean. I’m seeing a show later tonight with some friends, should be a great evening.

Approaching end of tour (and of my three month hiatus from NY), and wrapping up my affairs here in Japan. Sending out postcards, seeing a couple more shows, and playing one last show on Tuesday the 27th, at a venue called Next Sunday, with my friends Sawada, Kawol, and Yumiko. Should be a great evening! Come out, say hello, party with us!

It’s been so wild hanging here for the past month. I’ve been at a loss to express the amount of gratitude I feel toward everyone that’s helped me out with this tour, welcomed me into their homes, booked me last minute, introduced me to friends, translated conversations for me, helped me navigate around town. Damn. Damn!

Meanwhile, I’m looking forward to sleeping in my bed again + seeing friends back home. Yow!

Saw this on the way back from potato guy:

Other stuff from this weekend:

Best pastry I’ve ever had maybe:

On my way back:

Took another trip out of the city this weekend to visit and record with my friend Julien, who lives in the town of Chino, Nagano. It’s a mountainous area of Japan, and despite looking pretty large from a distance, it has a real small-town, countryside vibe to it.

We did get a few good takes during recording, and afterwards, we decided to step out and get hot soup across town. (Another friend recently said to me - and this makes total sense - “Japan isn’t very cold, but the houses are freezing.”)

I was in the middle of putting my jacket on when Julien said he heard something outside, and that I should go get my recorder really quick. Not one to argue, I went outside with my trusty mic and let ‘er rip:

I had to turn the gain up all the way and pray that the wind would be kind of me (it mostly was), but I got it: The sound of some guy singing somewhere in town. I’m really glad I captured it, it was beautiful to hear. So far away, echoing off mountains, the kinda thing you read about. Not the kind of thing you witness. Amazing.

Apparently this guy can be heard around town every Sunday. Neither of us could hear the actual words he was saying, but we kind of guessed it was a monk performing some loud prayer or someone of similar spiritual inclination. Who knows, it was just one of those moments where you’re like, “Holy shit, I’m in Japan, and this is how shit goes down here.”

In any case, he stopped singing eventually (you can hear at the end of the recording), so we went to get dinner. Dinner was, of course, was off the hook:

Lo and behold, we come back, and you can still hear the dude! Only louder! He’s close now. Was he using a megaphone? Probably, we figured. But who was this dude? What was he doing, where’s he walking from, where’s he walking to? What the hell is this song about?

We decided about two minutes into this recording that we’d set out and try to find him:

He was pretty easy to find by ear. (Turns out he was using a megaphone.) And it turns out, once we turned the corner and saw his truck, it was totally obvious what he was doing. Seriously, watch this before reading on:

That’s right. You catch that? That’s Julien saying, “Guy’s selling fucking potatoes.”

So, we bought a potato, and split it.

It was a pretty good potato. Nice hot food on a freezing night, hey.

A couple other folks gathered around and bought another few potatoes from the guy (which you can hear in the recording). After some quick business, potato guy got back in his potato truck and rode off into the distance, playing his regal and lonesome potato song.

Last night I went bar hopping with some friends in Shinjuku. The bars we went to were these little tiny affairs:

Seems like they’re all about the conversational aspect of bar hopping, not so much the loud, hard partying thing like in New York. Quiet rock or pop music, one bartender, and we’d file out when another group came in.

Afterwards we ended up hanging out at a venue that Daisuke runs called Soup, just kicking it and listening to records. I played some juke and ghettotech for them on the (really impressive) sound system, and we watched a couple YouTube videos of footwork battles. I was also hipped to this guy Yousuke Fuyama, who does AV art ala Ryoji Ikeda or Skif++, except like more maximal and awesome:

I immediately bought his tape 0.06479891/MOTIV from the Sludge label, run by the same crew.

Big shout to Yuka for like practically being my rep man this week. Scope our new collabo coming out this Spring, I dunno what it’ll sound like but prolly be pretty sweet yo!!

PS I guess I’m Tom Waits now, damn, Brendan stop it:

GOODNIGHT

Been in Japan two or three weeks and this was the first traditional style Japanese toilet I’ve encountered:

Baby Copperhead + AEN @ Superdeluxe:

Caught this duet u+uco at Bonobo, a small venue in Harajuku:

I talked to them before their set, they told me they basically cover themselves in barcodes and use barcode scanners to trigger musical events via a bit of software they wrote using Max/MSP. They did a few different pieces using this stuff, and at one point started covering the audience in barcodes too. Once they started their set, I was like, “Welp, looks like that’s pretty much as awesome as I expected.”

I played a little bit later in the evening, in this upstairs room:

I ended up doing an impromptu duet with the DJ guy downstairs - totally rad dude from Osaka, never learned his name, but we traded signals between the two floors and jammed for maybe 40 minutes? It was kind of a mess but a lot of fun. Later on, during this noise trio’s set, DJ dude got naked and did some wild modern dance along with the apocalyptic laptop / pedal soup. Dude had chops, wish I’d gotten pictures.

More walking through Harajuku at night:

The toilet that kills fascists: