Sunday, April 24, 2011
Tuesday, June 01, 2010
Pangbianr launch
I launched a site today. It's the first site I've designed and points in the direction of other upcoming projects.
Posted via web from Josh Feola
Saturday, April 17, 2010
Speaking of Noise
Thurston Moore and Bill Nace experimentally verify the "my baby could do this" argument against electronic noise.
Posted via web from Josh Feola
Bowed Piano
This is cool. Reminds me of when me, Andrew C and Derek Vincent banged the hell out of a piano soundboard that was lying vertical in an Allston basement closet with our fists and a bottle of Jack Daniels. Our "performance" wasn't as versatile, but it was very noisy and confusing to those people who are in Allston basements past midnight on a Wednesday.
Posted via web from Josh Feola
Saturday, March 20, 2010
Relocation, Changes
My address has changed to http://joshfeola.com
For now I've just plugged the domain into my posterous account but I'll get around to creating a website soon.
More changes to come.
Tuesday, August 25, 2009
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Reluctant Return, or Go East
Long hiatus, Beijing stuff:
This NY Times article about Americans finding employment in China has been making a lot of waves recently. Mostly because it's totally ridiculous. For one thing a lot of the expats I've met here don't have jobs, or at least not the 'real' jobs that this article claims Chinese companies are tripping over themselves to offer young Americans on the strength of being young Americans. Second, the individuals profiled in this article come from prestigious universities and in some cases graduated with half a normal person's starting salary in savings, which means they entered the post-graduate fray with a leg up on anyone, anywhere in the world, not least of which small businesses in a developing country with an extremely low overhead and cost of living. Not hating, as I exactly fit the profile of a career-confused graduate who struck out unanimously in my US job hunt and so took "go west young man" to it's logical conclusion (the Far East) to find work here, but reading the Chinese media backlash is pretty funny and makes me more cautious and aware of this scene I'm just starting to grasp.
Anyway, to spin the focus back around to the home team, I recently read this great article by Camille Paglia on Obama's early term missteps and why Sarah Palin is kind of a media genius. And China:
With the Republican party leaderless and in backbiting disarray following its destruction by the ideologically incoherent George W. Bush, Democrats are apparently eager to join the hara-kiri brigade. What looked like smooth coasting to the 2010 election has now become a nail-biter. Both major parties have become a rats' nest of hypocrisy and incompetence. That, combined with our stratospheric, near-criminal indebtedness to China (which could destroy the dollar overnight), should raise signal flags. Are we like late Rome, infatuated with past glories, ruled by a complacent, greedy elite, and hopelessly powerless to respond to changing conditions?
I guess the point is you should seek work in China.
Well I'm pretty much phoning it in with this post but I should be back on my game here soon. For now at least you can enjoy this (no longer very) new Raekwon family reunion-style jam:
House Of Flying Daggers by Raekwon Ft Inspectah Deck,Ghostface Killah & Method Man
Download now or listen on posterous
House Of Flying Daggers.mp3 (5604 KB) Download now or listen on posterous
Friday, August 07, 2009
Rising China and Its Postmodern Fate
"Deng Xiaoping’s (1904-1997) program has now lasted longer than Mao’s, and it continues to move forward. Indeed, in almost all of the manifestations of the Modern, the pace of China’s grand project has accelerated. Mao had hoped that the Countryside and all that it represented would surround and finally destroy everything that the City was and what it represented — and not only in China, but throughout the world. But the City has more than fought the Countryside to a draw; it is now counterattacking and it will win. China will soon leave behind its past as a predominately peasant society, and most of its people will live in urban settlements. Soon, there will be no countryside at all. Of course, the countryside will be more than just a memory for a long time; Postmodern China will have within it hundreds of millions of new urbanites who carry the Countryside’s habits of mind with them. The world as a whole may not yet be configured in the way late Qing-era writers of science fiction imagined it, but China’s newest cities — indeed, all the newest cities around the world — resemble the projections of prescient fantasists and pioneering filmmakers. The World City is now more [than] mere metaphor. It is a thing called Megalopolis, and it does not acknowledge national boundaries in its unstoppable sprawl."
Thursday, July 23, 2009
HK
been a ghost lately. here's some pics from hong kong, a megalopolis i recently visited. note: straight edge skyscraper, non-edge beerfest, construction, juxtaposition, and some art or whatever.
Monday, July 13, 2009
Hong Kong long gone
Shootout to The Batman
Get It (Feat. Cam'ron And B. Rossi) by Mase
Download now or listen on posterous
Get It (feat. Cam'ron and B. Rossi).mp3 (5392 KB) Download now or listen on posterous
Friday, July 10, 2009
Shootout saturday #manimissmydogs
Slow week, here's some things my friends write that I read in lieu of having any real friends in Beijing:
Two of my Boston friends are living the entrepreneurial high/low life, I like following their successes on that ADD realtime engine called Twitter. Check out Oak and Grillo's Pickles, also stay tuned for a heavy brand-evangelistic review of Grillo's from me coming soon.
Speaking of Boston, Matt S's new blog venture has allowed me to greatly expand my obscure worldpsych/diamond in the rough Americana musical vocabulary, as well as vicariously hang out with my beantown crew. Thanks, Matt.
My friend Jesse Spears from LA is on Van's Warped tour, where she's painting a new participatory mural every day.
Kat is digging Inka sites in Ecuador, as is Mike, who doesn't have a linkable name but might be moving to Ulaan Battur soon so hopefully he will start a blog.
Jeff is traipsing around Israel, making cross-cultural connections and wondering about authenticity.
Speaking of Jeff, I curate a science news reading list for him on that other ADD realtime engine called Facebook. Here's what I've lined up for him this week:
- String Theory Becomes More than Obnoxious Nerd's Parlor Trick, Blows Dude's Mind
- Scientists Make Radio Waves Travel Faster than Light; Einstein Furious
- Yale Guy Does Something I Don't Understand but that sounds Really Futuristic (ie builds a quantum processor)
- Scientists Again Defy God
Speaking of weird science, did you know that Tesla and Twain used to hang out? I had no idea. This gets me so amped.
Back to friends: Matt, Jay Bil and I have been posting fairly regularly to our city blog, drop by if you're into cell phone pictures of Tokyo, Turkish book design, or whatever it is I write about Beijing. Also, if you're by chance interested Balkan trout restoration, stay tuned for the newest member of the crew, Ljubljana-based John Zablocki.
Speaking of megalopoli, I'm headed to Hong Kong tomorrow morning. I already did the two tourist things that everyone recommends I do, so I'm not so sure what I'll get into. Probably just focus on avoiding this tropical cyclone. Cheers.
Tuesday, July 07, 2009
Cosmic wave
One-off weird music nights are rapidly becoming the Gauze to my Jay Bil. I can't remember the last noise/drone/etc show I went to in the US (well maybe I can) but I've already made 2kolegas Tuesdays a regular thing. Last night was kicked of by this French dude with his floor-camp setup of various chirping and blinking devices. He had this one synth panel thing from Japan that was a 16x16 grid of little white dots that would display cool animations as he programmed along, very beautiful actually.
The highlight of the night was a Japanese-Korean band called 10 ("我们是...十"). My new kolegas-affiliated friend Michael nailed it when he described them as "Japanese Bjork meets Kraftwerk." I couldn't tell if the girl (on the left) was on drugs or just cool, but she gave off this infectious weirdo vibe that successively transformed the set from pretty good to really enjoyable to the most fun I'm likely to have this week. The musical setup was pretty complex, with the dude on the right running some simple 808-style beats and modulating/looping the girl's mic, into which she inputed her voice (which had a considerable range on its own), balloons, squeak toys, a kazoo, and various other economical noise-emitting items. The best parts of the set were when she would lapse into the kind of deskilled, transcendent shredding you can only pull off if you're a cute Japanese girl with red Kanye glasses and a red panda umbrella and a red plastic keyboard guitar.
After 10 was a set of fairly enjoyable 8-bit gizmodgetry from these four guys, but the place was pretty much cleared out by then. I hung with Yan Jun a bit and discussed the possibility of playing one of these sparsely attended events, now I need to work on my entry point. First I need to go back to work.
Posted via web from Josh Feola
Sunday, July 05, 2009
Drums and drone
Another weekend, another post-late night late afternoon post.
As everyone knows (see below) I did my best to celebrate July 4th from Beijing. This is the second straight year I've been out-of-country for the 4th. Last year I celebrated by acting obnoxiously and uncharacteristically "American" toward my dear English friends and fellow Indonesia volunteers Kelly and Kate (basically saying "awesome" a lot and talking about herding cattle and generally playing into whatever other stereotypes they could throw at me). This year I wore a red white and blue plaid shirt and went out to meet a new friend, Elaine, the graphic designer I hutong-ed with last Friday. Elaine had a new, equally interesting crew lined up for the night: a Swiss artist-in-residence visiting from Kunming, an Italian PhD-in-progress studying acupuncture for the summer, and a guy named Bai Wei who's currently filming a documentary on stem cell research in China.
Also in tow was Twist, a Beijing-born English professor who lives in Elaine's building. Twist is a very cool guy (with a very cool name). After talking about religion and vegetarianism a bit I was excited to learn that Twist is a Hare Krishna. I had no idea that Krishna consciousness existed in China, but I learned from Twist that there is a small but committed group of devotees in the city.
One of the things I did to celebrate my country's independence was to try one of the most thoroughly "Beijing" of consumables, dou zhi (豆汁). This literally means "soybean juice", but is under no circumstances to be confused with the soy milk you buy at Whole Foods in wonderfully processed and palatable flavors. Dou zhi is very fermenty. Definitely an acquired taste, and one that even most "new school" Beijingers don't bother to acquire. I liked it, but given that my resume includes several years of veganism, one year of strict macrobiotics, and more recently various episodes of dietary exploration I guess I'm not exactly the least common denominator when it comes to thresholds for culinary weirdness.
After dinner I went to Gulou (鼓楼), Beijing's famous Drum Tower. We'd planned on going to an "Old Shanghai" event that somehow translated to dudes in red hats and matching Adidas short shorts... ended up just sitting outside and mooching the ambient music leaking through the walls while enjoying cheap beers from the mart next door and a sporadic breeze. After his third nip of baijiu Bai Wei became passionately engaged in elaborating upon numerous subjects to which he has dedicated much thought, notably stem cells, Obama's greatness, and the virtues and vices of Chinese women. Nice to have atypical conversations that move beyond the "who are you, what are you doing here, how long are you staying" exchanges I've had with most people I've met.
I went home at around 3am. This was my first time to Gulou, which is about 5 miles from my house, and got lost several times on the return trip, but I didn't mind. Riding my bike here, especially late at night, is a joy. There was some initial roughness with my new ride but after convincing my seat to remain solidly horizontal I've really fallen in love with my scrap heap of a bicycle. The breaks don't work so well so sometimes I have to screech to a halt by dragging my feet on the pavement Fred Flintstone style, and the lack of a bell means I've had to whistle a lot (for some reason I've defaulted primarily to "Michelle" by the Beatles and "Jump" by Van Halen for this purpose, do not ask me why), but these are minor bumps in an otherwise stellar relationship thus far.
I woke up this morning with a bill in my door that I initially read to be 1,000 RMB, but later discovered was my 10RMB ($1.50 USD) water bill, so everything's good. I'm currently in my office, alone, jamming Black Monk at full volume, can I really get any more narcissistic than literally listening to my own voice (albeit chopped and droned) over loudspeakers? Anyway it's putting me in a good zone, I need to buckle down and get some work done for monday. I also need to work on taking more pictures, huh? Will get on that.
Friday, July 03, 2009
Wednesday, July 01, 2009
Lucky st
Some weird architecture and street pics from my sunset ride to 2kolegas. One of those "it's a small world after all" streets featuring cuisine from such exotic reaches as India, France, Japan, Ethiopia, and, of course, Nashville. I neglected to take pictures of 2kolegas' cool sign or the ostentatious drive-in theater that envelopes it but yes, there are drive-in theaters in China. Question is: is it also a bike-in theater? TBD
Tuesday, June 30, 2009
Chinese noise
Last night I met Yan Jun, a Beijing-based poet/musician/organizer. I dropped off some copies of the then new Black Monk LP for Yan Jun at a record store in 798 when I was in Beijing in 2007, but didn't end up seeing him in person. I got back in touch with him the other day. Luckily he remembered me, and told me about a weekly experimental music night at a bar a couple of miles away from my apartment.
I biked there solo and started talking to some Australians sitting out front, one of whom happened to be Aaron Hull, a touring field recorder/droner. His set was very good. Pretty atmospheric and amorphous but with some well-placed field samples and the slightest (slightest) hint of deep house rhythm to provide some structure.
Following Aaron were two Chinese noise bands that were virtually identical, except the second one had an additional dude to spit into a mic and flail around more than the others. These bands were ok, nothing special. I did like when this dude (above) started screaming into a tube. Wasn't moved by the laptop guy who looked like he was reading unimpressive emails the whole time.
And what should I pass on my ride home but 黑太阳酒吧... maybe next Tuesday.
Monday, June 29, 2009
Snack rack
Snack selection at the mart across the street. Far as I can tell they're open 24/7. Shootouts to Keara on the pocky and Jamie on the oreo stix. Myself I don't like sweets, I usually just get the steamed corn by the register (no pic because I think the lady who works there was already seriously bummed on me flicking the pocky).
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Another Beijing Bicycle
I bought a new bicycle. It's an old bicycle, and it came with a great insurance policy: being shitty. I got it for 20 USDs, which included a superfluous U-lock that was almost as expensive as the bike. Little did the unwitting vendor know that the poor brakes, caked rust, and nearly vertical seat that I used to bargain down the cost were secretly assets in my mind. It doesn't have the same 'not riding a deathtrap' feel as the Khan, but it does have a certain charm and maybe it will last more than a week.
It also doesn't have a bell, which means I've had to reteach myself how to whistle.
Out with the new, in with the old:
Chinese Name
I have a new Chinese name. It is 巫明. My Chinese office manager says it means 'necromancer.' 巫 (Wu) by itself refers to shamanism and sorcery, and is also a traditional surname. 明 (Ming) means clear, bright, to understand. I like it because it reminds me of 昆明 (Kunming), the city where I first got to know China. Wu Ming can also be written 无名, which literally means 'no name.'
My old Chinese name was 黑太阳 (hei taiyang), 'Black Sun.' I picked it out for my Chinese class in Yunnan because I had a dream that that was my name. Hei is not a real family name and the phrase 'black sun' connotes the Japanese occupation of China for older generations, so I had to scrap it and go with 巫明 for my business card. I liked Hei Taiyang and was kind of bummed to have to get a new one, which is why I chose no name.
I can listen, I can talk
You Can Listen You Can Talk by Carsick Cars
Download now or listen on posterous
11 You Can Listen You Can Talk.mp3 (4769 KB) Download now or listen on posterous
Last night I got to see the one Beijing band I had previously heard of, Carsick Cars. It happened to be their major tour-ending, 2nd cd-releasing blowout show. Not much of a blowout actually, just two bands. The first one had a very atmospheric, shoe-gazey thing going on, which was fine until it was punctuated by weird guitar thrashes and high-pitched wailing, along with seriously obnoxious lights (not their fault). I wasn't too into it but I had no expectations and I was psyched to see anything with a general indie reference point.
The Cars, though, were pretty good. I've heard them compared to Sonic Youth from several sources, but I didn't hear that so much at first. They played a solid 45-minute set that sounded like an average of every SST record put out in 1984 except with an overall posi (read: saccharine) vibe. Nothing groundbreaking, but very enjoyable. After this first set they made one of the least subtle "ok we're done unless you really want us to play another song" stage exits I've ever seen. The obligatory encore literally started within 2 minutes. And I was much more into it. I started to understand the SY references, this was darker and noisier. They finished one song, played a crowdsourced hit, and then left again. This time I thought there was about a 50% chance of another return. They came back 5 minutes later and did a pitch-perfect cover of my favorite Stooges song, which sealed the deal for me. Big co-sign.
After the show I explored some abandoned hutongs with a group of people who all have very cool job titles: graphic artist, urban game designer, architect, filmmaker, Artforum correspondent. Got me thinking: can I still call myself an archaeologist even if it's just to sound cool? At any rate I did employ my archaeological skillset to date the abandonment of the hutongs we were sneaking around in to ca. 1999 as there were not one, but two Matrix posters hanging within. There was a weird high school bad kid element to the whole hutong session (jumping fences after midnight to drink warm beer in an abandoned lot?), but it was fun. Topics of conversation evolved naturally from architecture to cryogenics (I think MJ's passing was somehow the mediating point). I didn't talk much, mostly listened.
Woke up feeling a bit raw from the aforementioned warm beers and my day got a little rawer when my landlord came knocking down my door to inform me that my bike had been stolen. Several people I've never met confirmed this as I walked down the one flight of stairs separating my room from the outside world. That these people knew it was my bike that was stolen and aggregated seemingly for the sole purpose of informing me of the theft was weird and, to be honest, a little suspicious, but I'll write it off as community development and chock it up as a W. The bike was, in fact, gone, which sucks.
RIP THE MIGHTY KHAN: 6/21/09 - 6/27/09
Up next: Beijing Bicycle Lock
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