Synthesizers are way too overated. Guitars are a form of distraction, and if the vocals are the soul of the band, then percussion is it’s pulse, flourishing the music with life, giving it a good heart. On Wikipedia, a percussion instrument is defined as “any object which produces a sound by being hit with an implement, shaken, rubbed, scraped, or by any other action which sets the object into vibration. The term usually applies to an object used in a rhythmic context or with musical intent.” I prefer the Chinese way of calling it : “打擊樂” which translates literally to “Impact Music”.

It is the violent collision of 2 bodies,   the amalgamation of 2 voices upon impact which produces  a sound that reflects passion, strength and intimacy. As the saying goes, “it takes two hands to clap”, it is also the music of resonance,  reciprocation and companionship. Moreover, it comes in all sorts of sizes and shapes, each with a different name that when pronounced leaves such a sweet ring to the tongue (Tambourine, Maracas, Castanets, Tam Tam, Guiro, Hi-Hat, Tom Toms, Marimba, Cabasa, Cymbals, Snare, Timpani and so all..) 

So here I am, making a list of songs to honour the greatness of percussion in music, simply because its that time of the year when we go on a crazy rush to churn out never-ending lists of whatevers, plus, we all deserve a good beating once in a while.

10. The Arctic Monkeys – The View From the Afternoon

9. Foals – Astronauts & all

8. The Guillemots – We’re Here (Castanets and Muscial Saw)

7. The  Shout Out Louds – Tonight I have to Leave it (Cowbell)

6. The Klaxons – Atlantis to interzone

5. Broken Social Scene – Fire Eye’d Boy

4. Tokyo Jihen – Kabuki

3. St Vincent – Just the Same but Brand New (the album version sounds so much better though)

2. Mew – Hawaii (and perhaps every other mew song)

1. The Dodos – Fools

How about you? Which were your favourites?

We’ll sail to Norway on a boat. The troubling waters will threaten to derail us from our dreams, our music will suffer subtle slips and go slightly off tune, but we will navigate by faith and stay on course. We will sit and talk for hours about nothing in particular until our limbs become numb. When we reach our destination, the feeling will return to our toes but we will be far far away from our homes; the familiar earth beneath our feet will melt away and we will forget the others and be forgottened by the world. In that place, logic will be discarded,   longing glances will be returned and unspoken words would be understood.

One day, we’ll go to Norway.

I suggest you get your hands on Tokyo Jihen’s latest single “Noudouteki Sanpunkan” (losely translated as “you can only move for 3 minutes” ) , transfer it into your IPOD, and hit replay for eternality. The new song is so good that its almost paralysing, like dark chocolate, the really shiok kind. After listening to it, I don’t want to do anything else other then to keep listening to it again and again and again….

The bassline is perfect, like a good pair of black stockings that is so effortlessly sexy while the guitars are twisting and sliding along electronic circuits of cosmic cool. Also, did I mention that i’ve developed a crippling crush on the keyboard player and his impeccable jodhpur pants? Let me tell you, most of the time its about the music, but sometimes, its also about the pants. And this has both.

The new album is coming out in March 2010, and while I am completely lovin’ the new single, for the band that names their albums based on genres of TV programming (their first album was Kyoiku (Education), followed by ADARUTO (Adult) and Goraku (Variety)), I’m guessing based on the dancing in the video that the next album is going to be named Horror. Or Humour. Could go either way, but one thing’s for sure, it’s going to be irresistible.

As the promotional pictures would say, this is only a warm up compared to the real deal. I can hardly wait.

It’s somewhat calming and fulfilling to watch things fall from a great height. Fabrics forming crazy illustrations in the sky as they descend haphazardously. Debris from an opened suitcase shooting upwards like confetti in early celebration of its eventual demise. Everything looks more dignified in slow motion. For a moment there, I just want to luxuriate in the choreography of falling objects, because it makes you feel strangely alleviated.

I think it would be easy for me to to pass myself off as someone schooled in psychological and spiritual subjects because if given a chance, i would simply love to rattle on non-stop about stuff like the Oedipus Complex, the Electra Complex, Human Instrumentality, the Tree of Sepiroth, Thanatos, Oral Stage, the Dead Sea Scrolls and so on.

Nope, i didn’t take a psychology course in college. Also, I didn’t read about them from books. What i actually did was to spend an abnormally excessive portion of my teenage years being fixated over the anime: Neon Genesis Evangelion.
On a superficial scale, Evangelion is the step mother to all Japanese mecha anime (the mother is of course Gundam), another bland tale about kids operating giant robots to save the world. On closer inspection, it is an important epic chronicling the progress and evolution of the Human Race. But at its core, it’s a classic bildungsroman about a boy’s determination to find the courage to be accepted by others, as perfectly pointed out in a conversation between 2 important characters of the show.

That’s the thing about Evangelion, it connects on so many levels of human ambition: whether it centers around saving the world, or simply the emotional and psychological struggles of an individual.

I just finished watching You can (not) advance, the second film off the Rebuild of Evangelion Tetralogy, a project which was initiated to re-write the ending of the original Anime series and movies which aired in 1995 and 1997 respectively. Let it be known that Hideaki Anno, the creator, have already attempted to rewrite the ending once before, and this is his third attempt at getting it right. Judging by the looks of the 2nd film which took a painstaking 2 years to create, he’s finally on the right track. As with most forms of entertainment that strives to be intellectual, the story demands the viewer to draw their own conclusions, but at the end of the show, I got the feeling that this is too precious a story to leave it up to just my own interpretation, so I went on the internet for hours, scouring through heaps of information to find some form of truth about the series.

Why does it inspire such a manic following?  Because, to put it in a brash way, Evangelion is also the single most important work in animation history and the founding father of all shows that try to incorporate mythology in their plots (yes to all you JJ abrams fans out there, there exists no show with a mythology as dense as Evangelion, not even Lost), and fans still throw themselves and their cash at every attempt to franchise or rewrite the story 14 years after the show’s initial creation.

As Hideaki Anno himself would say:

“Evangelion is a narrative involving repetition, it is a story about how a protagonist won’t back down and continues on struggling in the face of unrelenting adversity. It is a tale about the will to move forward, however incrementally. It was created with the longing to share with as many people as possible the true endearing qualities of animation film, where mental images can be visualised into reality and a wide diversity of expression is available in order to touch upon the emotions of the audience on a primal level.”

At the end of the Rebuild films, I have no doubt that you’ll be be shocked, frightened, impressed, delighted, excited and depressed. You’ll experience the entire gamut of human emotions and find them to be a bottomless pit with no sky above, and through this, you will discover your worth as an individual.

In other words, what I’m trying to say is, this is epic stuff. You should watch this or else you might regret it one day.

My review for Crowd Lu’s “7 days” has been published at Knox Road!

Come take a look!

Check out their other reviews as well, those guys are too good to be true.

I’d wished I had used a more flashy pen name instead of my real name. Like Halloween Lin. Or Edward Cullen Lin. Or Lightsaber Lin. The last one has a good ring to it. Maybe next time..

The XX consists of 4  twenty-somethings from London and they’ve cooked up a critically acclaimed self titled debut by adding as much doom and gloom to cast a shadow on their glorious youth.

The album begins bright, like in VCR, but in a very swift turn of events, the lights are dimmed and a veil descends, until you are left with nothing but you, the music and dark thoughts. 

Crystallized, the standout track of the album, is a parred down anecdote of trembling young hearts, while Basic Space kicks in with a surprisingly levitating R & B groove. But before you are mistakened, this is not the typical teenage suicidal fanfare. You’ll be adequately seduced by the thick, sombre basslines and choked by an effervescent haze of love, loss, sex and confusion.

This, is also a really short review, because I’m already drifting in and out of conciousness. Got to go to bed. Here’s me signing off with the final song of the night and leaving you alone with your melancholic inclinations.

I’m very tempted to write a one word review for this album, but because the music itself is not that bad,  I’ll attempt to elaborate my lack of feelings for the New Moon soundtrack.

Unlike most albums, this one comes with an expiry date, by which I mean you should wire it with C-4 explosives to prevent yourself from even getting close to the thing from 20^th November onwards. I’ll be explaining about why you absolutely need to do that later on.

The album is a piece of work, which is a given when you’ve got indie giants like Thom Yorke, Death Cab for a Cutie, Bon Iver, Grizzly Bear, Lykke Li and St Vincent at the helm, but a grossly overrated one at that.  Thom Yorke’s “Hearing Damage” lends a good pulse to the album and starts it off like a rush of blood to the head. But the real shiner is Seawolf’s The Violet Hour, a swift bass driven melody that lets loose fumes of woozy young love.

Which I guess, is the part of the movie where Edward Cullen’s hairless chest starts to glitter.

That is why if you find that you like the album, be warned that things would turn sour once the movie hits the big screens on the 20^th of November. The reason it is called a soundtrack is plainly because they would be using the music for scenes in the movie. Perhaps Bella would be seeking comfort in Jacobs abdominal muscles while Lykke Li muses about possibilities. Perhaps Edward Cullen would be grooming his manly eyebrows to the tune of  Grizzly Bear’s slow life.

Its going to be heartbreaking, and you best prepare yourself for it.

Now where’s my liquor?

Its sad news when Pitchfork proudly declares that you are no longer relevant, but my guess is that Julian Casablancas is not gonna shed any tears for that.

I had somewhat expected Phrazes for the Young to be a disappointment, and though I was not proven wrong, I’m really liking the way “11th dimension” is making me dance (much to the horror of anyone around me).  It reminds me of the time when I was a teenager who spent half her time chasing after the Strokes’s steadfast rhythms. From the trepidation of the wobbling base beats to the keyboard slamming in the intro, there’s no brakes in sight and you’re sent off on an exciting retro roller coaster ride. “ALL TIME HIGH!”, is what I really want to say after hearing the song.

Does that mean the end for another Strokes album? I hope not. Even shoulder pads are back in fashion, so I guess anything is possible, right?

For what its worth, Julian Casablancas is still the sexiest skinny jeans wearing pavement kisser I’d ever known. (case evidence)