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Monday Michiru Corner


JSngry

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No way is this an official video (it's just some user-created visuals while the song plays), but for all you beatheads out there, here's "Freed or Bound (Reconsideration Mix)" (which can be found on Premiumix)a pretty interesting -and somewhat slightly radical - remix of one of the strongest songs from Double Image.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=XJSmyrZ_eFQ

I like the drumming here a lot...

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Co-Collaborator Works Of Monday Michiru

Another compilation from Universal Japan, this time focusing (but not limited to) more recent efforts. Not a lot here that's in any way "common", even by Monday standards, in terms of availabilty, and I was able to fill in some holes in my collection (and if I would've known that this was someday coming out, I could've saved a lot of money...).

Musically, it's a mixed bag, as some of Monday's guest spots have been friendlier to her doing her thing full-out than others. There's a few pure electronica/J-DancePop that I enjoy the same way I enjoy anything like that - while it's on, and then no longer. That stuf is "for deep fans only", some of it is just damn good pop (her version of Stevie Wonder's "The Real Thing" became an instant favorite when it showed up on the latest Soul Source Productions side a little while back, and it's included here, a is a recent thing w/Jazzanova that has taken a while to get to me but finally is)), some of it is remixes that are damn near perfect examples of that art (Jephte & MAW show strong here), there's a cut from 4 Seasons - "New Beginnings", a collaboration w/Da Lata, and there's one thing that has really, really blown me away.

That would be ""Higher (Spiritual Life voc)" a remix by Joe Claussell of a song from Optimista that isn't as much a remix as it is a total remake using some of the orignal parts and bringing in a bunch of new parts (a lot of them live players) on top. The groove is massive, primal, and deep ("spiritual" it indeed is!), the rearranging creative (he does some thing harmonically that are totally unexpected yet still make perfect sense, and by the time it goes into a "Latin dub" groove with a long violin solo weaving in and out, "higher" is exactly how/where I found myself.

Again, perhaps not a strong "introduction" disc, but worth the price if you're already a fan and want more. And dammit Dear Friends, if you find that Joe Classell thing in ANY form (it's been on an Japanese EP, some American 12", and god knows where else), do what you gotta do to get it.

Yeah, it's that tough!

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I've been trying to get some of Monday's stuff for quite some time, but as has been noted most of what's available is import only and quite expensive. And I can't figure out how to sign on for the artist share site. Anyway, someone on the AAJ board was offering "Routes" for trade, and I e-mailed him and offered to buy it off of him. He accepted, and I am now listening to "Routes." I think it's a wonderful CD (I think it's very cool that Henry Hey is the keyboardist. He's a terrific pianist) and I have to wonder why she doesn't have a record deal in the US. The CD appears to have been manufactured for the Japanese market, but like all Japanese imports it comes with a Japanese insert that translates the English text. I understand this practice when the CDs are Japanese versions of American or British albums, but this was made in Japan by a Japanese record label. Why is the booklet in English? Is the idea that the album will sell to English speaking listeners abroad?

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THE RIGHT TIME (JEPHTE'S KING STREET VOKAL)

Nothing to watch, really, just a great remix of a great song off a record.

Donny McCaslin on tenor, btw.

Sorry, but I don't just see the interest here. I'd give the tenor credit for doing his best on a deadly background. What is the attraction here - the vocal, the message?

Q

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Well, do you want us to repeat all the things we like about Monday that we've already laid out in this very long thread? If you've read back through it, listened to more than this one remix track, and decided it's not for you, then that should be that. Not trying to be a jerk about it, just sayin'...

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What Joe said, except that I find that "deadly" background to be quite the opposite. You want deadly, try standing in front of imposed ching-chinga-ching or any # of its variants all night. For some people, that's "classic", but then again, so is a wax museum...

And Alexander - I've gotten a few Japanese things that are all in Japanese, but they're usually things that have no "crossover" appeal, real or expected.

Monday's audience is "cultish" but also international, as is the house/acid jazz/etc scene in which she initially came to the fore (after "You Make Me" was actually a bit of a hit, her stuff started getting European as well as Japanese release, but that apparently stopped when she had "creative differences" w/Universal Japan over 4 Seasons & ended up w/o a label deal). Routes, was actually made for/through ArtistShare and therefore for all intents & purposes was self-financed. Geneon signed on as Japanese distributor to better service the audience that Monday has there (and also to give here a little bit of change for the privilege). They also got - insisted on, apparently - a bonus cut ("Sketches Of Myself", a freakin' marvellous tune, one of the first ones to really start fucking with my head as to how much "there" - and how many of them - there was existing simultaneously & wholly organically in her music) that was left off the AS versions (although it's available as a download there somehow) of the album.

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What Joe said, except that I find that "deadly" background to be quite the opposite. You want deadly, try standing in front of imposed ching-chinga-ching or any # of its variants all night. For some people, that's "classic", but then again, so is a wax museum...

Maybe "deadly" was a bit harsh. I know we have Warne Marsh in common. It seems a long way from there to here ... I realize he's now in the past, but that kind of aesthetic value (from out of the tradition) doesn't come easily or often, nor is it easy to shrug off. Anyway, I'll try to catch her next time she's in town ... gotta get out of the wax.

Q

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Hey, it's cool. I myself have found myself quite unexpectedly hearing/feeling new things new ways over the last few years, none of which supplant the old, just seem to pave a road ahead coming out of the old. I've been finding that only a few people "get" where I'm coming from on this, so ok, I've been out there almost alone before, it's all good, and I'm digging it all very much, it's not at all "closing off" anything from before, it's "opening up" something for the future, growing the plate rather than changing it, so let's just all go where we see the light leading and do no harm going there, or not going there, or staying still, if that's where our own lights lead, or don't.

I will say this, though - I've become very, very aware of the subtle yet profound differences in "groove", between what simply "works" & what is actually right. I thought I had already known that, & I kinda had, sure, but when you get into a music that is almost all rhythm by design, where the groove is the point, well, little differences that might not have mattered before because there would be other "things" going on to distract/compensate/etc. suddenly matter a lot, because that's all there is, and it had better be "good", it had better be right, as in connected and conducive.

Now, has this affected how I hear jazz? Of course it has, and whether it's been for the better or worse depends on to whom, I'm listening & whether they are good or whether they are right. It's also made me realize that rhythm is for me personally the base element in how I feel, think, play, & hear all music. I've also become even more aware of how sound and rhythm are connected, how the attack of a sound is a rhythm in itself, as is a sounds timbre. Hell, right now I'm hearing pretty much everything through the perspective of rhythm, and truthfully, I've never been happier with how I'm hearing it, so long as I'm hearing something that sounds alive & dancing (and by that I most assuredly do not mean just "dance music!). If it ain't dancing, if it's just chore music or reflexive stationaryism or otherwise just loitering and/or killing time rather than loving it, hell, that's never sounded worse. And thank god for that!

But that's just me. Like I said, a lot of people have told me I'm crazy or something. Oh well!

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