Alright, let’s chop up the past a little bit! When this newsletter first started, it was everything all together, which was way better than nothing, but for the past few months (writing this on December 12th, 2023) I’ve been splitting up the various aspects of this newsletter into 3 sections: Above & Below, Inspir, and EXP, and I’ve also just introduced a monthly-ish round up of activity called Echoes.
The content that I had produced prior to that, though, currently remains in its primordial state, which means I need to go in and rearrange things so that they’re more accessible for free and paying subscribers alike. So while I’ll be backdating this (and subsequent) post, it’ll be released, well, now.
And, just for reference, this post is created from the larger one taken live on May 9th, 2023 and titled Dïsfocuß.
Music: Altin Gün
I stumbled across the psychedelic fusion of ethnic Turkish & Danish rock a few months back and they’ve been on my go-to list ever since. The rhythm section in particular is bonkers good, delivering groove after groove with remarkable consistency, but there’s very little to not be impressed by here.
Movies: The Fire Within
This is an enchanting documentary from the venerable Werner Herzog, who has the exceptional ability to make both the mundane and spectacular orders of magnitude more exciting than either have the right to be.
And this one is particularly enchanting, if not also romantic, as it tells the story of volcanologist couple Katia & Maurice Krafft, who spent, and lost, their lives together doing what they loved: chasing and studying for the better of humankind explosive, molten eruptions of magma.
Games: Citizen Sleeper
I’ve been real interest in video games that don’t directly involve physical violence (even if its childish) for a long time, but was first actually shown it by a girlfriend I was with in the game development industry when I lived in Seattle. That game was called Layers of Fear, and I’m still mesmerized by it.
Ever since, I’ve been on the lookout for narrative experiences that are similarly creative, and have been presently surprised often enough. Recently, there’s been a stream of text-heavy RPGs which simultaneously hearken back to the tabletop gaming days of yore as well as using the visual medium as a means to update how we’ve traditionally consumed text content, and Citizen Sleeper is one of the newest entrants into that subgenre.
Taking some of Disco Elysium’s themes & styles and incorporating them into a narrative environment informed by various tropes from claustrophobic & existential sci-fi media of the past 4 decades, Citizen Sleeper isn’t so much exciting as it is enthralling.
Honestly, I don’t like game reviews. Just like with all other art forms, reading an analysis of something and letting that inform your decision to engage with it or not is a great way to become boring real quickly. Instead, I try to let a producer’s own designs, scripts, mechanics guide my decisions - which does produce its fair share of duds, to be clear - and so when I came across Citizen Sleeper, I thought, “huh, that’s somewhat unique” without much else in regards to expectations.
And, as ever, I gave it a go. This time around, I uncovered a gem.
Events: Blood Rite Vol. 15
We’re off to a galloping start on getting the 15th volume of our now-decade long flagship event series - Blood Rite - together. A joint project between myself and long term collaborator, occasional bandmate, and good friend Thom Skuld, we knock ideas back and forth to get what we consider a very refined reflection of the state of contemporary extreme music in Japan.
This 15th installment is already booked for Saturday, July 8th at one of the most notorious venues of Japan’s underground - Earthdom in the Okubo district (erroneously also referred to as Shin-Okubo, but that’s just the name of a station) of Shinjuku - run since 2006 by one of the most creative businesspeople in alternative music and storied drummer of Deathside, Mukai-san.
We’re aiming for 5 bands total, and already have 3 booked, and we’re already quite pleased with the lineup. So far, we have:
One of Japan’s newest entries onto the international Black Metal circuit, Evil!
Osaka-Tokyo Collaborative Blackened Crusties, Swazönd!
Putrid Buzzsaw Deathgrind chrono-hackers, Mortify!
Only gonna get better as we onboard the last 2.
Curious about Japan’s underground, either the bands and venues, the culture, or the business dealings? Shoot me a message through the button below.
Wellness: Lava Hot Yoga
If you can’t tell from the above section header and image, this issue’s section on wellness or fitness or whatever marketing term is en vogue right now is on the hot yoga aspect of that regiment.
So, up front - and without asking why hot yoga at all? - Lava, compared to other hot yoga studios, is attractive for 2 reasons:
They’ve got studios all over Japan, and membership levels that give you access to them
Enough of their studios are mixed gender so a guy like me doesn’t have too much trouble booking a session, regardless of where I am
Really, there are 3 major health-related reasons I’m an avid… student? goer? doer?… of hot yoga.
The first is that the whole “clear your mind” meditation thing just doesn’t work for me. I’ve got a pretty active and critically engaged mind and I simply can’t just switch it off. What I’ve come to realize in the last few years, though, is that I’ve been approaching meditation all wrong: I don’t need to remove all sensory experience, but rather overload myself with it to achieve a flow state.
The second is that I’m stiff as fuck. Seriously, how can someone be so ridiculously inflexible as this? And I simply can’t abide by that as it actually affects my ability to interact with the world around me, and so I’ve spent at least the past 18 months reclaiming the flexibility I’m guessing I had in my younger years.
And the third is easily the most fascinating: how can I possibly sweat this much. Sure, a typical hot yoga class is 60 minutes in a room with a temperature of 35-38°C and humidity of 55-65% doing pretty rigorous stretches so you’d expect to sweat some, but at first it was honestly frightening just how much water I could pul from my body. Now? It’s a challenge to see how much moisture I can pull from my guts.