IED0DXM%UCLAMVS.BITNET@WISCVM.ARPA (08/04/86)
Organization: Subject: KT-shirt design; and: enKa aT love-hounds? >It has always my impression that the submarine sonar sounds indicate >that Kate is rescued by a submarine. After all, we have the voice >telling us that "somewhere in the depth, there is a light", then we >hear submarine sounds, and then Kate is safe on land again. Thanks, Doug. Great point which IED applauds, is excited by, and feels dumb for not having thought of on his own. Subject: KT-shirts Well, here's IED's latest idea for a T-shirt design: F R O N T _________/ \__________ | Love-Hounds | < this line in HoL script | An International | |______ Kate Bush ______| < These lines in upper- | Computer Forum | and lower-case block | ___________ | print, taking up less | | 9th Wave | | space than as shown; | | or | | | | gold key | | | | photo here| | | |___________| | | | | | | | |___________________| B A C K ---------/ \---------- | | | | These lines in |______ ...With a kiss I'd ______| Hounds of Love | pass the key... | < script, unless | | someone can do | --__--__--_ -/_ | J.C. Bush-style | || /// | calligraphy | |// | | | \\ | The logo roughly | | \\ | < drawn, or as though | | \\\ | painted on; N.B.: | || \\ | unwise to copy KBC | | logo exactly |___________________| Fu-Sheng brings up a good point, namely, that the official cover photos are likely to get us into trouble if we use them on a t-shirt. At the very least, they won't exactly be a hit at future official conventions, etc. What we really need is a very simple black-and-white (or at least very high contrast, sharp-edged), unofficial snapshot of Kate. Concerning Michael Knight's idea of a logo: Great, but does it have to be a dog? Wouldn't a monogram design command more respect from the KognoscenTi? >Another Japanese music fan. Good taste, IED. Have you tried following >the YMO clan as solos? Quite an expensive hobby, but worthwhile. Are >there other LH "Nipponophiles" out there? (Well, Doug, you said anything goes, but you didn't know what you were letting the L-Hs in for:) Yes, John, IED has all of Hosono, Sakamoto, Takahashi, even Kenji Omura, Akira Mitake, Plastics and Melon, Tachibana, Urban Dance and Shi-Shonen (prod. Hosono), Akiko Yano, Sandii, etc. Not that he thinks all of this stuff is good -- he dislikes early Hosono and Takahashi's Sadistic Mika Band stuff, that pre-YMO L.A./Little Feat stuff is awful, or at least very dull. To IED's ears, BGM was the first really significant Japanese pop LP. Technodelic even finer. Naughty Boys was a retrogression in terms of attitude, though not production-wise. Neuromantic was exceptional, but Takahashi's style hasn't fundamentally changed since then, only gotten more and more enka-ish (i.e. schlocky) -- although his sound is always first-rate. As for Sakamoto, he's too inconsistent as a solo musician for this taste; Esperanto was excellent, as was B-2 Unit, but Left-Handed Dream and The Arrangement, as well as Picture Book Music (Illustrated Musical Encyclopedia) and the latest (Miraiho Yaru, or Futurista) all show deplorable American-cum-Akiko Yano influence. (Yano herself, reputedly the "Japanese Kate Bush, is, IED thinks, tiresome, silly and MOR, "Rose Garden" excepted.) Hosono is great from Philharmony on, although SFX and The Making of Non-Standard Music are admittedly very light. His ambient LPs -- El Nokto in Galaxia, Co-Incidental Music, Mercuric Dance, Paradise View, The Endless Talking -- are very well done, but there's enough of it now to last a lifetime. As for Shi-Shonen and Urban Dance, well, they're not great artistic successes. Interiors are a bit better, but not very expert. P-Model and Friction are execrable, and Phew! is respectable but dull. Both of Miharu Koshi's LPs are of the highest quality, and IED has a weakness for the Susan's two Takahashi-produced LPs: Do You Believe in Mazik? and The Girl Can't Help It. IED's personal favorite from Japan is Ippu-Do's Night Mirage, which is exquisite in its details, and gloriously effete and aestheticist. Tsuchiya's Rice Music was very respectable, though not as potent as Night Mirage, but his latest (?), Tokyo Ballet, is too main-stream rock for this listener, despite one or two very refined tracks. Equally fine, though only tangentially related, of course, is late Japan, and its members' various solo releases. The best of these are Sylvian's Brilliant Trees and Jansen/Barbieri's regrettably brief Worlds in a Small Room (Japanese-only import). Steve Jansen has reportedly released an album with Yukihiro Takahashi in Japan, and IED has heard that a 12" single from it has even been seen briefly in Tower, although his searches have always proved futile. It is called "Stay Close". And of course Sylvian has released his next single, from the forthcoming double-LP (hope that doesn't mean cuts will be deleted from the CD): Gone to Earth. Does John Lorch collect CDs of any of the above? IED suspects that Night Mirage, Live and Zen, Rice Music, Tokyo Ballet, Tutu, Parallelisme, Neuromantic, B-2 Unit and Immigrants are all out on CD in Japan, but for some confounded reason no-one in the U.S. is making any effort to import them. Does John or anyone else out there know anything about this issue? Even more important, does anyone know if there has been anything new from Susan or from Miharu Koshi since, respectively, The Girl Can't Help It and Parallelisme? The Japanese are so prolific that it seems unlikely there hasn't been a lot of stuff from them in the past two years. The problem in L.A. is that The Other Side Records, which specialized in Japanese imports, folded with the advent of CDs, which have ruined the audiophile end of the Japanese import business.