How did that NWA song go?

I doubt anyone who ever reads this blog and lives in Hiroshima is unaware of the situation at Barco so I will just point you in the direction of the GH blog for ideas on how to help and information about the recent arrest of Ricardo and Hideko.

Even if they weren't such nice people its all complete bollocks and very depressing. As it stands if they were arrested last Saturday for people dancing in their bar then me and GHB should be arrested on charges of inciting people to dance and would be languishing in prison with the owners of Edge and every other owner of any space that saw dancing last Saturday in Hiroshima.

For now, show your support in the ways suggested by Ricardo's wife and others. If you can't be arsed, why not just go and have a drink at Barco. I'm sure the practical support of their businesses would be of help too.

Arse.

3KBreaks?

Well, we had a lot of people through the door, the music was banging, and there were people dancing, but at the end of the evening GHB and myself felt more like we'd put on a drum and bass night for a couple of the local d'n'b crews rather than the Breaks extravaganza we'd hoped for.

Not that the night didn't have it's positives. Ca2 proved himself an excellent DJ and it'll be good to have him along for the Dangeorus Drums night. There did seem to be a little crowd there for the breaks too. I think if we're going to push things here then we're going to have to boldly go where no man has gone before. Or if I'm doing the more up to date pc Star Trek, no-one. Get the popular local D'n'B DJs in and we're guaranteed a crowd, but it's not really what we're about.

It was interesting to see how, no matter what country your in, people always want to blag something. I don't think it's got anything to do with the money really (especially when our nights cost literally 500yen to go in), just wanky, I'm known around here bollocks. I remember regularly meeting twats in Brighton who would boast about how they could 'get into any club night in this town'. I haven't yet found out what the Japanese for 'SO?' is. Must do that. We did have a lot of people come who seemed to want us to pay for their night out and poor SH had to deal with most of them. Sozz mate x


Right. Enough moaning. Next month see's Dangerous Drum's ED2000 touch down at 3K. It's a Friday night this time so get your dancing shoes on a night earlier and make the effort to come down because if you're not in to Drum and Bass it's not that often you get to see a DJ of such quality out and about in Hiroshima. We'll have a mix of his up somewhere soon....will keep you informed.

Golden Week by phone

A quiet week kicked off with a couple of days in the countryside to relax and set myself up for a frenetic end to Golden Week 2006. Perhaps the highlight of which was Dove Pro-Wrestling at Chinatown. I'm always amazed at America's fascination with one joke but when you've got it happening right in front of your face, with DJs playing hip hop and drum and bass it's pretty compelling....and bloody hell it looks like it hurts. At one point a barbed wired clad board was brought out for the two wrestlers to jump off an oil drum on to. Fake barbed wire naturally I thought, until they got up from it with bleeding backs (and just to check, an intrepid WC pressed his fingers against one 'barb'.....ouch). Quality entertainment.
2nd highlight was a drum and bass night at Tribes. I say 'a' drum and bass night because I have to admit I have no idea who the DJ was although I do remember he hails from the UK. And he's big (in size, no idea about his popularity). Best part of the night for me was a record that Spins DJ Shimomura played. Awesome. No idea what it was though. Superb set alround that featured a very very good Japanese MC who disappeared before I could find out his name.

The udonya was visited 2 nights in a row :)

And to finish it all off, best of all, SH and myself got a photo op with some girls out doing PARAPARA at about 3am infront of a conbini...happy days.



Keitai slide show

Bugs, itchy trigger fingers and Bobby

I've worn shorts at night, had a few bugs fly in my mouth/eyes whilst cycling, been in a shop that's had it's air-con on and felt cold on a bus. Yep, summer is almost here. Well, summer for a Brit anyway, I know technically it won't be summer really til rainy season is over and done with but when it's 25 degrees of a daytime I am culturally unable to ignore the fact that outside it is NICE. Having said that, I have been moaning like a bastard for the last few weeks because it has rained so bloody much. Far too much like home for my liking. Bring on the sweaty arse crack, it may be humid but better than that waiting for summer to start feeling when you suddenly realise it's October :(

Weather aside, I've been getting ready for 3Kbreaks, buying tunes from here and eating very very nice pizza. It's all go, and, I'm on the way to finishing another WC tune with a little bit of help from my lovely lovely new toy.

The only cloud on my horizon is the fact that 3k is on the same night as the FA cup final which I hope Liverpool win. Having said that, I would also like to see WC's former hero Bobby Zamora play and do well, perhaps nick a consolation goal? God I used to love him...

3KBreaks time

As fun as 3KLounge was what we really need for a proper night of breaks is a dancefloor, and at Edge there'll be one. As always. 3Kbreaks returns with another great Line up ;
Kyosan (Infinity Vibes)
Choco B (Bass Instinct)
CA2 (Volt)
Daisuke

will, with GHB and myself , be tearing up the dancefloor from 10 o'clock on the 13th of May. Breaks based music all the way, put on your best dancing shoes and come down. It's still the stupidly priced 1000 yen including a drink.

See you there.

3KLounge

Yesterday I thought any review of last night would start off something like; 'Well, the weather was horrible...'. When I left for Lotus I couldn't imagine that anyone would want to come out but as it turned out the lure of the company of GHB and myself was too strong to resist ;)
Big thanks to everyone who came and there were a lot of thanks to go round. From 10 onwards Lotus was pretty much full, and my god, some people were even threatening to dance. We kept true to the lounge spirit.....for a bit, then got pissed and played whatever we felt like. The great thing about Loutus is that with a sound system of that quality you can get away with playing quite banging stuff without rendering conversation impossible. So, a ball was had and it was gone 4 when we left. I hope the custom made the later finish more palatable for the boys at Lotus. Big thanks to them again. Hopefully see you all at Edge on May 13th for the real thing, 3K Breaks.

Stuff

Been a bit lacking in personality the blog of late, so I thought it was high time the man behind the anorak spoke with a few of my, recent, favourite things. First up a city; Fukuoka. Just down the road, kind of, on the northern coast of Kyushu, Fukuoka is a place I'd highly recommend. Esepcially if anyone is thinking of moving to Japan and can't quite face a place like Tokyo. Very chilled out, big enough and friendly locals, it gets the WC seal of approval :) There comes no higher praise.

Keeping things Japanese, I watched the best film I've seen in ages last weekend. Not since the Incredibles have I been so moved to praise a motion picture ;) Daremo shiranai - Nobody knows is one of the saddest most beautiful films I've ever seen. Chek-a-chek-a-chek-it-out.

And sod it, some breaks on this, 3KLounge-eve. Recently I have been mostly listening to Breakspoll Presents: Vol 2 - Mixed by FreQ Nasty, it's so good it's keeping me from my Japanese study podcasts, and, has me riding my bike at less than safe speeds.

Pics and words about Lotus very soon.

3KLounge

More physical lounge than musical one, the theme will, as always, be breaks in whatever shape they get served up in. Join us down at Lotus from 10pm for some relaxed 3K action. Its free ofcourse and apart from Ghb and myself some of our 3K friends will be in attendance. Warm up nicely for the real thing next month.

Spring breaks?

eurgh...it was a bit of a long weekend for me finishing off with DJ Fresh and Dieselboy at 4.14 on Sunday night. I wasn't really in a mood to go out but ended up quite enjoying it. Preferred Fresh to Dieselboy's more 'in your face' approach. You've got to hand it to the D'n'B faithful of Hiroshima as they turn out time and time again on Sundays or weekdays to party. Thank god I have Monday's off.
Part of the reason for going down on Sunday was to book a DJ for May's 3k. I'll post up the details soon but for now, you can pencil in these dates as myself and GHB bring more tasty breaks to Hiroshima. Apr 15th sees us relaxing at Lotus again for a more laidback 3k, 3k lite if you will. Come and lounge in the brown of Lotus. Then on May 13th it's the real thing back at Edge, where we will then return a month later hopefully with a very special guest. That'll be on a Friday :gulp: I'll confirm all of this as soon as I can. For now, why not get in the mood with ibreaks.co.uk - Breakbeat internet radio. Hopefully see you all out and about sometime soon.

Windcheater E.P. available on BeatPick

As promised, Windcheater's first E.P. is now available on BeatPick. You can visit the artist page and listen to the whole E.P. If you're then wanting to get your own copy it costs £2.50/€3.50 (that's about 500 Yen). It's got 4 tracks on it and they are;

1. Apathetic featuring Susan Doyon

2. Penalise 'em

3. Blank faced groove

4. The Pinch

Also check out other BeatPick artists as I have been doing the last couple of days. They are of a frighteningly high standard and cover a very widespan of genres. It also has a very 'sound' set up. You can read all about that here.

I'll let you all know how it goes, but for now it's nice to know I have a 'release' out there...somewhere :)

E.P.

Windcheater's first E.P. will be out pretty soon on Beatpick. It's not a 'physical' thing but it was cool to be chosen by the label, so, that's 'nice'.
I'll put links up when they're all in place once I've got all the relevant paperwork off. For now, why not have a browse anyway....

Last night I dined on Horse's tongue :) Not bad for a former vegetarian.

Talking out of my arse...

3k won't be around for a little bit longer unfortunately. Edge is pretty fully booked up so it's looking like a May date. Yes May! Hopefully see some of you in Lotus before then.

Apart from that it's hay fever season here (nightmare) and the Heiroglyphics are flavour of the month in the WC studios. Check them out, wickerrrrd.

Sickness permitting....

3k should be back in March. Well, whether or not I'm ill it's sure to be so make sure you check out Hiroshima's original (only?) breaks night. Mark our words, everyone'll be doing it. One day. Read some stuff about the last one here.

Apart from that, I've been battling flu demons and the far worse horrors of trying to build websites. I can kind of see why web designers charge 1000's of pounds now. Although I imagine they are a tad more fluent than I am in their chosen field.

Bought an mp3 off Breakbeat Online the other day. Well worth a look if you are interested in, er, breakbeats. Very easy to use and great quality, long samples for you to check out too.

And that's today's blog.

Feautured artist at Soundlift.com

The nice people at Soundlift.com have decided to feature me on their front page for a week. Lovely stuff.

WINDCHEATER'S SOUNDLIFT PAGE

Occasional confusion - New Track

It's that time again. I finished my latest track today and you can have a listen to a nice 192kbps mp3 of it on my Soundlift Page . It's a breakbeat affair called 'Occasional Confusion' that started out as a remix of an older track called 'Agony Aunt' which I decided to bin, so, I won't be calling it a remix. It's got a new bassline and breaks anyway, plus some samples from older WC songs I plundered. I hope you enjoy it. As always, comments right here will be very much appreciated. If you really can't be arsed to navigate away from this page, you can download a lower quality 128kbps version from HERE.

Hisashiburi

Hello. It's been a while but I've been entertaining these two. Loads of cool pictures of Hiroshima and Japan in general on there if you are at all interested. A couple of hideous ones of me too. It's all gone so fast, I suppose cos I've been working whilst they've been here. This Monday I took a day off though and we went to Iwakuni to see the Kintai-kyo bridge.

Oh how I hate Iwakuni. With it's stupid bridge and it's stupid marines, and it's 3 day old fart, left in a dirty sock, smelly air. Perhaps that's slightly unfair (to the bridge) but I've been there twice now and have felt a bit under the weather both times. This Monday though I felt sufficiently under that weather to decide to come straight home after arriving at aforementioned bastard bendy bridge. What followed was a journey that will probably stand the test of oratory time, like what that Beowulf did. Quick dump and vomit in toilets by Kintai-kyo. Hop on bus, close eyes, sip water, try and ignore corners. Back to Iwakunting station. Bit of a wait for train. Slightly sweaty moment but stayed within dashing distance of toilets and then it's onto the train. Oh the train....with it's complete lack of toilets. WHOSE IDEA WAS THAT? I managed to cope admirably for about 40 minutes. Then within striking distance of an early departure off train and a taxi I started to feel really bad. Remember, no toilet! Horrible horrible waves of nausea, cold sweat and panic.....and then retching. Christ know's what the other mid-Monday passengers thought of me, head in my hands praying to whatever Shinto god protects travellers on bog-less trains from vomiting everywhere. I just about made it. Ran off the train and into the toilets to.......not be sick. Ahem. So it was into a taxi, deliriously tell him he was going the wrong way (when he wasn't) and home. From this point it was a fairly regular: bed (shivering cold) to toilet, back to bed (freezing) to bathroom to vomit as if possesed by the devil. And repeat. Until the wonderful nurses Andy and Sam arrived to feed me drugs which stopped me being sick and plugged me up until the morning..... erm, I then got very very hot and had a very very weird night. Poor Sam got it too. What was it? Answers on a postcard please, I'm scared of doctors. So, what with that, my chums leaving and other stuff, it's not been a great start to February.
Here's to the next 11 months. Stay healthy people.

Blogs

They're taking over aren't they? Well not really, but they're pretty damned popular as everyone in the world spews forth the rubbish floating around inside their heads. Speak for yourself...

Anyway, a couple for you to peruse; Today, at 10am my good friend Andy (aka Chem7) touched down in Tokyo. Along with Sam, the two of them are starting a yearlong round the world trip with a month in Japan. They arrive in Hiroshima on Saturday. I can't wait. When I lived in Madrid I could set my watch by visitors. For obvious reasons I haven't had so many in Japan and Andy and Sam are really the first people from back 'home' who have come to spend time here. You can follow their adventures right here on their camply titled Andy and Sam blog. Andy/Chem7 was the person who patiently guided WC through his first tentative steps in music making and whilst they may think I'm going to be showing them round Hiroshima, it's straight to Shimomura music for equipment then back to the PAO Sumiyoshi sudios for more tutorials. Bwahahahaha.

Right. Then there is Wide Island (nice name). All about one man and his family and the city of Hiroshima. I'm not a great blog reader but this one is well worth checking out. The bastard can really, really write. And he's funny. Very funny. I'm glad to say I share two things in common with the author of said blog:
1. We live in the same place. I don't just mean Hiroshima, our houses are a minute's stroll away from each other. I even crashed my bike into the wall opposite his house.
2. We once reviewed a urinal together for Japanese TV. Yep, that's something no one, and I mean, NO ONE, will ever be able to take away from us.

Futsukayoi no ato de

As you might have guessed from my post last night (this morning) I had quite a good time yesterday. It's a night I won't be forgetting in a long time and one that left me slightly drunkenly incoherent. I haven't danced that much in years either. A natural high I think it's called. I cycled home (very slowly) at about 5ish via Peace Park where I took some stunningly bad photos of the A-bomb dome looking like some kind of demented early bird tourist. I wonder what the good folk at the Udon-ya think of us too, turning up every couple of weeks and taking photos of each other. Back at home the obvious thing to do is to have another drink, watch a bit more Hifana, and then your favourite bits from Spirited Away, drunkenly cry at them and then go to bed. Ah! A life of tortured artistry. Oh well, all good clean fun.

Back to the gig; The Spins kicked things off and were, as always excellent. Bom plays bass aswell. He seems to pick up a new skill monthly. A bit of DJing followed (a tad too hard maybe for that time of the night? my only slight niggle) and then the stage was Tucker's. If you've never heard of Tucker, perhaps if you imagine a (nutty) teenage boy in his bedroom, picking up (and setting fire to) whatever instrument comes to hand and playing along to some of his parents old records, you might get some kind of idea of what his live show is like. And if you want to get some audience participation going, why not write down the word you want the crowd to shout out. On the bottom of your organ. That you are playing. Just lift it up, no worries.
Normally an act like that would be hard to follow, but Hifana are more than a match. I struggle to find words to express just how good they are at what they do. And does anyone else do what they do? Electronic percussionists? Turntablists? Breakbeat unit? Musicians? Talented bastards. I'm amazed they aren't massive in Europe yet. When they are discovered I'm sure they will be. With the fantastic visuals of Gec and a lot of humour thrown in for good measure too, they left WC a very happy bunny indeed. 4.14 was rammed and from the snatches I remember of the drunken conversations I had last night, I think a lot of people left feeling the same way as me. Keizo Machine and Juicy I salute you. Many many thanks to Niteowl for bringing them to town. I'll try and write a sensible review of the night for GH very soon. They'll publish anything ;)

For now though, why not enjoy a ramble through WC's wobbly night through the medium of photos.

Udonya no ato de

Well, they werealways going to be good but I don't think I've appreciated a night like I did tonight in a very very long time.
I'll write a review of it soon, but for now, Otsukare to the Spins, the nutter that is Tucker, Keizo Machine and Juicy.
Arigatou gozaimashita

Windcheater demo CD

Today Windcheater entered the, er, 15th century and got a printer. Finally, finally the demo CDs that have been sat in the cupboard have beautifully legible labels that tell you amongst other things, what WC's email address is and where the website can be found. It's only taken me 6 months. Time for some thanks then....
Firstly to Jun (Green Youth Society) for his fantastic artwork and for printing out the covers for free when I know he's a busy bee. He'll be off on his travels soon, be sure to keep up to date on them right here. A big arigatou too to Messyman who's becoming a bit of a regular on this blog with his mastering skills. Then there's Susan Doyon, she of the lovely voice on Apathetic which takes pride of place at the beginning of the CD. Thanks for all your efforts guys :bow:
The CD has 3 tracks on it (1. Apathetic, 2. Penalise 'em, 3. Blank faced groove) and is available from nowhere right now. Plans may well be afoot to change that though.
Seeing as I'm talking about ME I do have another track at a very advanced stage. I'm quite pleased with it, and I'll post it up here when it's done.

My music aside it's only 2 days until Hifana fly into town. Getting very excited about this now as yesterday I bought the Zamurai TV DVD. Inspirational stuff. I'll write more on it after the weekend but for now have a watch of the trailer. Beatboxing and tap dancing. It's the way forward.