autumn tactics

Though I’m not sure I deserve it given the amount of diligence I’ve been putting into practicising lately, I bought it. Oh well, we’ll see what happens…

Menthol cigarettes, chianti reserva, Miles Davis and sandalwood.

Sometimes life slows down, whether you really want it to or not. Maybe because you need it to. Maybe because that’s all you can take.

I rode my bicycle home, slowly, and took a shower. I rinsed out the cans in the sink and put on an undershirt. I slouched down into the sofa and got my deal handed to me straight by a Chinese girl. I’m attractive between my forehead and my mouth. I’m quiet.

I sat down at my desk and thought about modality, I sat down at my desk and thought about ego.

Why don’t I get a girlfriend? I cook sometimes, with spices. In China big televisions are cheap, but in Japan life is good. Work is good, the city is good. Lots of things are good.

The scales are blue and in a ten-measure cycle. My life is blue and in some kind of cycle.

Life is kind of blue.

Fried does not begin to describe how baked I am. Although I got to Fusamoto station at five ’til eleven, I ended up not catching a train until nearly one. Ultimately it was a comedy of erros. I left my glasses at the cap site and had to trek back all the way from the station to retrieve them. Fortunately, the only thing I lost in the process was a lot of sweat and aoog quart of energy.

I hiked a toatl of four times to get up and down route 297 from Mimata to Fureai, but ti was still a total of four miles up and down the off ramp to the station. I got to meet some nice people in the process, though.

This was the first time I’ve hitched from the side of the road. Previously I’d always started from an interstate parking area which is a lot easier. People have time to size you up on the way into the food court and mull it over for a few minutes before they decide to take you or not. On the side of the road all you have are the five seconds or so from when your thumb becomes visible until they pass you. I didn’t even have a sign saying where I was heading or if I could speak Japanese. Just a big, forced toothy grin doing its best to offset the week of beard and obvious exhaustion on my face.

The first ride I got ws from a middle-aged woman in a BMW M5. She was awefully nice, and not only helped me find the campsite but also drove me up to the driveway. The rides out of the camp site were easier, there was a fairly steady stream of people heading north up 297 towards Ishihara. The second tiem down the road was tougher than the first. My lack of an oversized backpack may have hurt me (I’d left it at the station so I could run). But what that left me was a bandana and a stained undershirt. I was smart enough to take off my sunglasses, eye contact is crucial for this sort of thing.

After running virtually the whoel way back from Mimata, I just made the 1253 train (I only had a window to go home every two hours or so due to the lack of trains in the sticks). Transfers were tight, so I couldn’t get a drink and I’m hurting now from dehydration, but it’s better than waiting another hour to get home. As soon as I get off it’s going to be a huge bottle of water and a cold shower.

なんと力だ？！音力。

You may remember, Indeo, of the first tiem you attened a party; the sights and the sounds, the air moist and thick with pungent odors… how the children sparkled, how touched you were with their openness. So close to so many hearts, the distances between smiles collapsing to an inch, then shooting away, like minnows in a pool.

Different production groups attract different fans, but there still remains a very high degree of familiarity in each circle, people who go to party X generally know the organizers and other fans of party X. And those fans are close-knit similiar groups of people socially. The parties I met Jun-Masa ring of people in are very much the flower side ravers. They are the people that dress in robes and colorful clothes with many affectations around the hair and arms. Today’s Open Air Psychology is more towards the mainstream (if you can really say that) side, but not a complete garu event. the girls all wear jeans or tiny jeanshorts and the boys t-shirts with short-cropped hair. Really everyone is very drunk now; fall down slightly rowdy drunk, which is a different direction that the flower parties. People drink there, but they’re more likely to be feeling good because of something else.

What is it that calls to me, that simmers through my heart? Is it the bass? Or the treble? Or the smiles on young faces and the flare in every eye? Trucks, tents, and incense; grass, rock, and sky. The sweat between cotton fibres and under tousled hair. A light unseen, in a wider spectrum than any machine dreams of. The beat. The anticipation. The flow. Shake and froth, the filter sweeping while it cuts. Dusk melts pastel candied skies, my skin crawls through sound check testing 1..2..3..

Abandon your manmade shells and slide into the twilight– naked, alive as you were first born and radiant as the gods intended.

Welcome the softly loving night.

Does something tribal call inside of you? Not as men and women but as boys and girls and something deeper than that. Like the fire that keeps you transfixed with drunken awe, some sort of primal power sits on your eyelids and jerks at your knees. Colors fall and repeat, noise rattles off of aluminum and quakes through mud. So stop and start relaizing those emotions rooted deep under the topsoil of your soul. This is the time to break free the soft flesh of youth inside of the yesterday you.

Lantern slep fall my heart,
skin splits open and breaks apart.
From inside another you,
moving back to whence it grew.

私は私の中にあります。どうやら一人に居る？
何を探してるを思いつかない。

Cosmos and stars aligned in curves my heart at peace. Would I feel so at peace in another world? Or would the lack of my suffering remvoe meaning from such a soothing balm? The Tao says without the lost there would be no way, so is the altruistic ideal only so gracious because of the voracious world? Is nature clean because the city is dirty? Do lovers love because haters hate? How alone must I feel for another to belong?

So much of beasts make us human.

What is it that calls to me, that simmers through my heart? Is it the bass? Or the treble? or the smiles on young faces and the flare in every eye? Trucks, tents, and incense; grass, rock, and sky. The sweat between cotton fibres and under tousled hair. A light unseen, in a wider spectrum than any machine dreams of. The beat. The anticipation. The flow. Shake and simmer, the filter sweeping while it cuts. Dusk melts pastel candied skies, my skin crawls through soundcheck testing 1..2..3…

Abandon your manmade shell and slide into the twilight, naked, alive as you were first born as radiant as the gods intended.

Welcome the softly loving night.

So I’m currently riding on the haggard and glum JR Keiyo Line, a mundaneity normally reserved for trips to Disneyland or the Tokyo Game Show (which ironically I’ll be doing again Friday). But today’s adventures extends well beyond Maihama, and even overblown Makuhari. Today I ride to the end of the line, to the fabled Soga, onyl to change lines twice more, following the Sotobo Line to the eastern tup of Chiba and the Pacific Ocean. From there lays the much anticipated private Isumi Tetsudo Line into th eheart of the Boso Peninsula, for a rave in Kachiura. Solstice, a promoter whose events I haven’t had interaction with in at least five years! This is classic raving, back in time to the days when I would set ou into the wilderness alone, with only a hand drawn map and my sense of direction to guide me. I very nearly missed my route, sleeping late dreaming of God knows what half satisfying fantasy. But I kicked me ass in gear, doing dishes, laundry, trash and just enough vacuuming to get my affairs in order. Actually, through partial laziness I’ve had a bag packed since Nature Wind, my complete camping gear set just by the front door.

I caught the exact train all the way across the board, grabbed a mostly meaningless shower, fed and watered the cat, and arrived sweaty and heaving on the Hibiya Subway Line to rearrange my effects. Less that suave but effective. I have all the envergy bars, beer, and film I require in a highly optimized Ferrino hiking pack for adventure. Passing Maihama TATE cries that “Happiness is Overrated” and iodine burns through the scrapes left in the wake of my destruction with Ai.

And speaking of
Little Miss Catherine
I feel swell, oh well
Because losing you
Was something I always…

Sorry, I really lost my head
Oh, I’m so sorry, I really lost my head
Oh, those words you said
-The Airborne Toxic Event

Missing the War

All is quiet, his tired eyes
See figures jotted down
And clothes all strewn around the bedroom floor
Now nothing’s adding up
And nothing’s making sense
She’s sleeping like a baby
She doesn’t know he wasn’t meant for this
I’m missing the war
I’m missing the war, all night
Missing the war
I’m missing the war

So much time so little to say
-Ben Folds

Admittedly, there has been a distinct dearth of writing this year. However, there has not been a lack of fantastic electronic music. I’m about four or five years behind the curve of certain compatriots in terms of purchasing media, but I’ve been making great strides so far this year. Normally I’m a listen-to-it-on-ETN-and-rip-it kind of guy, but this doesn’t work for albums, especially vintage stuff. However the closure of Virgin Megastore and some shrewd international Amazoning has allowed me to get my hands on a number of classic recordings (some for the second time).

Chicane – Far From the Maddening Crowds (1997)
Namesake of autumn tactics, electronica artist Chicane’s debut album. Before Behind the Sun, in 1997 Nick Bracegirdle composed this seminal album of glasslike cool. In particular the track Offshore is reminiscient of winding through the rising Applachians on my way to Pittsburgh during grad school.

Paul Oakenfold – Tranceport (1998)
Tranceport is the album that pulled me headfirst into trance. Though Moby and Aphex Twin got me started on electronica, it was Paul Oakenfold that metamorphisized me. I used to listen to this album on a Sony Walkman brick of a tape player while running around Lake Sammamish in the cool, green, summer of 2000. This is at the top of my list when I need to plow through something in 74 minutes.

Ulrich Schnauss – Far Away Trains Passing By (2001)
Ever since meeting him at Taico Club last May, I’ve had Ulrich Schnauss in my heavy rotation for riding home at night. Minimalist electronica that ranges from the chill to the grand in Ulrich’s first album under his own name.

Sasha – Airdrawndagger (2002)
I bought this album simply for the zen nature of Cloud Cuckoo, but Sasha’s self-produced work is growing on me.

and a couple more recent releases:

Oceanlab – Sirens of the Sea (2008)
I’ve always loved Above and Beyond’s anthems, especially Oceanlab mixes by Ferry Corsten. Justine Suissa’s vocals are fair on this album, not up to the level of Autumn Tactics, but a couple of the tracks are nice.

Nick Warren – GU035 Lima (2008)
I don’t get out of trance enough, unfortunately, so I was happy to run into this album when at the Virgin Megastore in San Francisco. Even in its progressive format, house is still more suited for small clubs rather than raves but it’s a nice change, and I’m enjoying the double CD. It makes me pine for my old GU004, Paul Oakenfold in Oslo.

Kawasaki-shi Kyomachi is still the same. The same tired, old buildings, empty of people but lived in. The same early morning shadows in winter, soft and blue in fresh January air.

The more I learn about them, the more I can imagine myself using narcotics to maximize my output from life; stimulants for when I don’t sleep, to help me focus, to be able to grind out hour upon hour of photographs, music, and prose. Reading volumes and consuming everything, augmented and completely wired to my core. Then inevitably I’d need depressants to relax me, to help me get the three hours’ sleep that would keep my body from collapsing, to put the brakes on the endless surges that carry me all the way up the stairs to my apartment after work. So many things I’m capable of, so much light to consume and refract.

But there are limits, and like all substances there has to be something to give for what I receive, sooner or later. So I just imagine it, and compromise the government-recommended way: an endless supply of coffee and self-denial.

It’s a clear day. It’s a very saturated day.

A clouded sky, under a twenty-thousand foot canopy of still grey. Towering, slim evergreens reach across the ceiling like well used acrylic brushes. Moving without sound with expectation, with so much determination with direction, with longing, with cold dispatch. Explosions of color in water, slowly diffusing into starkly back lit glass. To do everything with purpose, and gravity.

To do everything… with purpose and gravity.

Without circumstance, November has come to an end. My annual review and company retreat are over, Thanksgiving has passed sans oven-baked bird, and the cold permeates all.

I am awash in media, after finishing last week’s after parties for Natural Smile, Drop, and Fukushi. I have a collection of CDs from new acquaintances DJs Funnel, Slam, and Sugluma. Also, I’m not quite sure how, but French band Air has been really in the back of my mind lately, so yesterday I picked up Pocket Symphony, Talkie Walkie, and a limited edition DVD set of Moon Safari.

Now I am shivering in my home trying to fight my way through the mountains of film from Europe, sipping Asahi and contemplating how much more comfortable reading books in the park would be.

Natural Smile and Drop albums are up, so feel free to take a look if you like. You also may notice that European blog posts are trickling in as well, so check the feed or scroll back to October.