The Wagakki Band has released the song Ikusa, which is the opening song for the new anime Sengoku Musou, or Samurai Warriors. Wagakki means traditional Japanese instruments in English, and the band uses them to create a fusion rock sound that is pretty unique. Thanks to Rocket News 24 for the heads up on this one.
Junkyard was a short story written by Clifford D. Simak and published in Galaxy Magazine in 1953. NBC converted it into a Radio Drama in 1956 for the program X-Minus One. That show is now in the public domain and available to anyone who wants to listen to it or download it for their own collection. They dramatized some of the best classic science fiction short stories from Galaxy Magazine by an amazing array of authors, including L. Sprague de Camp, Fritz Leiber, and Philip K. Dick, to name just a few more. These particular examples of the show are courtesy of the good folks at SFF Audio, who are an excellent source of such programs.
The band La Luz played a live set at KEXP’s Iceland Airwaves event at the Kex Hostel in Reykjavik, and the station just got around to posting it online the other week. Why a Seattle radio station decided to record a Seattle band in Iceland I have no idea, but I really like their retro sound, so I am glad they did. KEXP is constantly uploading and streaming some of the best music you never heard, they are well worth tuning in.
I am not sure how to categorize Yasuko Omori‘s music; Kawaii Punk maybe? Or perhaps Hyper-Energized J-Pop would be closer. Whatever it is, I like it, and wanted to share it here. The first track is something like absolute despair is the best condition, while the second one is Kyurukyuru, both from 2014.
The band is called Good Morning America, and the first song is the title track of their new album In Tokyo City, released this past October. The second tune posted here was their 2nd single, Dear Sirs, Tsuratsusutora, released in April of 2014. They had to use goodmorningameica as the name for their YouTube channel, because someone else had already taken the bands actual name for use there.
Most of these are classics, meaning more than 50 years old, although some are noticeably more recent; but there are so many excellent books included here that pretty much everyone will find goodies for their ears and brain. The collection of links is from Openculture’s Free Audiobooks Archive, and it includes the works of Issac Asimov, JG Ballard, Frank L. Baum, Jorge Luis Borges, Ray Bradbury, William S. Burroughs, Lewis Carroll, G.K. Chesterton, Arthur C. Clarke, Arthur Conan Doyle, and Philip K. Dick… and that only takes us through a few of my favorites out of the first four letters of the alphabet. You can stream these in realtime or download them to load into your favorite media player or burn them to disc if you still have a CD player in your vehicle. There are a ton of free radio drama/audio book resources available online, and this one is a great way to get started.