New Chicks on Speed

Chicks on Speed, the multi-media band of artists that had major club hits throughout the past decade, has unleashed a new song. "Super Surfer Girl" isn't just a single, though, it's musical accompaniment for the group's line of surfwear, designed in connection with Australian label Insight. It's called Insight on Chicks on Speed and you can check out images via this link. The song will also be released as a 12" single with remixes from Christopher Just and WhoMadeWho.


Whomadewho "Space for Rent"


Christopher Just "I'm a Disco Dancer (DJ Hell Remix)"

Tune in Tokyo, 1/29/09

Earlier last evening, Jungle and Cure USA in Little Tokyo hosted an in-store featuring Blood, who are touring for the final time, and their mates GPKISM and DJ SISeN. We were eating dinner at Mr. Ramen when this was happening, but later, DJ SISeN and GPK of GPKism showed up to party with the Jpop/Jrock crew.



Despite his brightly colored ensemble, DJ SISeN (above) is a goth. To be quite technical, though, he is cyber-goth. Check out his MySpace music player for a sample of the Japanese industrial, goth and EBM groups he plays. Aural Vampire, who I am starting to love, makes the cut. Judging from his selections, the prevalent sound is remarkably similar to American goth club fare (which is to say, it's not the crap metal that people erroniously claim to be goth). It's heavily electronic, at its most maniacal coming close to trance in sound, with a lot of dramatic keyboard action. The rock stuff seems to come from the Christian Death school of guitar playing.

DJ SISeN is also one-half of the band Seileen. The duo is influenced by pretty much everything I loved in my spooky college days, including Die Form, Attrition and Qntal. Also mentioned on the influence list is the late, great Klaus Nomi and Diamanda Galas.

Jrock Revolution has a new interview with DJ SISeN online.




GPK is the singer for, you guessed it, GPKism, which also features Kiwamu of Blood on guitar. The band's debut Atheos is set for a March 4 release. Based on what I've heard on MySpace, the band has a bit of a future pop (that is to say, trance-influenced synthpop) on some of its songs, like "Sublimis." I think the hit is going to be "Abaddon," the first song on the MySpace player. Trust me on this, young goth girls go absolutely nuts for a guy in a dress and heels pleading "Why don't you come and dance with me?" Fifteen years ago, I would have been one of them.

Kaya and AOL

Above you will find the debut video from Japanese pop star Kaya, "Chocolat," which I just found on YouTube. The Rococo garb and exaggerated facial expressions remind me of Army of Lovers. Well, Army of Lovers with less cleavage. Can you see the similarity too?



And just for the record, I love Army of Lovers.

I started researching Kaya upon the suggestion of some people I met at Tune in Tokyo. Kaya was first known as the vocalist of Schwarz Stein, a Japanese EBM group, and went solo almost three years ago. Androgyny is central to his persona and I have been told by a few of his fans that part of Kaya's mission is to blur gender roles.

Tonight, I'll be heading down to Little Tokyo for another installment of Tune in Tokyo. Perhaps they will play Kaya. Perhaps I will see someone dressed like Kaya. Who knows?

I can tell you that Blood, who is playing at the Knitting Factory tomorrow night, is doing an in store at Jungle/Cure USA, so there will likely be loads of visual kei kids tonight.

Related: "Tune in Tokyo: Where Jpop and Jrock Rule"

Strange

When you start out your adult life working in nightclubs and end up working as a journalist, strange things tend to happen on a regular basis. Last night, though, was the strangest.  

I don't want to give too much away because the whole story will run in the next issue of Razorcake. I'll just tell you that TMZ was there.

Korean Bell of Friendship

It was the rare Sunday afternoon where I was not on some sort of deadline, so Carlos and I decided to explore the South Bay. We headed south on Western, stopped at the point where it ends to check out the view from one of the local beaches, and then traversed some coastal road whose name I can't recall until we saw a massive bell topping a hill.

The Korean Bell of Friendship was a gift from the Republic of Korea in honor of our bicentennial, which makes it five months older than yours truly. You can read more about the bell here.

From the pagoda, which you can enter to a degree, you can see beyond Catalina, with oil tankers dotting the horizon like Battleship pieces. It was extremely windy on the hilltop, so windy that I got a case of airplane ear, and the slope was quite slippery from three days of rain. Nonetheless, it was beautiful and I suggest taking a look if you're ever in the area.

Yay for Depressing Scandinavian Music

I'm a sucker for the dreariest music around and, in recent years, much of that aural melancholy has come from the Scandinavian countries. Can you blame them? It's cold, snowy and dark for a good chunk of the year (depending on where you live, of course).

One of my favorites is The Knife. Carlos and I had the chance to see them at the El Rey a few years ago and it was intense (kind of reminded us of what we thought The Residents might be like live, although we had never seen The Residents). So, I was overjoyed to hear that Karin from The Knife has a new solo project called Fever Ray.

I can't tell you much about the album for work-related purposes, but I do recommend that you schedule the release date on your calendar. My friends Roo and Robert alerted me to the video for "If I Had a Heart," which is posted here. Enjoy.

Pazz & Jop

Despite feeling disenchanted with music last year, there were a few things I liked, so I filled out my Pazz & Jop ballot, the results of which you can read here.

It's self-explanatory and I don't want to relive 2008, so there will be no commentary.

A Tale of Two Shins *

I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, Liz, what the hell are you doing looking totally unmetal and posing with Beefcake the Mighty. We'll get to that in a minute.

It was an eventful weekend filled with excitement and brutal physical pain, the latter occurring completely as a result of the former. Take Friday night, when I was so busy dancing to Dinky's set in the balcony of Boardner's that I turned around and banged right into a footstool/chair, thus bruising my left shin. The following day, in an attempt to race through the crowd towards the entrance of the Anaheim Convention Center, I walked straight into a fire hydrant, subsequently bruising my right shin.

Yes, Anaheim. Much as I hate ever having to travel across the county line, there are times when it must be done. For example, NAMM. I covered the event for the LA Weekly, with a focus on the DJ gear. There was a lot of it, so I zoomed in on three pieces. Go read the story when you are finished with this.

If you're in the market to see musicians, NAMM is definitely the place to be. I can't even tell you how many people we recognized, let alone the amount of unrecognizable faces with recognizable names that probably passed us. At some point in time, I practically screamed, "Oh, my God, GWAR!" That's when Carlos took my picture with Beefcake the Mighty.

We also caught Roger O'Donnell, the great keyboardist for The Cure (need I remind you of that truthful quote from South Park "Disintegration is the best album ever"), from back when the band had a keyboardist, playing over at the Moog booth.



The members of Shiny Toy Guns were there and I had the chance to talk to Sisely Treasure for a little bit. Like me, she was keen on checking out the new Serato systems.



As far as Serato madness goes, I'm intrigued by both Vestax and Numark's work, but I think I'll stick with my turntables for now. As I said to my friend Robert on the phone today, it seems to be less of a pain to carry a few crates of records to a gig than to have to import my entire collection into my computer.

* The title this entry might also be the title of an episode of Shin Chan. If it isn't, it should be.

In Brief from the LA Weekly Files

Wednesday Night, I headed down to the Toy Factory Lofts with my friends Roo and Melissa to check out the new UK-centric piano night from Adam Unknown (Cute Phase). It's eclectic and fun. You can read more about it here. The post ends with a few Britpop videos I love and I'm encouraging everyone who reads the piece to leave their comments regarding the genre, including their recommendations.

In print (and online), you can read my profile of Chilean DJ/producer Dinky, who played her first ever LA show last night. I completed this story in precisely 24 hours, so it holds the record for my print pieces.

Indie 103.1 went off the air for good last night. Randall Roberts (one of my editors at the Weekly) and Lina Lecaro have updates.

And, also over on the play blog, Jeff Weiss has an interview with Samuel L. Jackson about Afro Samurai.

Coming Clean

Smack in the middle of my first issue editing The Rockit, our cartoonist flaked. Distraught, I called Jeaux Janovsky, who, aside from being a great cartoonist, has also been a friend of mine since ninth or tenth grade.

"Jeaux, can you do a comic?" I asked.

"Well, I always thought we should do something together," he replied.

So we did. But, since I was writing (or ghostwriting) half the paper, I thought it would be best to use an alias. I picked Violet Peters because it was my great-grandmother's name and it sounded kind of like a surly goth chick name. Then we sent ideas back and forth until we came up with a record store filled with snarling but adorable animal hipsters who find joy in making fun of bands and customers.

That was Animal Sounds.

In honor of Morrissey's new single (not sure I'm feeling it yet), Jeaux reposted the original strip.

He also created some cute profiles for the protagonists.

Go Lions?

I'm not sports enthusiast, but I am an alum of Loyola Marymount University, which means that I care about the Lions, even though they are in the running for worst basketball team in the country.

This isn't a new thing, LMU has sucked ever since Hank Gathers died, which was way back when I was in junior high. I'm not the only one who knows for a fact that Gersten Pavilion is cursed, but no one seems to say it out loud.  Now we have proof.

Bill Bayno was brought in as the team's superstar coach. Everything was looking bright for the team. Then Bayno suffered some sort of malady before the first home game and has been out for the season. Today, he resigned. 

I humbly suggest that the someone call the Jesuits to perform an exorcism STAT. I'm not sure if technically you can exorcise an inanimate object, but it's worth a shot. At the very least, they can put up a big St. Michael painting near the court and maybe change the name of the Pavilion officially to Hank's House. It's time to appease the spirits.

More Craftiness from ALA

I found out about RosaleenDhu at Anime LA and had a chance to speak with the creator, although there wasn't enough room in the piece to include a quote from her. Her plush scarves are super cute and she does them in BJD sizes too! The orange one, I was told, is loosely based on a character from Fruits Basket, which I have yet to see even though a friend of mine tells me I should. Anyhow, if you're looking for a warm scarf with a kawaii edge, check out her etsy page.

Anime Los Angeles

By the second day of Anime Los Angeles, it was clear that the angle for my LA Weekly coverage had to be the amount of incredibly talented, young artists are emerging from the convention scene. In some ways, it reminds me of the goth and klub kid scenes of the mid-1990s, the creativity knows no boundaries. In terms of fashion, clothing isn't determined by gender and the more fantastical (and impractical, by the standards of our unfortunately casual society) the outfit, the better.

The dresses above were created by Megan Amo. The hat are by her sister Cecilia. I loved the steampunk elements in top Lolita look (the mechanical clock parts and the use of brown and cream). The model, Michele McArthy launched her accessory line Cute Land at the convention. It consists of little clay candy and cakes that you can wear on your fingers or in your hair. Since I wasn't photographing the event, I forgot to get some pictures of her table (bad, Liz).



I loved the back of Jonelle Abitong's samurai princess dress. If I didn't hate my upper arms and fear leaving the house without a bra, I would wear this to M/R/X. It's so cool.

Oh, and the dolls were amazing too. Check out this unicorn boy.



And these are pretty amazing too.

Guilty Pleasure

My guiltiest pleasure is getting all bent out of shape whilst reading the comment sections on AOL and Yahoo news features. It's an activity that does nothing but help me lose my faith in humanity.

Today, I read this article about a American Muslim family who was kicked off a plane, cleared by the FBI of any wrongdoing, but still can't fly on that airline. That itself is ridiculous, but the amount of commenters saying that the airlines made the right decision is astounding.

Are people so afraid of living that they have lost all sense of logic?

The family was booted from the plane because their conversation regarding the safest place to sit raised the suspicion of some passengers. (I'm telling you, Harold and Kumar are the great satirical characters of our age.) 

I've been on airplanes before and can recall hearing people, or actually having the conversation myself, about the safest place on a plane. People fear flying. It's that simple.

Now, if terrorists were to board a plane in order to wage an attack, it is doubtful that they would be discussing the safest place on the plane. Terrorists, as we have all seen with 9/11 and in numerous episodes across the world, tend to go down with the proverbial ship. With an airplane involved, it would have to be a suicide mission, you can't run a plane into a building or down into the ocean without assuming that you will die. Therefore, the "safest place on the plane" would be a moot point. 

My New Year's resolution should have been to stop reading this nonsense, but it wasn't. 

Cosplay!

In late November, I went to Otaku Society, which is the annual event where Malediction Society goes cosplay. You can read about it over at The Anime Blog. I also suggest checking out the photo album on LA Dead.

By the way, the cosplayer above represents Gurren Lagann. It's an extremely popular series right now.

I got the available Gurren Lagann DVDs for Carlos for Christmas upon the recommendation of Dan at Anime Plus, who has never let me down. So far, Carlos, whose opinion you should always trust, says it's great. Based on the one episode I saw, I must concur.

Happy New Year from the Party Pauper

What better way to start off the year than by posing with Pee-Wee Herman?

New Year's Eve began with Carlos, my brother and I vegging out in front of the TV watching Knowing Me, Knowing You, which is sort of like what might happen if Larry David hosted a talk show (although this precursor to I'm Alan Partridge also predates Curb Your Enthusiasm by almost a decade). It can be difficult to watch, but it's incredibly funny. Rent it.

There were numerous parties going on across Los Angeles last night, but since none seemed to be in walking distance, we opted to hit two. We said goodbye to a shitty year while chatting and dancing to French pop with new friends in Koreatown. We then headed to North Hollywood to hang out with some old friends for the opening hours of 2009.






My friend Daniel has become my favorite subject for these photography experiments.









Daniel was doing something in the living room that could only be described as interpretive dance. Today, I spent some time trying to figure out if there was a way I could load them into iMovie and make a video. That didn't work out at all and so I ended up fooling around with Photobooth.