Koji Kondo, Nobuo Uematsu, Nobuyuki Hara, Yuzo Koshiro, Masato Nakamura, Koichi Sugiyama, Kraftwerk, Steve Roach, Air, Susumu Yokota, Ray Lynch, Quasi, Angelo Badalamenti, Julee Cruise, Radiohead, Sigur Ros, Brian Eno, Nine Inch Nails, David Bowie, Grandaddy, Oasis, Pink Floyd, Van Halen's 1984, Mozart, The Beatles, GBV, Bach, Le Tigre, Sean Lennon, Vangelis, all the video game music that warped my mind as a child, the eternal mystery of British musical superiority, Dayton's beautiful skyline.
somethingambient is the culmination of two and a half years of work on the part of James Webster, or HCMJ. Guitarist and vocalist for Dayton fantasycore space rockers, The Sailing, HCMJ combines elements of many forms of electronic music and fuses them with brit pop sensibility. In its conception, somethingambient was meant to be a soundtrack of contemporary video game music, the video game being the life of its creator. It soon ballooned into a double disc project chronicling a cosmic coming of age, and a lament for the loss of the sleepwalking life of a child. The result is a sort of wavering synth opera, built from flowing dreary chords cascading like mist over the snowdrifts around a drafty window on a cold winter's day. Each song is a little universe, telling a single fractured piece of one man's journey to escape the terrestrial boundaries of his mind. Like transmissions sent from far beyond the Jovian giants, the scale of the universe and the depth of heartache are explored in this two disc opus. At the center of the story we find our hero locked in a space capsule, voluntarily jetting away from earth – with nothing but a synthesizer as a companion. As he passes each planet, he sends back the music he's created. Each song reflecting on the story of lost love and uncertain joy that was his life before the voyage, set to the background of the infinite expanse of space. The result is something beautiful, something haunting, somethingambient.
What's even cooler, I was thinking compared to American fascination with Japanese culture is Japanese fascination with American culture. They are captivated by PAF humbuckers from the 1950's, nike, Levi's, words like radical dude. I read that gibson first released the PAF burstbucker pickup in the 1990's in Japan. They are fascinated with vintage original spec gibson guitars especially the 1959 model. I mean that kind of stuff I am interested in too.
btw...that was just plain rude you little street punk... i have seen you around. i know exactly who you are, and dont think for a second your mothers not going to hear about this. whered youd get that dirty mouth? looks like someone is past due for a dentist appointment. why i outta... ill show you...
...just stopped by to wish you a Happy New Year and remind you that now is the accepted time to make your annual new years resolutions (next week we can begin forgetting them as usual!)... HAPPY NEW YEAR!!!
