After a jovial little exchange on facebook with my little brother about my music, I decided I’d total up the play time of everything I’ve been involved in musically. That means all of the content from my various alter-egos, all the remixes I’ve done for other artists through the years, the countless mash-ups I’ve made and all the content I’ve co-written/produced. The number spewed back by my mp3 software of choice, foobar2000, shocked even me. This is because I have apparently created over two days of music. That is a staggering figure to me, but when I realize that each of the 700+ audio files probably had an average of 6 hours of my labor poored into each one, I have probably spent somewhere around 175 days at 24 hours a day writing music. Sure, that’s spread out over the past 14 or 15 years, but that still insane.
Clearly, after I put my next album out along with Nursehella’s and Rai Kamishiro’s respective albums, I think I can take some time off.
Or I have to try to bring that 175 days up to 183, I.E.: over half a year.
At the end of the last anime season, I genuinely pondered what I’d be watching next. None the titles really seemed to jump out at until I happened upon a forum thread about Ano Natsu De Matteru. Apparently, it’s from the same person who created the Onegai series, and that fact couldn’t be more obvious. The premise is virtually identical – a buxom, red-haired, alien girl falls right into the middle of a high school boy’s previous droll, pastoral life, much to the dismay of the boy’s childhood friend who happened to have romantic feelings for him.
There are some key differences: in Ano Natsu the high school boy’s parents are dead instead of his sister, the uncontrolled decent of the spaceship’s arrival on Earth kills the high school boy in the opening minute of the show, and now only the alien girl’s kiss can keep him alive. Additionally, the alien girl is only an upperclassman this time, not his school teacher, and it seems that the childhood friend is let in on the alien girl’s secret identity from the start. Those little changes amongst others may have a dramatic impact on the flow of the show, even if many of the other characters in Ano Natsu are near facsimiles of the characters in Onegai Teacher.
That said, while seeing an author who had previously breathed new life into the shonen romantic comedy genre simply phone should’ve left me bored, it’s actually really worked so far. The few bread crumbs that are different are so radically different that I genuinely wonder where they might lead. It doesn’t feel setup to reach the same finale either, at least in any obvious sense.
Besides, the series had sold me in it’s first minute before they killed the lead. Much like Onegai Teacher, Ano Natsu’s first episode opens with a monologue from the male lead, and those monologues sold me then and now. It was so simple, so eloquent and clear that from those words that the creative staff have set the show up for a very poignant yet sweet journey. Well, with any luck they should’ve; Onegai Teacher maybe a timeless anime, but Onegai Twins was slightly mediocre. Perhaps that risk makes it compelling as well – it’s a romantic comedy fused with NASCAR.
Anyway, I’m quite glad it’s been pre-licensed by Sentai Filmeworks – I’ll probably be catching it on DVD or Blu Ray by the time CrunchyRoll finishes streaming it.
After what has been an admittedly long wait, it looks like things are really beginning to cook with Nursehella’s album. The recent studio sessions have run smoothly so far: we have six songs worth of vocals in the can after only two days in the studio, and she has material lined up for another five or six.
I’m not particularly sure how many of my instrumentals will underpin her album. That fact hinges a lot on her tastes, and how many other producers we can wrangle into working with us. She made a lot of good connections in the past year though, and perhaps it’s time to see how just how good they are.
In regards to my own album, I’m essentially just waiting on material from some of my collaborators now. Everything else has been locked down though perhaps once I have the collaborative elements in, I might tweak my vocals in a few spots. I could also draw the album out to 22 original tracks, plus 9 or more remixes. However, I think I’ll wait to see how long the collaborative tracks run. The final version of those songs could eat up the spare space.
Lastly, readers should expect more updates like this as I am obligated to blog an average of twice a week for a writing class. Not every update will be this extensive, but I figure that I ought to be forward about why I’m using my blog heavily.
Watch and skip around my mixtape. Or just download it from one of these places:
Bandcamp
Multiupload
Google Music
After all, Hipster Please! liked it, and that blog is the Pitchfork of Nerdcore (or so I’ll claim.)
Don’t mind me, I’m just enjoying some flavorful sodas. Certainly no song leaks in the background of these soda reviews:
I have been interviewed about my upcoming project and so on. Highlights included me blathering about my creative process, what I do on collaborative projects, and my favorite Prince song. With juicy sweet information such as the preceding teasers, you know your soul is compelled to observe the amazing secrets of my banal life, as revealed to you in an excitingly over-verbose yet shockingly nondescript fashion.
Meanwhile, I should be more of a narcissist and google myself regularly, so I find sick fan videos when they come up:
Ladies and gentlemen, ZOIDBAHTON.
