The Hippodrome

I honestly spit out my tea when I saw this video. This is Tim and Eric meets Andrew W.K., shamisen style. The best parts are the shots of the refined Japanese gentlefolk nodding in tentative approval. And the breakdown around :50 is priceless.

These guys are seriously signed to Domo, so no drome feature in the cards here. Jokes aside, the shamisen playing is flawless, but seems like an arpeggiator with a “Japanese” patch plugged in. This is kind of a shame when you consider their undeniable virtuosity and the subtlety of the traditional art form.

I don’t really have a problem with the fact that people eat up cheesy music by virtue of one gimmick, but what does sadden me is that The Yoshida Brothers are treated as gods in Japan. They’re far more recognizable than the countless and starving traditional shamisen players who live in anonymity. It’s great that more people will even be exposed to shamisen, but isn’t it a shame that the world works like this?

Glitchy grimey techno poured over concrete? No better way to enter the holiday season.

Manu Delago is an Austrian musician that plays the Hang, a beautiful Swiss percussion instrument. Apparently, Hang drums are extremely hard to come by, since only two people in the world know how to make them. I don’t think Delago is one of them, but nonetheless, this solo performance is pretty sweet.

Although I have no knowledge of traditional Hang music, I think it’s really interesting how Delago seems to naturally gravitate toward a drum and bass/nu-jazz feel, even though he’s on his own. I don’t know if that was a conscious decision, but one could probably make a statement about how modern genres have permeated old ways and blah blah blah . . .

It was hard to pick only one of my good buddy’s videos to showcase here, but I decided to post “Four Corners” for its homemade charm and vintage vibe. Unfortunately, Ben doesn’t have that mohawk anymore. Tell me about it.

I bet you’re starting to enjoy bad quality videos of awesome quality bands. This is fellow Wesleyanite George Pritzker’s band, Japandi. I had the good fortune of seeing them perform last night, and was so mathed out afterwards I couldn’t even do my algebra homework.