Space Bio DUH or the Greatest Journey I’ll (Probably) Never Make
I like anime music. I like Yoko Kanno’s anime music, very much so. I read Mai’s very excellent Kanno blog regularly. So why did my mind “click” just only now?
Let me elaborates some. I like live music a lot–thanks to my proximity to one of the best music scenes in the world, I can actually catch a lot of interesting acts playing live. It’s not cheap to go to them, but I find myself increasingly preferring a more consummating experience like a good concert rather than buying a CD of the same band. Occasionally I even forgo buying the CDs completely and do lives instead. There are various reasons for this, but let’s just generally chalk it up to my affinity to live music.
Yoko Kanno is one of the gateway drug, so to speak, for my mild addiction to anime music. It’s not just soundtrack stuff, as you know, because Kanno is prolific at making pop and all kind of weird stuff as well. Over the 20+ years she has produced, scored, played, conducted, performed or otherwise got associated with favorites after favorites, that it has gotten to a point where I set her apart from everyone else that do anime music. It’s gotten so ludicrous, that I don’t even find her all that fascinating, adorable or worthy anymore, but outright like a force of nature. It’s like the sun–it sustains life, but we take it for granted far most of the time. Her work in this landscape of modern, JapaneseAsian visual culture is something that will always be a defining factor personally. Even if it’s a small, relatively quiet corner of it all.
So comes Space Bio Charge. If you didn’t know, it’s a “best-of-Yoko Kanno” 3-disc set that has basically one or more favorite piece from nearly every anime piece she scored, ever. Why the best collection release?
Supposedly, the best collection CDs are to go with the 7/7 show. Yes, SKUs to promote a show. It is a part of a blitz campaign for a concert on July 7th. The concert is going to play songs lifted from Space Bio Charge…?
There are some other strange marketing ploys for this show, including a weird promotion video with Tim Jensen in it, the funky Seatbelts website, and all the numerology. It ties in also with the CMYoko promotions as well, which are two other CD compilations (available on iTunes, actually…) from Yoko Kanno’s commercial music portfolio. The second disc came out just a couple months back, and the first disc came out about end of last year.
So, back to clicking. It just occurred to me this might be the most awesome anison event of…the past 20 years. Those Animelo anime summer lives and the new Lantis Fest are great and all, but the 7/7 concert is going to be so much more. Just look at the list of performers for yourself. Factoring the fact that Kanno just hasn’t done any tours or anything like that for her own work, this show is probably an once-in-a-lifetime event.
And there won’t be a DVD of this. What a grave sin!
Anyone got a spare ticket?
Too bad Anime Expo ends on the 5th, because the most epic opportunity would be a (paid) live stream to the convention center. Here’s to an awesome 日本人 streaming a live phone/cam version online. *clink clink*
Alex: Maybe NND can help out with that? :3
@TheBigN
One can only hope. That would solidify my attendance at AX 2009 for sure because as of now, I’ve no real reason to go :P
Anyone wants to go with me? Let me know by Friday.