A few more fun bands from Japan for you to check out. A lot of these folks have albums released in the US and UK as imports, although they can be pretty hard to find (hint: Amazon and the like are good places to look if your local brick and mortar doesn’t carry them). First up this time is a favorite band of mine, Uplift Spice with her song Omega Rythm. The second band is another favorite, Scandal, doing a live version of Shoujo S, which is the opening song for Bleach. The final tune this time around is Psycho x Letter by Aicle, a Visual Kei band. As with all Visual Kei bands, it is a bit difficult to tell which band member is what gender, but the music is great.
I have commented before about the Sci-Fi London audio archives of old time radio shows they are posting on line. This new addition to the collection is quite nice: the Ray Bradbury Radio Shows. They include such gems as And the Moon be still as bright, The Veldt, and an assortment of stories from The Martian Chronicles, and you can listen to them online or download them for your permanent collection.
This may be one of the most surreal young musical artists to come out of Japan for a long time: Kyary Pamyu Pamyu. Her songs have one hell of a lot of energy and are very upbeat (at least musically; I don’t speak enough of the language to know if that holds up lyrically) and perhaps the most kaiwaii live action sequences every filmed. After the two songs, a brief interview to give you an idea of what else she is up to.
Starting today, a brand new series of radio adventures begin for Tom Baker in Doctor Who: Hornets’ Nest. That is the story arc name, which is comprised of five stories, each an hour long. The first half of the first story, The Stuff of Nightmares, part 1 aired today at 6PM London time, and will air again at Midnight. It will be available at that link to listen to for the next 6 days, with a new episode each weekday evening at the same time for the next two weeks. At least that is the usual arrangement, but I am not taking any chances and will be listening to each episode the day it airs. They are also running two other Sci-Fi programs around it; just before the doctor you can here Married, a science fiction comedy about a bachelor who wakes up in a parallel universe to discover he is married there. And just after the Doctor this week is H. P. Lovecraft’s At The Mountains of Madness, also starting today. You can see the full schedule here, but as I write this there are only 7 hours left to hear episode 1 of married, since that program only runs once a week.
Another fine J-Rock band, Uplift Spice was formed in 2005 and is best described as Emo-Punk. The first one of this set is Minority Parade, which they played on last weeks J-Melo episode. The next track is Memento, followed by Justice; that should be enough to tell you whether or not this band is worth following. I for one enjoyed the hell out of every track I have heard from them.
Uplift Spice also has a MySpace page you might want to check out for more information.
A lot of people know about the Sci-Fi London film festival, or the 48 hour film challenge, or their many Indi film projects. But did you know they have been collecting Old Time Radio programs and making them available for download? Some are available from other places, but some I have only found there. And they have started building their own, with the first one now available: Rossum’s Universal Robots.