sleepmakeswaves - In today already walks tomorrow

Finding good music is always a pleasant experience. Finding good music for free is even more awesome. Recently, I got lucky and stumbled upon a fabulous record, "In today already walks tomorrow", by the band sleepmakeswaves, distributed on the net by the Lost Children netlabel.

Hailing from Sydney, Australia, the four guys play a very cinematic kind of post-rock, including sweeping strings and ambient electronic elements as well as very heavy guitars. And whereas many newer post-rock bands simply recycle ideas from the genre's big names (think MONO, Explosions in the Sky, Godspeed You! Black Emperor, ...), sleepmakeswaves manages to create something very original. With a strong emphasis on melody, the tracks never seem to drag on for too long, waiting for a climax that comes too late. Instead, with relatively short songs - the longest on the E.P. is only 8 minutes long -, the band keeps things fresh and interesting, and strike an excellent balance between pure beauty, epic sections, and heavy rhythms. That said, sleepmakeswaves never finds themselves on the aggressive side of things, even during the most intense parts of their songs.

Anyway, I don't think I can really do them justice only by speaking of their music, so I'll let you taste it for yourselves. Don't hesitate to tell me what you think of it in the comments !

sleepmakeswaves Myspace
Download the E.P. here.

A month, a game #1 : Sonic Rush

What the hell ?

Out of all the games I'm currently playing, I managed to finish that one first ? Ah well, guess it was the nostalgia factor. I was a fan of Sonic once, especially of Sonic Chaos on the Sega Master System. That said, I only managed to complete the main mode once, with Sonic, without any Chaos Emerald. And I'm not going to try and get them, it would be too hard, and the game isn't THAT good. It's fun, but nothing more. Fun and fast, to be fair.

So I won't praise it using a plethora of superlatives like I'll probably do with Persona 4 which I should complete soon. That one is going to be a much longer post...

Well then, farewell for now !

6 things.

Another post, another list of sorts. This is becoming a trend I entend to fight soon. Mainly because I tend to think too many lists can quickly become tiring to read. And there's so many MANY lists out there. Maybe I should make a list of posts about lists to show just how many there are.

...

Anyway, tangents about lists aside, I was "tagged" last month, not in the metadata and Web2.0 sense of the word, but rather as in children's games (yet it's still a little Web2.0-like). You know, like...

"Let's play tag !"
*Children running around*
"Tag, you're it!"
*More joy and laughter and running around until one of them stumbles and FALLS HEAD-FIRST ON THE AXE LYING AROUND INADVERTENTLY WITH ITS BLADE FACING UPWARDS !!!*

...

Anyway, tangents about painful children mutilation aside, I was "tagged" last month by my sister with/for a blog meme consisting of finding six things that make you happy, in no particular order. That means the following list is going to be made with bullets, not numbers. Isn't that a clever way to imply that the list is unordered ? Yeah, I know.

• Playing music live : I really don't do that enough, but grabbing a guitar and playing songs is a thrill when done on a stage, however small it may be. Especially when it's along with some other friends and sisters.
• Reading an awesome book/playing an awesome video game/watching an awesome anime/watching an awesome movie : The important word here is... No, it's not awesome. It's "story". Regardless of the medium it is told on, a good story that makes me forget the passing of time, make me laugh or cry, or provoke thought is worth knowing. It's a whole new universe for each one, and the ability to visit all those worlds is... Well, it's awesome !
  
• Walking around in an urban landscape while listening to some good music : The bigger the city, the better. Ah, the joy of walking around in a cold morning while your ears are comfortably put inside your headphones which are pouring some soothing melodies or heavy rythms into them...
  
• DC++ : No, really, I'm not kidding. I only frequent a couple of hubs, but in those I've met many people who I now consider my friends. Even though it's designed to be a file-sharing system, I only go there to chat, nowadays. I'll probably write a proper article about Direct Connect at some point in the future, it deserves it.
  
• Being who I am : Ho, ho, ho. Doesn't that sound pretentious ? Before you label me a narcissist, let me explain. I mean that in a very broad way, more than in a "I think I'm awesome" way. For example, I include "knowing the persons I know because they're great" in it. Or "my family", or more material things like "playing the guitar". Or even "my taste in music". So it sounds pretentious, but it's just very general. And of course it doesn't mean I consider myself "perfect" in any way. There's so much I have to work on >_>
  
• Having a nicely organised music library : Even though this list is supposed to be an unordered one, I chose to put this last. Because I figured that if I was to leave you with a quite bad impression, the best way was to sound pathetic right at the end. So there you go, I love having a perfectly-tagged, consistent, well-sorted music library on my computer. My life is SO full of exciting things...

So, that's it. Now, I won't go and tag other people, partly because these blog memes feels a little too much like many chains of mails I receive and am not fond of, and partly because I don't think I follow enough blogs I could consider tagging. So this ends here !

Here comes the obligatory...

2009 challenges !

Have you noticed ? Nowadays, you don't say you've got New Year's resolves anymore. The term seems to less used, and is quietly replaced by a more down-to-earth trend : the challenge ! I don't know why that is, but I don't want to fall behind, and so to start this new year with a bang, I've decided to hop on the challenge bandwagon and set a few goals for myself this year.

Some of them will hopefully be quite easy to accomplish, some will require some hard work, but I guess it should be possible in a year. Not to mention not all items are unrelated, so that makes the whole meta-challenge a tad bit easier, if you will.

So here are my 6 challenges for the new year (yeah, 6, because it's 2009, and 9 is 3², and in turn, when you take 3 and 2 and take their product, you get... 6 ! It's really not because I didn't find 9 different goals, I swear !) :

1 - A month, a book

Logically enough, I'll try to read a book each month. I love to read, but unfortunately my pace slowed to a crawl last year, so that'll help me pick up a book and read regularly. The whole idea being to really read a book each month, not read two in one and none in the next.

2 - A month, a game

Unlogically enough, this is about playing twelve games over the year, but not necessarily one each month. Why name it exactly like the previous challenge if it's different ? Because I can, I guess.

3 - A year, 12 animes

No. Don't even try. I will not be bound by mere logic. But you guessed it, the big idea is to watch at least twelve animes, be it series or movies, to have something to say when the next Christmas season comes...

4 - The road to 15.000

If there's one thing I'm borderly obcessive compulsive disorder about, it's the tagging of the files of my music library. I won't go into much details here, but believe me, it's ugly. Thus, I have yet to go through a huge number of files (33.530 as I'm writing this, to be precise), and I want that to change. Thus, I'll try to shrink that number down to 15.000. That's still 1544 files per month, or 51 files per day, more or less. Doesn't seem like it, but it'll probably be one of the hardest challenge...

5 - Exploiting my other challenges (a.k.a. "Update your blog, slacker !")

I started to post here in June, then stopped until December. That's not good. So as we're in 2009, I've decided to try and update this humble blog 9 times each month ! Hopefully, I'll have at least a post about a book I've read, one about an anime I watched and another about a game I played, hence the name of the challenge. It'll require a little dedication, but I feel I can make it !

6 - The Aprentice Game Maker

One day, I hope I'll be able to work as a game designer. That being said, I've yet to prove myself I've really got what it takes. And thus, the biggest goal of this year will be for me to make an original game from scratch (okay, maybe using some third parties librairies, but still). This one is going to be hard, but I really want to get it done. So hopefully blogging about my progress regularly (hey, another clever way to make some "free" posts) will help me see this through.

So there, now I only need to make it happen ! It's with a strong resolve that I enter this new year, and once again I wish everyone a happy new year, and good luck with your own goals !

2008 in anime - #1: extreme fear

And so, this is it. As the year comes to an end, we've reached the top of this list. The icing on the cake, if you will. What made me happy to be an anime-loving person - I wouldn't qualify to a full-fledged otaku - and made all these episodes feel they were worth the time spent watching them. And that would be ef.
Before I go on, I guess I need to warn you : the two seasons of ef (a tale of memories and a tale of melodies) still have a firm grasp on my mind as I'm writing this. I guess I'll need a little time to completely free myself of their emotional aftershock. So this is probably going to sound a little fanboy-ish, but who cares ?

That being out of the way, which is the particular moment of the series I want to remember ? Honestly, I changed my mind a dozen of times before settling for something that's probably not very original : Miyako Miyamura's breakdown, in episode 7 of ef - a tale of memories.

If you've seen it, you probably know exactly which scene I'm talking about, and if not, I won't spoil it too much, but know that one of the female protagonist experience a really sudden and horrible nervous breakdown, and that it's depicted in a way that does nothing to soften the blow.
I don't even know if this is really the best scene of the show, but it's at least the first real big shock ef will throw at you. Admittedly, the situation itself is not the worst in an anime to date, but the text piling up and covering the screen, the increasingly distressed voice of Miyako, and the way you mostly don't see it coming make it unforgettable.

In the end, it's a prime example of how SHAFT (the studio behind ef) manages to turn a somewhat standard visual novel adaptation into something much, much more than that. Well, wait a minute, that's not totally fair, as the visual novel itself is already praised as particularly heavy on artsy stuff, so in a way SHAFT is only following the lead. But anyway, they're awesome at making it work.

But was that scene alone what made me choose ef as my favorite anime of the year ? Certainly not! The two seasons of ef have managed to make me feel things with more intensity that I could've possible have imagined a couple of year before now. It wasn't as powerful as when I saw 5 centimeter per second, and maybe not even as shocking as the end of Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~ because the overall tone of the anime prepares you better for dramatic events, but it was gripping nonetheless.

As I said, the premise of ef sound particularly mundane : it's a story about people falling in love. Me ? Watching that kind of things ? I know, I know, my comments on Sora and Gouta in the previous post make this claim dubious, but honestly I used to hate stories focusing on love affairs. And ef probably wouldn't have gained the attention I gave it without the already mentioned art direction. That and its music, composed by the very, very, very talented TENMON (who, coincidentally, also did the soundtrack to every Makoto Shinkai movie, especially 5 centimeter per second). Both sound and image are used to convey points in a great variety of ways, and much more effectively than dialog alone could have achieved.

And there is a lot of meaning contained in those 24 episodes. I'll definitely have to rewatch the whole thing, because I surely missed many subtle thing, seeing how taken I was by the story itself. You can't stay all cool and analytical when you're in the emotional state ef put me in...

I'll tell you, I'm really glad to have experienced ef, and some of its characters have earned a special spot in my memories. Writing this post reinforced my wish to rewatch those two tales in the not-so-distant future. I'll probably take the time to blog about it then, in an episode-by-episode fashion, to help me better express what ef now means to me, and thus will stop praising it too much here. I guess giving it this first spot is already a good indication of how I liked it.

This concludes this mini-series of posts, and the year. I wish everyone a very happy new year, and 365 days filled with brand new memories.

2008 in anime - #2: Jaws dropping under a summer sky

Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~... The perfect summer anime. The best one to air this summer, all genres included, at least according to yours truly. What could more fitting than a slice-of-life-with-a-touch-of-magic show depicting the life of a young girl, Suzuki Sora, going from Hokkaido to Tokyo to learn magic for a month ? Especially with such gorgeous visuals ? Between the most photorealistic backgrounds you'll see in a while and characters with that distinct "Beck" flavor to them, the life of Sora is a real feast for your eyes. Add to that a beautiful soundtrack composed of celtic-inspired melodies and acoustic songs sung by a girl near a train station which Sora passes by everyday, and you've got something exceptionally pleasing for the senses.
And if that wasn't good enough, the story and characters themselves are very muck likeable, each one in their own way. From the innocent Sora, to the grumpy Gouta, and including their classmates, and even their teachers, you're bound to find at least some of them attaching. Thus, even though most of the series is slow-paced, it never feels boring. There's a plenty of things that make you want to come back to Shimokitazawa (the Tokyo neighborhood Sora is living in) to see how events unfold : what will Sora's next client be like ? Will Gouta be able to use magic properly ? And, as becomes evident pretty soon : when are Sora and Gouta going to go out together ?
I'll have to admit, they make one of the, if not the, cutest couple I've ever seen in an anime. And the way their relationship evolves feels completely natural, including the way they "confess", without really saying much. I couldn't help but to go "awww" when they held hands together the first time. For once, this is a show where there's no love triangle, no one ends up in tears because they were left out. Natsu no Sora is like condensed happiness for everybody involved, including the viewer.

That is, until episode 10.
In one of the most dramatic plot twisting I know of, your whole perspective of the show changes. I won't spoil it here, but let it be known that this will have almost anyone feel a huge emotional shock. It's at the same time both brilliant and cruel. It does turn a fairly inconsequential slice-of-life anime to something with a much greater impact, but you can't help but to feel that it is incredibly unfair. You half-expect something like Sora having to separate from Gouta, her first love, at the end of summer, and you're prepared to feel pretty sorry for both of them, but you aren't prepared for what's happening.

If Natsu no Sora was a TV drama, the "shocking truth" would have been revealed right at the start, and the overall tone of the show would have been greatly modified. But here, because of all the happy moments you've shared with Sora, you feel robbed of something. Or rather, you feel that she's the one being robbed of the happiness that should have been hers. The last episode even goes as far as having Gouta and Sora's mother meeting, but without knowing who the other is. It's the last coincidence that makes you wish things would have turned differently.

But in a way only japanese anime do, you're left with a strange mix of emotions at the end of the twelfth episode. You want to cry, to smile, to scream it's unfair, to be happy for how Sora's summer went, in the end. So you go through a little bit of everything, and it's a feeling like no other. And that's why the jaw-dropping revelations of Mahou Tsukai ni Taisetsu na Koto ~Natsu no Sora~ episode 10 get this second spot in my list of 2008's anime moments.

2008 in anime - #3: Is that thing REALLY talking ?

I like dark and insane anime. Usually, I tend to love shows which begin by puzzling me, and wait a looong time before they start to make sense. It's the same with games, actually, and that surely explains why Xenogears is my favourite game of all time (and why I usually like RPGs and Survival horror games, in fact). So when, during a chat about the weirdest anime openings on the VGM Central DirectConnect hub, I saw Paranoia Agent's, I knew I would have to watch it. It was just too weird to pass. I mean, not only is the song completely crazy, how can you not be intrigued by an old homeless woman laughing while standing on a table in a fancy restaurant ? Or a conductor on the moon ? Or... well, you get it, I was eager to see what it was all about...
And I was not to be disappointed. Because Paranoia Agent is surely one of the most insane series I've ever watched. The beginning of the first episode seems harmless enough though, following the daily life of Tsukiko Sagi, a mascot designer whose previous design seemingly proved to be very popular. She's now under a lot of stress, having to design the successor of her famous Maromi, which was some kind of pink "dog" (or so they want you to believe, because well it's doesn't really look like a dog to me). One night, while going back home, she gets attacked by a mysterious figure wielding a baseball bat and going around on roller blades.
As one could expect, the police starts an investigation to try the hit-and-run assailant, while she stays at home to recover from her injuries. And that's when things start to go wrong. She sees on the internet that she's being called a liar, that she made the whole thing up to avoid her deadline for the next mascot, and so on. She throws her little stuffed Maromi (which she always carry around) on the floor, and the thing, instead of staying on the floor like any normal stuffed animal would do, GETS UP AND SPEAK TO HER. It may sound kinda lame, but trust me, when you're watching that episode for the first time, and don't know what the show is about, you're guaranteed to have a big "WTH" moment. At least I did.
And it all goes downhill from there, by the end of the first episode, you're already wondering what is real and what is not in Tsukiko's story. And further down the road, you're introduced to many peculiar characters, such as a trio who wants to commit suicide but can't really do it, a police detective playing the super-hero, and many others. Almost all have some hidden sides to them, and one of the show's main strength is making you want to get to know them and their motivations better.

Actually, I had some troubles deciding exactly what to put on this list. First, there was the scene I described above, but on the other hand, the previews shown at the end of each episode were also worthy of praise. While many shows use those previews to make the audience laugh, the ones in Paranoia Agent were almost scary. Maybe it's because of the music, or because of the old man's voice used, or maybe is it because they're some of the most cryptic around... I don't know, but more than once, watching that old man speaking gave me goosebumps.

Well, anyway, there you have it. 3rd favourite nime moment of 2008 : Paranoia Agent's speaking mascot.