If you're an art fan with a twisted taste and bored with the average exhibition space, this little book is for you. It features some decent reviews of larger establishments, but focuses more on art and culture spots off the mainstream, ranging from exquisite used book stores to unique galleries, and even amusement parks. Also included are contributions by the likes of Kusama Yayoi ("I love Tokyo from the bottom of my heart"), and such odd pieces as Shinsan Nameko's interview with a "space ballad singer" (!), so there is actually quite a lot to read (in Japanese only though). The whole thing is a true value pack of information not only on the Tokyo art scene, but also on places where you can take a break from it, and those where you can purchase the nicest souvenirs of it.

Doug Scharin (Him), Jeff Parker (Tortoise), Bill Laswell, and Bernie Worrell - could a band lineup be any funkier? But those who expect drums, basses, guitars and keys that kick ass, will be surprised to hear the quartet cruise mostly in low gear. Considering that Bill Laswell, for example, has always operated on the boundaries between ambient, funk and dub, this rather dark brew in the vein of Him's classic "Sworn Eyes" actually makes sense. Especially the quieter parts of the four tracks are filled to the brim with tension that makes the listener sit on the edge of his seat waiting for the next big bang. There are a few of those "bangs", but not quite what one would have expected from these four. The DVD contains a video made by Doug Scharin.

The Morr label's showpiece artist and epigone of piano-driven electronica, Bernhard Fleischmann presents his new opus. On each of his albums he does something big, if not exaggerated, be it the length of a song or album, the instrumentation, theme, or setting, and this time it's the fulsome commemoration of a frie death that makes at least some parts of "Angst..." slightly too heavy on the emotional side. What's different this time is the excellent songwriting that somewhat justifies the moments where things get too syrupy. There are only a few songs that touch directly upon the serious issue in the first place, and if you skip those tearjerkers, you get what is easily B. Fleischmann's best and most densely composed album to date.

A transparent harmony, a piano, a guitar. Throw in a subdued rhythm and decent melody, and you basically have the pattern for the entire album. Voila your average electronica CD that is condemned to gathering dust in the shelf. But this is not. This is Keith Kenniff akaHelios, the genre's greatest poet, and a man of unmatched talent when it comes to crafting the most magnificent music out of totally commonplace ingredients. Following his foray into vocal territory, "Caesura" marks Kenniff's return to fully instrumental music. Even though there is absolutely nothing new here, the way the single parts are stringed together to dazzlingly beautiful melodies, with the occasional bass, kick drum and shoegazer guitar riff that expand the whole thing to widescreen format, is just plain overwhelming. A little surprising element here and there, and it would have been one of the most captivating electronica albums ever...

With a style that embraces everything from funky house and cheesy disco to straight techno and melodious pop, Morgan Geist has carved himself a unique yet vague niche in the groovy landscape of Detroit techno, marked by just a few releases as a solo musician. Tokens of his exquisite taste, however, are scattered all over the place, in the form of several hits by Daniel Wang and other artists on Geist's own Environ label, and the music he releases with Darshan Jesrani under the Metro Area moniker. All these different elements flow together in his first solo album in over ten years, and while sounding familiar if not dated on the surface, the careful listened is rewarded with an entertaining mix of soulful vocal numbers and epic instrumentals that are cleverly arranged and orchestrated to pay homage to the past of Detroit techno, and at once preview its future.

Rutger Zuydervelt, an extremely prolific sound artist who keeps releasing one 3-inch CD after another while working on soundtracks, collaborations etc., has a new album out. Considering that he is constantly involved in a number of different projects, it is truly amazing to hear with how much dedication he crafts every single song and infuses it with a disarming sense of tension and expectation. Different from ambient music that seamlessly blends into the environment, a lot of things are happening on multiple levels here, and even though it's all tiny occurrences in a minimal setting, Machinefabriek manages to spellbound his audience even through such tracks as the 25-minute-long "Singel" that concludes the album. The challenge for the listener is to brave the tension and display the same amount of dedication, to be rewarded with a masterpiece somewhere between hushed silence and bursting melody.

Here's the bearded wizard of Argentinian avantgarde's new album. Although the _file under world/new age" in the press release is certainly not the worst description if you want to categorize it by any means, additional elements from ambient, jazz, electronica, field recording and others make this music so exceptional that it's impossible to pigeonhole. Traditional instruments from Africa, Europe, Asia and South America play the most prominent parts, but then again there are pieces played only with synthesizers. Some songs are very percussive, others are delicately built around simple melody patterns. Both the package and what's inside suggest with a strange but highly intoxicating mixture of different colors that this must be what they're playing in paradise. It just ends too soon, but it's still worth five stars.

Takayuki Joe grew up to become an excellent musician since 2001, when the minimal and slightly clumsy first album of his unit No.9 was released. With 73 minutes in total and including remixes among others, this fifth effort sound a bit overfilled, but the compositional complexity of the 14 tracks demonstrate how skillful and mature an artist Joe has become. There's just one thing that's wrong with this album. It's track two, a version of Pachelbel's Canon. Apparently supposed to be the album's showpiece, coming right after the listener has enjoyed track one and is hugnry for more, it simply kills the atmosphere by pushing the whole thing down to elevator muzak level. Conclusion: it's not always good for an album to include a "hit" in order to sell more copies, especially when the rest is much better!

Included in this book are one hundred photographs, ranging from carefully composed pictures to (what looks like) random shots, and from shocking motifs to those that inspire the viewer to think or just smile. Among the artists are a few amateurs, but most of them are professional photographers, including such celebrities as Nakahira Takuma and Morimura Yasumasa. Each picture comes with a short comment from editor/author Otake (in Japanese), and those little texts are remarkably to the point. The images inside burn themselves into the viewer's brain with the intensity of still and not moving pictures, and with the depth of written and not spoken word. Personally I found Kitajima Keizo's photo showing four women in the former Soviet Republic most amazing. In the magnificent composition of this book, the entire history of photography seems to crystallize.

"Minus One", an expression that existed in Europe and America long before the term "karaoke" was coined, here stands for a product in which "one thing is missing from the complete thing." This 6-disk Beatles karaoke song collection demonstrates why the Japanese are the world's leading Beatologists, as it caters to the needs even pf those who feel like singing John's part in a piece that was originally sung and recorded in three voices. Each song featured here is included with several different "minus ones", so while listening to the versions the connoisseur will make some surprising discoveries about how the songs were harmonized and played. The more you investigate, the bigger in the chance you find out that you've been living for decades with the wrong interpretation of the Beatles' musical universe!

"Variations VII" was part of the "9 Evenings: Theatre & Engineering" intermedia performance event in 1966. Nam June Paik enthuses in a documentary that, not only in terms of John Cage and David Tudor, it was one of the best live electronics concerts ever. Cage did not play back pre-recorded pieces, but he captured via microphones and telephone lines various sounds generated in the moment, and incorporated electronics in order to make them audible and orchestrate them. The most intriguing thing about this DVD is the question how the composer's large-scale experiment sounds to us when we listen to it now, in the 21st century.

This movie's title figure and heroine channels all the energy of the susceptible years of her early adolescence into her creative work, and makes her mark as an artist at a young age. A bit like Cinderella, she gets everything from a big house to a smart painter husband, but as this is not a Disney production, not all that glitters is gold here. The prince marches off to war, and her castle is so big that Angel is getting cold... It's another fine example of how director Francois Ozon shines every time he places some kind of trouble girl in the centre of a movie. This one is full of cynical remarks about human life and dreams that pull the viewer out of fancy dreams of gowns and carriages, and back down to earth.

Formed around Rob Mazurek, a key player in the Chicago post rock scene, the Brazilian version of Chicago Underground present their second full album. With two percussionists added to the original duo of Mazurek and Mauricio Takara, "The Principle..." focuses increasingly on rhythm, however what after the Sun Ra-esque cosmic noise that opens the album suggests a cornet player struggling against a thunderstorm of drums, develops gradually into a diverse exploration of the possibilities between man and machine, and between chaos and order. Emerging out of the encounter between samba, rock and free jazz traditions is a fascinating musical mixture that defines the narrow border area connecting emotional expression and stoical performance.

This film tells the story of Gogol, an Indian-American boy named for some reason after the great Russian writer, and his family. The movie is an adaptation of Jhumpa Lahiri's bestseller of the same title, a Japanese translation of which was published alongside an edition of the Pulitzer Prize-awarded short story compilation _Interpreter of Maladies" by Shinchosha. While movies based on impressive novels tend to be rather disappointing, in this case it's quite different. Director Mira Nair ("Salaam Bombay!"), like Lahiri a New York resident Indian creator, managed to apply the original story's sensitive touch to realize a movie composed of highly realistic images.

Although the surprise effect is probably bigger when learning about the instrument this album was primarily made with, the Casiotone MT40, after listening to the CD, the music seems to sound differently altogether when having a look at the picture in the above link first. Basically a product of home recording on cheap, lo-fi equipment, each of the "11 Easy Pieces" amazes the listener with a new set of sounds Craig, a trained pianist, managed to elicit from the machine and build into compositions that range from simple melodies a la Cluster/Harmonia to layered, Eno-esque sound paintings, here and there enhanced with "handmade glitches" and other trickery. The resulting album highlights at once the keyboard's hidden qualities and the artist's ability to locate and extract them.

The architects appearing in this film talk about urban issues and their own abundant possibilities, except for Antti Lovag perhaps, whose work primarily caters to a friend's vanity. More than ten architectural works including unrealized projects, such as Buckminster Fuller's floating spherical city, and a mass cemetery for which Oscar Niemeyer even specified the depth of the grave pits, are reviewed in sometimes rather cheesy yet crisp images, with comments by the respective inhabitants. Together they highlight quietly both the real and unreal aspects of the "grave problem of cities" we were supposed to be facing in the 20th century, summed up in the bittersweet title that reflects the idea of what all those master architects could have achieved.

Photographer Ishiuchi Miyako took her camera and snuggled up to one of the biggest scars on earth. She directed her lens toward some of the approximately 19,000 relics including dresses, blouses and underwear of the atomic-bomb victims that are being kept at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Museum. From the silhouettes, bright colors and tailoring details that stand out against the gloomy background, one can almost smell the air on the morning of that fateful summer day. Also available is a separate volume with poems by Polish poet Wislawa Szymborska, and essays by the likes of Inoue Hisashi, Yanagida Kunio, and Washida Kiyokazu.

This useful English guide to the Tokyo art scene and art spaces features an interesting lineup of a total of twelve art-related venues, selected from a unique point of view, and ranging from such major museums as Hara Museum and 21_21Design Sight to smaller galleries, such as Gallery Koyanagi, Gallery ef, etc. Next to introductory texts and maps, the book offers with interviews and other contributions from some of the Tokyo scene's key players (including RT editor Ozaki's own comments on art journalism) quite a lot to read. The book's duotone design is simple yet elaborate, including nice illustrations by Takahashi Nobumasa.

If the ultimate piece of ambient music either melts perfectly with the environment, or creates a completely new one, here is a fine example of the latter type. The album is dedicated to the "Ben Franklin", a submarine that was built to explore the currents of the Gulf Stream in 1969, and revolves around field recordings made, among others, during the expedition. Combined with "human elements" in the form of real instruments and melody fragments that appear and disappear along the way, this sonic mixture takes the listener on a virtual trip deep down into the ocean, and into a sea of sound that tells the exciting story of a historical event. Not recommended to claustrophobia patients!

Ohiro, a composer, pianist, saxophonist and percussionist, released a new CD on his own, is unrelated to the band "Societe Contre L'etat" he usually plays in. Included are 12 songs characterized by salsa and samba rhythms on top of a base of bossa nova, ten of which were written and composed by Ohiro himself. He plays guitar and sings, and it is this simple framework that particularly highlights this unique musician's distinct profile as a poet. His natural voice fits this season perfectly as it seems to be flying high in the clear blue sky. Also catch this extraordinarily gifted musician's live concert on 5/17!

"Sweet Dreams", "Kiss", "Corcovado"... And then this cover art! The world this guy (the man behind this project) is living in must be a weird one! After gathering some fame with covers of Kraftwerk and YMO, Senor Coconut present the second summer compilation of '80s hits in Latin guise after 2005's "Fiesta Songs". Even though the gag isn't new anymore, the way it is served is funny and fresh as always, and this time with an attractive extra portion electronic trickery. In fact, these songs sound so genuine that one is tempted to think that these are the originals. An essential alternative for everyone who's still stuck in the '80s, with a nice YMO bonus for Japanese fans on the Japanese edition.

This newest issue is titled "Thirst for transformation" and focuses on portrait photography. Inside is a conversation between Morimura Yasumasa and Yanagi Miwa, as well as interviews with "transformation artists" from China and Korea. After a tour across the Asia-Pacific realm introducing up-and-coming creators, Miyadai Shinji gives his thoughts on their respective works. Apart from the main feature, there is an article reviewing Chanel's "Mobile Art" exhibition with an eye on the portable museum's opening in Tokyo, and a compact guide to some of the artists participating in the upcoming Yokohama Triennale (fall '08). This time Tsumura Kosuke made his "Fantasy mode to order" for Ellie, the only female member of the art unit Chim Pom. Both magazine and website are, as always, in Japanese and English.

This luxurious set includes 10 DVDs that include everything From Svankmajer's early works to his latest, "Lunacy" (2005). Marionettes, handmade objects, mixed photographs, tongues, food, keys, drawers and other familiar items provide keys for understanding the connection between the artist's early short films and his longer pieces. Watching all this, the viewer becomes aware of the fact that we are a sport of our instincts, and that even our "intentions" are heavily manipulated by the system. The films are characterized by a tactile sort of odiousness that is part of a tough fight for individual freedom, fought with such tenacity that it looks at once funny and dreadful. Fun to watch are also the "making of" documentary and interview footage. The set is visibly charged with the power of Svankmajer's late wife and partner in crime, Eva, who passed away in 2005.

Relatively soon after his previous CD "Sketch 2006", Taneda Go presents a new piece that just screams to be compared to its predecessor for various reasons. It's of course again an extremely finespun affair, but as the cover image suggests, this time it's a rather colorful and organic universe that unfolds behind the microscopic sounds. However, as this is presented in a highly compressed form, in the end the components of this macrocosm come across as brief as the frames of a long movie fast-forwarded at ultra high speed. It takes quite some concentration power to "uncompress" the sounds while listening, and in this respect, compared to the handy 20 minutes of "Sketch 2006", with 30 minutes this one is almost a bit too long. Recommended especially to advanced listeners with some Taneda experience...

From 12k, a label that has shifted from slowly transforming minimal electronic soundscapes toward more organic music, comes a particularly eventful CD. On "Volume Objects", an array of sound fragments including field recordings, various (acoustic and electronic) instruments, voice snippets and others form a minimalistic yet highly thrilling acoustic narrative. Autistici explore "tactile sound" and the space between recorded music and listener. "Songs" or "structures" clear the way for hints at melodies that are set adrift in electronic loops, or disappear to be replaced by new hints, and it's this continual process that draws the listener deep into the inner workings of this album.

Aiming to communicate the fascination and diversity of paper, the renowned Takeo paper shop has been hosting the "Paper Show" once every year since 1989 (up to '94 it was called "Paper World"). This book sums up the '07 show, and the fact that it is very much more than a simple record of an event makes it almost forgivable that it took a year to complete. The book contains photos introducing the works of various creators who participated in the Show, along with their comments, which together convey nicely the versatility of paper. There are so many things in it that no two of the 300 pages look similar, and as the cover pages of each of the 26 chapters are made of different kinds of paper, browsing through the book while looking and touching the various textures is just as fascinating as wandering across the venue of the actual Paper Show.

The long-awaited solo album of Radian member and Mosz Records co-founder Stefan Nemeth is a collection of music for various short films, videos, etc. The CD starts with street noises, which suggests a typical "soundtrack" - music that needs visuals to exist. But there's a reason behind the fact that "Film" is released as a "solo album". It showcases the brilliance and originality of an outstanding musician. Rather than accompanying or conjuring up images, this music is exactly what they call "cinema for the ears". Exquisitely balanced between acoustic instruments and digital sounds, and between freely improvised and traditionally structured, the album's only weak point is that it ends too soon.

Neohachi started off in 2005 as probably the world's first "electro poetry unit" combining vocals and synthesizer sound. In 2007, a drummer was added to the lineup, and with this extra power the new trio recorded their first mini album. The highly expressive vocal part built around the unique melody of poetry recitation wraps nicely into the carpet of ambient sound laid out by the synths and drums, and with partly improvised tunes of up to 20 minutes length, this CD offers in fact not much less than a full album. As stimulating as the music is also the cover, designed by Enlightenment's Mishima Akiyoshi.

The author of this book used to work at a handicraft shop in Tokyo. He made all kinds of objects and introduced them in the shop's own blog for promotional purposes, but those little artifacts are in fact so exciting that they clearly exceeded the boundaries of mere "advertising". Stitchwork in particular is the author's forte that even led him to launch his own website, and that site's peculiar "8-bit home computer" sort of look is again something that's overwhelmingly charming. The artist eventually became a professional cross-stitch designer, and published this little book. You can find here all kinds of vehicles, dinosaurs, zombies, old Game Boys, insects, and other things that showcase a "new form of stitching" that are the results of a boy's "after-school activities".

The first edition of ART iT in 2008, this issue titled "Evolutions in Japanese Art II: The floating generation" marks at once the first attempt to create an "exhibition in print" style magazine. Introduced are 15 artists whose highly spirited works display an exquisite mixture of airiness, transiency and humor. This issue also includes an interview with Sawa Hiraki, a conversation between Tanaka Koki and Kimura Yuki, and a long interview with Odani Motohiko, who also adorns the cover this time. Tsumura Kosuke presents outfits exclusively designed for artist Fukui Risa, followed by the interdisciplinary "Ti TRA" corner that closes the issue with various reviews, and this time also Shiriagari Kotobuki's regular contribution. Like the website, the magazine is fully bilingual.