So it’s been a week since the upcoming VME album was mastered. What the hell are you waiting for, just release it! is what I’d say if I was a fan.

Right now, I’m taking care of the business side of the album. Yes, the boring Gawd-I-don’t-wanna-do-this side of the deal. Since I’m my own manager, I have to tell the musician half of me to just hang on for a while while the manager half of me thinks up ways to go about promoting this album so that it’ll reach as many pairs of ears around the globe as possible.

The cover art is on its way and a few new cool photos are scheduled to be shot next week. A few videos are in the making for some of the songs off the album, and they involve a whole lot of cheeseburgers.

So, it’ll be another few weeks before everything is all aligned and ready to go. Hang on!

Hugs,
Aki
Voluntary Mother Earth

Yes, that’s right.
The piece of news you’ve been looking for for the past 2 years and a half.

A new Voluntary Mother Earth album “Space Elephant” (working title) was mastered just now and is ready for you to absorb into the right hemisphere of your brain.

Man, it took me forever to get this done. But it’s done. And it’s done tight.

More news coming soon.

Much love,
Aki
Voluntary Mother Earth

Well, sort of.

As I wrote in my last post, I finally managed to start working on the mix of “Cheeseburger Baby” (America’s Favorite) a few days back.

Got the first verse and the mid section mixed, and I’ll get down to the latter half of the song and the prelude tomorrow, and hopefully it’ll get done sometime during this weekend. Yes, I’m spending a whole week just for the mixing of one song. Call me crazy, and you might be right.

Music aside,,,
Since I’ve moved recently I have to hand in some paperwork to the local government office. So today I went back to Yokohama to fill out a move-out form.

On my way there, I stopped at Shibuya, Tokyo, which is like Tokyo’s equivalent of Times Square, New York, except nastier and more plastic and with full of shit music blasting out of every fucking store and huge screen mounted on buildings and loud speaker in street corners. (3 years ago it was all Sean Kingston’s “Beautiful Girls”, and our then-drummer Sean and I used to have good laughs poking fun at this particular piece of noise, busting out this little tune in the middle of our songs at rehearsals. God bless Seans. Both of ‘em)

Anyhow, I stopped by there and got a few second-hand CDs. For those of you who somehow are curious about what the fuck I’m listening to right now, here they are, except I haven’t listened to ‘em juschet.

As you can see, they are two Radioheads and a Thom Yorke, and a Kraftwerk. I got into Radiohead last year. It takes me a long time before I have enough balls to purchase recordings of bands that are still around. I’m mostly strictly religiously a dead-person-music/disbanded-band-music kind of guy.

Yes, I still buy CDs, but almost only used ones. I like to own stuff. I don’t like owning something intangible like a downloaded MP3. MP3’s not even stuff. Just give me some stuff. I want STUFF!
It ain’t no stuff if you can’t touch it, and you can’t own it if it ain’t no stuff. Stuff’s good.

But at the same time, I can’t afford to keep buying $25-30 albums (which is the standard price of albums sold in Japan).

Out of this particular circumstance, I developed a habit of buying old CDs and records. These days lots of people seem to like digital download and it’s cool. It just ain’t my cuppa tea.

While in Shibuya, I also picked this thing up. I’m a big fan of Krishna and Indian art.

Aigh, so that’s what I’m up to.
Still not Dre, but taking my time to perfect my mix, nonetheless.
What are you up to?

Hugs,
Aki
Voluntary Mother Earth