Those that have read the “Whos’ Stephen?” page would know that apart from blogging about anime and video games, I also like to write electronic music. Well, today my first two albums, withStyle and CheCheChe, are being released under the Creative Commons license! Feel free to send the mp3s to anyone you like (or even don’t like?) or use them in YouTube videos or whatever else you might want to use them for. It’s all good, so long as it’s not commercial. If you want to use any of this music commercially let me know, and we can probably work something out. My third album is also nearing completion and will be released here under a Creative Commons license when it’s ready.

withStyle

CheCheChe

I found this band called Sakanakushon on the internet not too long ago and thought their music was pretty catchy, so I wanted to share it with all of you. I have several videos to share with you, so I hope you enjoy them all–I certainly did!

I’ve actually been trying to post this for about a month, but I’ve had some serious problems with my web server and uploading files, so I’ve been unable to actually put in any content other than text, and that’s just no fun, right? As you can see though those issues are all sorted out, so back to posting awesome stuff! I have a bunch of other posts half written and needing images and such, so I’ll try and post like crazy for the next while. I’d really like to be more active on here, and I have a decent bit of free time right now, so I will try and be as active as I can. Hopefully this free time lasts.

Native Dancer

Sample

Center Tray

Word

Have you been wondering what the small bit of inactivity lately was about? Well, here’s my answer–or part of it anyway–my new website project; sauceplz.org.

It is basically wikipedia for files. You load a file and will be presented with a page unique to that file where information about the file can be listed. You could, for example, load a page from a manga and add tags for the artist, manga name and page number.

That’s part of the inactivity, I’ll try and have some more posts up soon, but there’s a few other, as yet, unannounced projects I’m working. Hopefully I’ll have more to say about that soon.

I found a folder entitled “Star House City” sitting on an FTP server the other day and decided to download it just because the name sounded interesting. Turns out that was a good idea. Star House City is the newest album from Korean House Superstars; House Rulez.

The whole album is just fantastic and I had to have every MP3 I could find of theirs. It’s been really hard trying to find stuff from their previous album…I found 10 of the 15 tracks and all of them are labelled wrong, so I can’t even tell what track numbers they are supposed to be. >.>

Check out video for their song “Do It!” below. It’s really catchy, just like all the rest of their songs.

Ever wondered what it would be like if you were about to drink a can of melon soda when suddenly it transformed into a cute, young girl? Yeah, me neither–but this bizarre concept turned out to be a win, in my opinion. It sprinkles a fresh twist on the harem genre with a main character that is…well…not some wussy, girl-fearing loner. Instead he is a mountain of sarcasm, topped with a thick layer of innuendo and narcissism.

Kakeru Daichi is a 16-year-old high school student and collector of aluminum soda cans–he has also been, for all 16 years, single. While on his way home he stops at a vending machine to purchase a melon soda, but he does not anticipate the coming disaster that would unfold. He gets home, has a quick shower and then takes a refreshing sip of his newly purchased lemon soda…only he finishes that sip with a cute blond girl locking lips with him. The girl, known as an Akikan, is glad to have finally transformed into her human form, however; she’s not so glad to find Kakeru lacking any form of clothing short of a towel over his shoulders. Needless to say she freaks and sends him flying with her strange carbonated beverage powers.

As it turns out, this is not an entirely unusual happening. Soda cans turning into girls have been relatively prevalent lately and are under investigation by the Department of Economy. Leading the investigation is Hidehiko Otoya, a government official who also happens to be flaming gay. He appears at Kakeru’s doorstep with his assistant and starts feeling him up before he even introduces himself. Kakeru is somewhere between panic and shock at this point, so the assistant steps in and tames the overly foward Hidehiko and drags him out the door. Kakeru leaps from disaster to disaster, each more disasterous than the last and all the while still pantsless.

The premise is certainly an odd one, but the writers did an excellent job of shaping it into something hilarious. The comedy in the show is very blunt and always tries to push the boundary just a bit further. I’m really looking forward to more episodes of this show and is definitely at the top of my watch list so far from this season.

The music provided a perfect accent to the quirky hilarity that had me laughing all throughout the show and at the same time was quite catchy. Many people underestimate the importance of audio in video medias–try playing a Tales game on mute and you’ll understand what I mean. Audio is a very important aspect in the creation of a good show and this one handled it brilliantly. Not only was the music great, the voices matched perfectly–it’s hard to capture so much sarcasm as Kakeru’s character, but they pulled it off flawlessly.

I highly recommend anyone that likes a good laugh have a look at this show because it is absolutely brillient. Just don’t watch it too late at night or you might get some angry phone calls from your neighbors.

Gallery

I made my own personal mod of FofR, a really great skin for Foobar2000, the best audio player software out there.  I liked the design of the original, but found the fonts were a bit to small at 1920×1080 resolution so I changed them…then while I was already digging through the code I added a little button to download album art for the current playing song and fixed some minor graphical glitches that FofR has when viewed at such high resolutions. I might make some more changes, but I’m not sure what else I’d want to do with it yet, so here it is; version 0.1 of FofR But Better.

I’d recommend using version 0.9.5.2 of Foobar2000, as the newer versions broke much of the PanelsUI engine used to make this skin. You can find it here.

Merry Christmas, Happy Holidays and enjoy whatever other holidays you enjoy around now! More on the characters in the picture in coming days–it’s a great show called Toradora, for those pre-emptive enough to have a look before I write my review.

From the same people that brought us The Animatrix (oddly enough), Studio 4°C brings us this new animated wonder. It’s unique style and tremendously detailed animation net this movie countless awards, and it certainly deserves them. Following the lives of the two orphans Kuro and Shiro, or Black and White in English, the story dips in and out of the underlying corruption of Treasure Town; a bustling city puppeteered by Yakuza.

Kuro and Shiro live on the streets–comrades in the daily adventures of staying alive. With Yakuza threatening the peace of life in the ever-decaying Treasure Town, the two get wound up in a conflict when a foreign investor seeks Yakuza assistance to build an amusement park at the core of the city. Kuro, being the wildcat of the Treasure Town streets, rushes of to save the city from plunging further into chaos, but Shiro is the only one who can save Kuro from plunging into that same chaos himself.

The art is really quite amazing and is like nothing I have seen before in an animated feature. The art design’s uniqueness fits well with Studio 4°C’s unconventional story writing, creating a modern masterpiece of animated story-telling. A great degree of detail was put into the backgrounds used in the movie–the clock tower near the start is a great example of High Definition video put to good use. It’s quite obvious Studio 4°C put a great deal of effort into making sure this movie perfectly matched the vision that director Michael Arias had for the movie.

The soundtrack matched brilliantly and was something very fresh and new for anime. Written by Plaid, a well-known British electronic duo, the soundtrack is beautifully subtle, with emphasis in all the right places. My favorite track being the closing song; White’s Dream, is minimal and earthy yet a powerful close to this brilliantly unique movie.

If you are into artsy anime, Tekkonkinkreet comes highly recommended from me! It’s truly a feast for the eyes, the ears and even the mind–a worthy addition to my budding collection of anime Blu-Rays.

On a side note; the girl ’singing’ is Minorin from the new series Toradora, which I dare say is the greatest Tsundere Harem I have ever seen. Much hysterical laughter ensued. Stay tuned for my upcoming review of Toradora.