Hang on the Box | "No Sexy"

Listen to "No Sexy"

An article I wrote about Hang on the Box, China's first all-girl punk unit, just went live at Burning Ambulance. Read it here.

Ezra

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Kojima Mayumi | Me and My Monkey on the Moon

Listen to "セシルカットブルース" ("Cecil's Blues Cut")


Listen to "あの娘の彼" ("That Girl of His")

Get the 21-song retrospective aqui.

Well, lookee here: It's a fabulous collection of 1990s singles and rarities from one of our all-time favorite Shibuya-kei artists, Kojima Mayumi. I found this lovely item in Shibuya itself, almost certainly at one of the smaller indie used CD places dotting the Tokyo neighborhood's outskirts.

I'm currently cooling my heels with family in Corvallis, Oregon, where I'll be boxing up the "literally thousands of" (actually more like 20 or 30) Cambodian, Lao, Thai and Vietnamese CDs I found last week on Foster Road in Portland. If I find any of the covers online I'll go ahead and post while I'm here; but pretty much, if I do manage to post over the holidays, I'll be limiting myself to items like today's offering: Stuff I've already got on my computer but, for whatever reason, haven't yet shared with y'all yet.

Sezen Aksu | Serçe

Listen to "Ölürsem Yazıktır" 

Get the 2-CD album here. 

Perhaps because Portland is constantly overcast and drizzly, Stumptowners compensate with high-end coffee and music to cut through the gloom--you can't hold out your arms and flap them frantically like a baby chick crazily anticipating  regurgitated worms without hitting someone in the face who has just walked out of a record store on their way to a coffee shop.

Seriously, I have never seen so many record stores in my life. Two days ago, at one of the biggest (Everyday Music, 1931 NE Sandy Boulevard) I found a used copy of Sezen Aksu's second album, Serçe (Sparrow), which I've been searching for for years. 

I'd write more about it, but my friend and Portland host Rodney is throwing me a cocktail party that is set to begin in--eek!--15 minutes. Meanwhile, you can read a bit about Aksu, and get her first record, here. 

Tuấn Anh | Rau Dắng Mọc Sau Hè

 

Listen to "Rap: Vo chong lam bieng"

Get it all here.

Greetings from Beervana! Forgive my absence these last several days, but I'm on the road for the next couple of weeks, currently in Portland, Oregon, where dear friends have been shuttling me from one Southeast Asian media store to the next. I was not aware of this before, but the City of Roses has quite a significant population of people from Cambodia, Laos, Thailand and Vietnam--and I've been grabbing up music from each of these places to restock the shelves of the old bodega.

I will not be posting too much while on the road, mainly because I lack a scanner. However, in cases where I'm able to find images of the covers online, I'll do my best to keep this humble blog active during the holidays.

I found today's offering by Tuấn Anh at a wee Vietnamese media store nestled in Fubonn Shopping Center off SE 82nd Ave, in what is more or less Bridgetown's current Chinatown. I know nothing about Anh other than that he's got a Facebook page and is apparently very popular among the Vietnamese living in this area. The rap song above (one of two on this album) is a duet with Family Love member Christian Le; most of the songs on this CD are not, however, rap, despite the groovy drop-out white letters on the pink field in the bottom right-hand area of the cover.

That's it for now--I've got a hot date with the biggest bookstore in the continental United States, where I'm hoping to flesh out the International Music section of my modest book collection.