Exit Clov is working on a new record, which isn’t easy to make happen, and takes a lot of money. First just travelling to meet each other to rehearse and write, then studio time for days and days of recording. Then mixing and mastering. Then printing the album and paying fees to online retailers. The [...]
I’ll venture a brief introduction where none is needed – Symphony X is a band from New Jersey that specializes in one thing: keeping it real. I’ve been a fan since my friend and fellow guitarist Jaime introduced them to me, around 2001 when Live On the Edge of Forever came out. I saw them play [...]
OnBeat will be presenting the Kaifuku album art on 8×8″ cards along with download cards for the song for sale at the Japan-America Society’s Annual Beer Garden tomorrow, on the rooftop of an office building on K St. All proceeds of card sales will be going to the Red Cross. Come out to support the [...]
I just got an update from my friend Katsumi of Orientarhythm on his latest project. He’s been experimenting with projected visuals and dance for a while now, and his latest effort is extremely impressive. Katsumi developed this piece for a performance on a Japanese TV program in front of a live audience - whose reactions shared my enthusiasm. [...]
Santi, Joelle, Jay and I saw First Name Basis perform at the mansion at Strathmore Hall at a Friday Night Eclectic Show. Props again to Strathmore Hall and all those involved for keeping these events going, our area is blessed to have such a beautiful venue to showcase our local artist scene. I really don’t [...]
Last Sunday we did another video shoot for Doin It In the Park, a song I’m doing with Suzi. It was me, Jay, JL, Javier, and Gyasi, and we spent about 6 hours outside that day enjoying the park and the city. We got some great footage, mostly tricking and establishing shots of the park. The [...]
I remember when he died. Or rather, when it was published on his blog for Hydeout Productions that he had passed away a month earlier in a car crash in Shibuya. I’m finding it difficult now to type out exactly what kind of emotions it drew from me. For lack of a better label, it was [...]
Friday Night Eclectic at the Mansion at Strathmore Hall, always a winner. It’s a great opportunity to see local talent and enjoy the beautiful venue, and much respect to Strathmore Hall for providing this outreach to the young artist community. A friday or two ago I went to check out a group called Bellflur, a [...]
The other weekend I visited Pittsburgh to see an old friend of mine, Hironori Yoshida. While his first name is Hironori and he often goes by ‘Hiro’, I’ve always called him by his other nickname, ‘Yoshi.’ Yoshi is a guest researcher at Carnegie Mellon, working on digital fabrication. For those unfamiliar with the term (ie me, before Yoshi explained slowly [...]
Today we did a shoot in Rock Creek Park for the upcoming Mad Sole track called Doin it in the Park. We were lucky, the weather was great, not too cold, and no one got (seriously) injured. We got some good shots on top of some picnic tables, climbing some trees, and on a bridge. [...]
Bat and I checked out the Sneaker Pimps show, at Lux Lounge on New York Ave. It was pretty dope, there were some hip hop performances (although the names of the performers escape me now), people were selling sneakers and related merchandise, you could bring pairs to buy/sell/trade, and of course there was a lot [...]
A D.C. State of Mind is one of the upcoming songs from Mad Sole. It’s a celebration of D.C. culture, and represents our role as young artists in this city and what we owe (everything) to the pioneers here that came before us by using samples from artists such as Duke Ellington. For the music [...]
So I volunteered at the Cherry Blossom Festival (Sakura Matsuri) a while back as a translator for the performers that were coming from Japan, and by a stroke of awesomeness a Japanese dance group came that specializes in Hip Hop dance… with nunchucks… Basically, they’re hip hop ninjas. They’re called Orientarhythm, and their concept is [...]
