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I love the mix you can get sometimes between modern and traditional music, when the right people are involved. In this case it is heavy metal guitar and Taiko Drums, with the guitar played by Tomoyasu Hotei. The first song is Battle Without Honor or Humanity, the second is Devil’s Sugar, and the setting is live in front of a famous Buddhist temple. If they sound familiar, there is a good reason. The first track alone has appeared in the movies Shin Jinginaki Tatakai (where it originally was used), and then in Kill Bill, Hotel for Dogs, Shrek the Third, Transformers, and Team America: World Police. If you don’t see many movies, it was used in the games Dance Dance Revolution and Gran Turismo HD, as well as a number of TV shows and radio programs.

Taiko Drums are traditional Japanese instruments used in temples and festivals, and often played in groups. Taiko actually means “wide drum” or “great drum” in Nihongo, so calling them Taiko Drums is a bit redundant, but that is the usual English usage. The third track is a traditional Taiko performance and trust me when I say the recording did not capture the depth of sound those drums are producing, nor could your speakers reproduce it. One of the most moving episodes in the 2011 season of J-Melo was their broadcast of the live performance by the surviving members of the Fukushima Taiko competitive team. If you don’t have J-Melo available from your cable company or satellite provider, you can watch it and the rest of the programming online from NHK World; just check their schedule to see when your shows will be on.

This may be Abney Park’s best song to date, which is saying something considering their long line of Steampunk hits, but it is most certainly the best Steampunk music video ever put together. There is an amazing culture out there, and more of the outstanding people, groups, and projects are represented in this one than I have ever seen gathered together in one place. If you have not previously been exposed to Abney Park, this song is the opening track from their new CD coming out in June, but they have a boatload (my spellchecker didn’t like Airshipload) of previous releases you can enjoy right now. This is definitely my favorite Steampunk band, and one of my favorite band’s overall.

And a few other interesting videos used in its production, or just Steampunk oriented…

It was Leonard Nimoy’s birthday yesterday (Happy Birthday, Leonard!), so it seemed like the perfect week to post his video with Bruno Mars on the Lazy Song. If you haven’t seen this one yet, it is wonderfully silly and shows you just how comedic Nimoy can be without even using words.

There are several tasty Korean bands I would like to mention today, the first one being Girl’s Generation. They are more of a pop group than a rock group, but they have worked long and hard at creating a following, as you can tell from their song Run Devil Run. The next track to mention is the band 4Minute doing their hit Heart 2 Heart, and then the song I have been waiting for: I Go Crazy Because Of You by T-Ara. As I said, more pop than rock, but a bit of good music even so. Unfortunately, every one of them was removed from YouTube, so I have removed the videos here as well, in case they were taken down because of copyright issues.