Wednesday, March 30, 2011

Indie is In!*12








...as the answer to life’s great quest.


the portastylistic




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Indie is In!
*vol 12


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Noah and the Whale - Last Night on Earth (2011)


*I Proud To Recommended!!!*

"fun fun fun"
into
"sun sun sun"



Full disclosure: I am actually a sucker for the whistling, uke-strumming, hand-jiving, oversaturated super-8 montage, matching-outfits twee of Noah and the Whale's breakout single "5 Years Time". Which I guess makes me part of the reason this crap winds up in car commercials. Sorry. But that song was animated by exactly how close it crept up to the line of preciousness without tumbling into full-on Pomplamoose territory, and even if it was only a trifle, nothing else on their first two albums came close to its sugary stickiness.

In fact, Noah and the Whale's sophomore album, The First Days of Spring, deliberately turned away from that sort of thing, opting instead for a glummer, stripped, and slowed-down acoustic sound. If both these albums relied on a certain hand-crafted feel to derive their small charms, new album Last Night on EarthThe First Days of Spring was their Science of Sleep (maudlin, sluggish), then the new album is their Green Hornet in 3D-- although that would all assume they had Michel Gondry's appeal in the first place.

The change is immediately apparent on opener "Life Is Life"; the song begins with a lapping synth arpeggio and drum machine sputters before building up to big buzzing synth chords, echoing grand piano, and-- why the hell not?-- a gospel choir. Everything that follows is equally blown up, and the arrangements are frequently lovely, but the songwriting at the center of it all doesn't exactly merit such widescreen treatment. Over obvious changes and neatly resolving chord progressions, bandleader Charlie Fink sings stock rockisms and bland platitudes: "Tonight's the kind of night where everything could change"; "baby, she's a wild thing"; "you got heart, and you're going your own way." Fink's singing is fine, but he's abandoned the folksy British accent audible on the band's early albums to settle into a kind of vast, unremarkable singer-songwriter flyover country.

At its best, and on lead single "L.I.F.E.G.O.E.S.O.N.", Fink aims for a kind of Tom Petty story-song vibe, with broadly painted characters ("she's a rock and roll survivor with pendulum hips") and a classic Americana sense of the possibility in the great wide open, even one littered with cautionary tales. The first half of the album is written almost entirely in third person narratives, and it begins to give the album the feel of a world looked at not through its protagonist's eyes but through a camera's lens. This trick holds up enough so that when the album shifts to first person on the flipside, it feels like Fink is inhabiting roles rather than just spilling his own guts.

Even at their best, though, Noah and the Whale struggle to overcome a trying-too-hard odor that permeates everything they do right down to that ill-advised band name. Here, they've lost both the rinky-dink whimsy of their debut (save for a little xylophone melody on "Give It All Back") and the subdued strength of its follow-up, splitting the difference to arrive at an album that's as artfully inflated as it is vacuous and forgettable. Believe it or not, it may actually make you yearn for the simpler times of "fun fun fun" in the "sun sun sun."

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Gruff Rhys - Hotel Shampoo (2011)


*I Proud To Recommended!!!*

"Creative wanderlust!"


Enjoying the more eccentric quarters of Gruff Rhys's colorful back catalogue hinge's on one's tolerance for his loose wordplay and peculiar themes. Rhys's last departure from Super Furry Animals, a culture-colliding collaboration with Brazilian VCR repairman Tony da Gatorra, was perhaps his most off-the-wall effort to date, packed to the gunwales with influences and ideas that would have been best left on the cutting room floor. Hotel Shampoo, then, catches the plucky Welsh songster in a mercifully modest mood, and is replete with comparatively straightforward songwriting and some surprisingly charming couplets.

But, as ever, there's nothing totally straightforward about any album bearing Rhys's name: He markets his latest as an attempt to "buy a suit and record an album of piano ballads," neglecting to mention his affinity for sprightly mariachi brass sections and a newfound penchant for über-sexy saxophone solos. And while this could be the closest Rhys ever comes to making a truly "mature" album, his quirky personality and giddy experimentation are still very much at the fulcrum of Hotel Shampoo. God forbid he ever grows up completely.

Given that Rhys has restlessly toured the globe for over a decade, and having recently spent an extended period of time in Patagonia last year tracing his estranged relatives, it's no surprise that his music incorporates a broad range of sounds. That Hotel Shampoo doesn't sound messy is a marvel in itself, for this album exists in cultural and stylistic limbo. One minute we're bouncing to "Sensations in the Dark" (an exotic jaunt with steel pans and mariachi horns lifted from Super Furry Animals's "Northern Lites") and the next we're sucked into "Vitamin K," a pensive nouveaux chamber-pop song complete with one of those aforementioned saxophone breaks and some superb tremolo cello work. "Shark Ridden Waters" plays like a spacey pseudo-Bond theme, an unruffled psychedelic number plucked from any decade in any galaxy you care to imagine. Rhys always seems comfortable in any environment he chooses to lay his scene, but refuses to settle into any particular sound throughout the course of the album.

Thematically, too, Rhys plays fast and loose with whatever tickles his fancy: "Space Dust #2" may represent the very peak of his storytelling prowess, as he spins an enticing yarn of star-crossed lovers falling for each other—and then gradually drifting apart—at a science conference. Sarah Assbring, the endlessly talented Swedish pop prodigy behind El Perro del Mar, is the Juliet to Rhys's everyman Romeo, and the pair trade call-and-repeat lines atop a honeyed matinée melody: She bemoans "You upped and left without warning," to which he nonchalantly replies, "I had to work in the morning." This track is full of pert witticism, and the two establish a fantastic repartee that will all but erase memories of Rhys's overblown jousting with de Gatorra last year.

Hotel Shampoo strikes a happy medium between Rhys's two personas. Here, he paces up and down his recording studio like a mad scientist at one minute, and playing the modish master of the lounge ballad on the other. Many of these tracks could well have featured on any Super Furry Animals record, but there's no question that they're also right at home here. Hotel Shampoo is terrific, neatly channeling all of Rhys's wonderful eccentricities into an intelligent pop record.

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OST.Submarine (2011)


*I Proud To Recommended!!!*

"by Alex Turner"


Bright eyed, tousle-headed, with a look halfway between penitence and innocence, Submarine star Craig Roberts stares back at you from the cover of Alex Turner's soundtrack to the buzzy indie comedy. The two make quite a pair; young Roberts looks a bit like Turner did when we first met him and the Arctic Monkeys five years ago. But Turner's not a young man anymore, and over the years, the the cynical smirk with which he greeted everything on those early Arctics records has threatened to turn to a scowl. On title alone, the forthcoming Arctic Monkeys album Suck It and See doesn't offer much confidence that above-it-all hasn't finally given way to fuck-it-all. But the songs he's written for Submarine-- the story of 15-year-old Roberts navigating the cusp of manhood-- find Turner sounding more revived, more assured, and in a sense, more himself than he has for some time.

Submarine collects five and a half new Turner songs-- a few lilting ballads with minimal adornment, and a couple of mid-tempo pop tunes often calling to mind the spare, stately beauty of Turner's countryman Richard Hawley. It's a brief, fairly unassuming set, pulling back on both the Monkeys' linguistic barrage and the symphonic flourishes that Turner and Miles Kane deploy in the Last Shadow Puppets. He's long been an ace at the narrative lyric, unspooling yarns into tangled, cutting slices-of-life. But with the film providing the storyline, Turner's lyrics tend toward impressionistic details and wallflower observations, filling in the picture rather than trying to retell the script in song. Though some of these stray lines can feel a bit adrift without a plot, Turner's keen wit and eye for detail coalesces into a tender portrayal of that resolute adolescent uncertainty, of figuring things out as they go.

Highlight "Hiding Tonight" succinctly captures that uniquely teenage feeling that tomorrow is bound to be transformative, so worry can wait. "Glass in the Park" sounds like a lazy afternoon between two young lovers, whispering impossibly grand promises to each other. "It's Hard to Get Around the Wind" is a touch more inscrutable, a Dylanesque puzzler that touches on desert spoons, X-Men pinball, and coming to terms with fate. Here, the images get a bit tough to follow line for line, but the overarching notion that we're forced to accept some things we don't understand comes through clearly enough. "Stuck on the Puzzle" is the set's most musically straightforward track, with a fuller sound bolstered by psych-pop flourishes. Closer "Piledriver Waltz" tells an odd tale of breakfast at the Heartbreak Hotel and reminding someone, "If you're gonna try to walk on water, make sure to wear your comfortable shoes." "Waltz," which Turner intends to revive on Suck It, proves the set's lone dip in quality; its parade of images is a tad too clarity averse, although it gets by on the constant motion of its melody.

Matched to this sophisticated, admirably restrained music, Turner's SubmarineHumbug and the early Suck It songs, Submarine's rich, reminiscent tone finds Turner sounding very much at ease with himself and his talents, offering a swift but satisfying glimpse at that same charming, circumspect young man we knew back when.

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Saturday, March 26, 2011

Portastudio Playlist: A COSY SOUNDTRACK FOR WEEKEND+Live Session 61







A COSY SOUNDTRACK
FOR WEEKEND

+LIVE SESSION 61



portastudio

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On this week's+live session Sixty-one we welcome for a second time is Ingrid Olava
joining us in the Playlist return to the show to perform a live music set
emotional song of Scandinavia in the spring while she writes her third from the
green festival fields next summer. while singer-songwriter folk live music set.

The Cosy weekend playlist brings together exclusive live music
from our favourite
Artists cosy sound throughout the Quiet night life of weekend.



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ARTIST
THIS WEEK IN PLAYLIST


Ingrid Olava
Uh-oh..Oslo childhood is a story so on the money for a musician.
She later gave up her psychology degree to pursue songwriting.
"If I should have a motto for my music it would be beauty with sharp edges,"
says the 29-year-old.
By the Soundtrack Weekend inaugural music guideline,
with exclusive live music from Portastudio's playlist,
so conclude+Live music performing at the perfect way and
welcome to your life join with the cosy music performs
a set of songs on your cosy weekend night!


{01} 'Warrior Song' | {02} 'Involve Yourself' | {03} 'Only Just Begun'


{04} 'Back To Love' | *{05} 'Chasing Pavements' | **{06} 'Cold Water'
*+Covers Adele
**+Duet with Damien Rice

*{07} 'Don`t Give Up' | **{08} 'Because' | {09} 'The Queen'
*+Duet with Thom Hell
**+ft, with Lillo Stenberg & Thom Hell

{10} 'Treasure and Pain' | {11} 'Den verdensomspennende øltest'
{12} 'No love' | {13} 'You'll Never Walk Alone'

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—RECENT +live SESSION

ARCHIVES

Catch up with previous +live sessions of A COSY SOUNDTRACK FOR WEEKEND Series

+LIVE SESSION 60
20 March 2011
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+LIVE SESSION 59
12 March 2011
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+LIVE SESSION 58
5 March 2011
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+LIVE SESSION 57
26 February 2011
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Listen to A COSY SOUNDTRACK FOR WEEKEND
ALL +LIVE SESSION REVIEW
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—ABOUT A COSY PLAYLIST
In 2010, the Portastudio Playlist proud to presents A Cosy Soundtrack For Weekend+live Session, Is a cosy music smart playlist and feature interviews. From our panel which also includes selected by the Portastylistic. We focus on the inaugural music guideline, Our favourite musical talent with exclusive live music from around the world to the week ahead.

This Cosy life night weekend for your experience cosy music playlist with some familiar on your cosy night in pop sensation. our panel which also includes selected by the Portastylistic.

A Cosy Soundtrack For Weekend+live Session goes live every Saturday at 8pm. Bkk, Thailand time on Mixpod and right here at theportastylistic.blogspot.com.
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Some rights reserved
PORTASTUDIO PLAYLIST
A COSY SOUNDTRACK FOR WEEKEND +LIVE SESSION
BY

The
PORTASTYLISTIC


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EVERYDAY HAS A SOUNDTRACK!

-the portastylistic





Porta's Look!...Honokaa boy, ホノカアボーイ — novel by Leo Yoshida





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Honokaa boy
ホノカアボーイ
novel by Leo Yoshida






Based loosely on the autobiographical novel by Leo Yoshida, Honokaa Boy tells the coming-of-age story of Leo, a Japanese college student, who, while on vacation with his girlfriend, falls in love with the sleepy Hawaii town of Honokaa. Six months since his initial visit, looking to find himself and no longer together with his tiresome girlfriend, Leo returns to Honokaa, taking a job as a projectionist at the local theater. While doing odd jobs, he quickly befriends the local community of quirky elderly Japanese residents, including porn-loving Koichi and the elderly confectioner and home gourmand Bee. He also keeps his eye on local beauty Mariah and her frequent fights with her boyfriend. During this seemingly directionless year abroad, Leo falls in and out of love and through heartbreak, reconciliation and loss, he sees the many faces of love and friendship and learns their true meaning. Filmed entirely in the scenic town of Honokaa on the north shore of the island of Hawaii, Honokaa Boy makes its premiere on the U.S. mainland at the 10th Annual DC APA Film Festival. — Sunbin Song

INTRODUCTION

Talent gravitated to the creation of the film version of Leo Yoshida’s “Honokaa Boy” as if drawn to a magnet. It was like a miracle. The screenplay was written by hit CM producer Takuma Takasaki. Food Coordinator Naomi Takayama added her gentle touch and delicious aroma to the set. Popular female photographer Orie Ichihashi provided the imagery, light as air. And Moichi Kuwahara, Takuji Aoyagi and Umitaro Abe transformed the mellow island breeze into music. And finally, the director, Atsushi Sanada, (Ne, Marimo (starring Aoi Miyazaki) short film in the omnibus All About My Dog) known both at home and abroad for his warmhearted, humorous commercials, rounded out the creative team.

The entire movie was shot in Honokaa -a small town on the north shore of the Big Island of Hawaii -with the help and cooperation of the mostly Japanese American locals.
Through the symbiosis of both fictional and real characters in actual Honokaa Town, a wonderfully warm, somehow Hawaiian movie version of Honokaa was born. “It’s like a fantasy film”... “like science fiction, with a nostalgic feel to it”... were some of the comments about the film. By the end of the six week shoot, they had blended in with the local scenery.

Starring in the film is the most sensational young talent of the year, Masaki Okada. His refreshing, gentle character is the embodiment of “Leo” as he comes into his own in the film. Opposite Okada is veteran actress Chieko Baisho, who fit the role of Bee so perfectly that the writer of the original work, Leo Yoshida, broke into tears and hugged her the minute he saw her. Keiko Matsuzaka plays the cute gourmand, Edeli, and homegrown Jun Hasegawa plays the local girl who Leo falls for. They are flanked by Koishi Kimi, Terue Shoji, Yu Aoi, and Eri Fukatsu, who come together to create an aura of familiarity to Honokaa. In the vast landscape of the Big Island where everything becomes one with the wind, the lines of the story and reality begin to blur...




STORY
Leo (Masaki Okada) is a young man with no sense of personal space. He comes to Hawaii because his girlfriend (Yu Aoi) wants to see a moonbow -a rainbow over the moon.
“Did you know that the island of Hawaii and the Hawaiian Islands are two different things?” she asks, exasperated.
She’s moody. He’s quiet. Their trip is awkward. He has a bad habit of clamming up when put on the spot...

6 months later, Leo finds himself living in Honokaa, a town they stumbled upon while driving around and getting lost on the Big Island. Life is full of surprises. He becomes an assistant to a movie projectionist in a small theater. Then one day, Leo meets the biggest prankster in town, an old lady named Bee(Chieko Baisho). Their meeting leads to an invitation. “I’ll cook you dinner from now on”, says Bee. It was the beginning of everything.

Bee is happy to have Leo around. He has a good appetite and enjoys her cooking. He is almost like family -other than her cat. Their daily ritual is like sharing a secret language, drawing out a natural, charming side of Bee.

Then one day, Leo falls for a girl named Mariah, (Jun Hasegawa) a pretty local girl who is quick to laugh. Who would have known that her presence would trigger such dramatic consequences...?
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CHARACTERS

Buzz (Chaz Mann)
Leo’s boss, the non-communicative movie projectionist.
He’s a man of few words, but also sweet and big-hearted.
He’s also big-bodied. And clumsy.

James (Tom Suzuki)
A living fossil. The oldest man in Honokaa is also the popcorn vendor
at Edeli’s movie theater. Part of his charm is the time lag in his conversations.

Koichi (Koishi Kimi)
Leo’s friend who is always sitting on the curb thumbing through Japanese porn magazines. Leo digs Koichi’s idle, yet cool banter.

Chako (Eri Fukatsu)
The “annoying” heroine of Bee’s favorite daytime soap.
She’s unlucky in love and always clinging to “loser” guys.

Mizue (Terue Shoji)
The owner of the local barber shop. Her haircuts depend on her mood.
Notorious for uneven sideburns, sometimes by as much as 3 centimeters.
The creator of the “Honokaa Boy Cut” (self proclaimed)

Edeli (Keiko Matsuzaka)
The biggest gourmand in Honokaa and the owner of the local movie theater.
She’s kindhearted, always cheerful and crazy about Hawaii -- thus, she married Buzz and settled in Honokaa. A good friend and confidante of Leo.

Kaoru (Yu Aoi)
Leo’s girlfriend who drags him to the Big Island, only to end up in a fight.
A modern girl who can’t live without her cell phone. She’s amazed that the island of Hawaii and the Hawaiian Islands are two different things.

Tom (Leo Yoshida)
Mariah’s unemployed boyfriend who’s always hot and cold.
Why are girls always attracted to these types??

Leo ( Masaki Okada)
A sensitive young man who finds work in the projection room of a theater in Honokaa.
He tries hard not to hurt anyone, so he doesn’t get hurt himself, but it’s never that easy.
He’s a good boy whose awkwardness is endearing. Something about him appeals to Bee.

Bee (Chieko Baisho)
The biggest prankster in Honokaa, and also the best cook. But she only cooks for people she likes. Her famous malasadas are on sale at Edeli’s movie theater.

Mariah (Jun Hasegawa)
A pure, light-hearted local girl who works at an organic food shop. She knows what she likes and doesn’t like, and is fun to be with.

Ken (Leo Yoshida)
A passing tourist. But he’s got another Honokaa Story up his sleeve... (still under construction)

©2009 FUJI TELEVISION NETWORK/DENTSU/ROBOT















Leo Yoshida



November 13, 2006 (Mon) Sunny
Be friends, happy birthday.
Bee's alive, if it is 91 years old this year.
Grandmother of 94 years now.
Unfortunately, the physical condition is not very good.
The Bee's time if something happens, thank you to the grandmother's house.
By the way this year with a book of what happened a few months spent in the village of Honokaa. Bee's main character is of course. It was not yet reported.
Next year I hope to be able to report directly Bee's grave.
Until the day we meet again.
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Leo is also in the Fashion/Accessories business with his father Katsu Yoshida

PORTER CLASSIC

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Warm in your heart beat,
coming-of-age story, falls in cosy love.





















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PERSONAL EFFECTS


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“Now I know why the end of summer makes me feel sad!”



the portastylistic