General Science's Running People Band

Ok so its more like a personal music project more than an actual band.
I've written some tunes, mostly instrumentals, the genres will be around post-rock, math rock, ambient. I've got a few funk ones but I'm not very consistent with that genre. Maybe some psychedelia, I'm more keen on that genre. Basically influenced by all the stuff I've been listening to. Written lyrics for some of them, don't know if the lyrics will spoil it.

I've uploaded 2 new instrumental songs - "Tapping... Test... RUN!" and "Strolling Life". Best listened with a headphone cause it's quite soft. I apologize for that.


Here's the link again: General Science's Running People Band


And for more lively songs, check out my sis's page Halfway Kings

Swining Sunshine

Cracking codfish folding the sky
Swirling dishes holding my eye
Swinging Sunshine feels so very fine
Golden threads shining down from the blue skies

Holding my fingers in a pool of guitar
Soak in the mirror of a marigold flower
All man find their way to a stage
So many riots dropping lemons in blue

Technique of a jumping old man
Living in a conch dripping from the cold sand
Paper reef define a machine
Four weeks a minute ten thousand waltzing grenades

Video tapes are so hard to find
Recently baked a chip full of pie
Joining tigers for a train ride
Yellow and pink bed frames drowning in the sea

Thumbs and an experts paper mache
Craving for some sunflowers seeds
Building pizzas out of a pan
Couldn't find a working bundle of peas

Keys and towels dancing in a straight line
Mobius movement observed in the sky
Swinging Sunshine feels so very fine
Golden threads shining down from the blue sky

http://www.myspace.com/gsrpband

Flu

Exploration week went pass just like that, not a very productive week to be honest. Only managed to really work on my mix media illustration poster. Its almost finish - I suppose about 20% left. All that's left is a bit more air brushing, and some little touching up. At least there was some significant progess, but only for that subject. It didn't help that I fell sick on Saturday. It was the usual flu bug, where it starts off with a sore throat which develops into a fever, and after the fevers gone, flu. Rested the whole weekend except for last night/morning, cause I had to complete assignments for today (Monday).

Fever was really bad last night when I got back to Sunway. So I decided to sweat it out. Here's what I did: I still had my jeans and polo-t on, so I put on my jacket, took my bass out of the bag and had a short jam session. I usually sweat a lot even when I'm not sick or wearing a jacket when I'm jamming. But the combination of clothing yesterday acted as a catalyst. And it work! Fever gone. Must have looked totally ridiculous, imagine someone rocking it out on stage wearing an over sized National Geographic jacket - not cool.

The thing I realised when you're sick is that even though you feel really tired, you can't sleep. That helped a bit yesterday night, managed to complete my work. Slept at 5.30 woke up at 9 for 9.30 class... that must have shaved off a few year of my life span.

One thing I look forward to when I'm having a fever is the far out dreams I get.
I remember I came across a site on dreaming and stuff, and there was a section where they teach you how to control your dreams while still remaining asleep. The thought of it was frightening yet very tempting. However and I was wondering: what if I wandered off to some spot in my mind where I get stuck and can't wake up? That's too much Sandman and Hellblazer for me.

I always wondered how does TOA get people to audition for whatever event they're organizing. Just today I got to school and saw an audition poster. BUT! When is the event? 19 March. And the audition? 12 March. The thing is they choose to post it up at the shortest notice and at the wrong time. Its EXPLORATION WEEK, everyone who doesn't have replacement classes or need to attend some workshop are at home either doing work, slacking off or staring at a blank piece of paper waiting for inspiration to drop out the sky.

I'm always missing their auditions...

Anyway on a more bittersweet note - the English version of the remakes of Pokemon Silver and Gold are out. The only thing standing in the way is the issue of time. I'll just have to wait for the holidays.

Pokemon FTW!

Born On The Bayou

Been watching some anime series recently. It started with Samurai Champloo, I actually watched it before, i had a DVD set, but it had totally crap subtitles and I didn't know what was going on most of the time. So I managed to find it online and watched it again. Hip-hop elements in feudal japan - totally hilarious, especially the beat boxing dude and the rapping group carrying planks of woods over their shoulders in place of a boom box haha.

And then I re-watched Witch Hunter Robin too. I think I had the DVD also with totally crap subs - welcome to the sad sad world of buying anime DVDs in Malaysia. Found it online too. And you imagine the huge contrast between these 2 animes. Samurai Champloo action packed, fast paced and a little bit of humour. WHR was more like a detective story very few action scenes, and very lifeless in comparison to Samurai Champloo.

And then I watched Mushishi's anime series. The anime series doesn't deviate much from the original manga, some scenes look like they were just copied right out of the manga. It's like they treated the manga like the story board for the anime. There are only 26 episodes, almost unrelated just like the manga. So it covers until volume 5 of the manga and still not all of the stories. The only novelty of watching the anime is seeing the mushi come to life in the animation. To see they way they move, their colour, the sound they make - its just hard to communicate that in a still black and white picture. One interesting thing to note in the anime is that I realize is that there are a lot of children involved and you can tell through the voice acting that it really is children voicing children characters in the anime and not adults putting on a child's voice. I didn't realize that there were so many children in the story while reading the manga. The pace of the anime is slow, which suits the poetic feel of the story.

Now I'm watching Ayakashi Ayashi... very hard anime name to remember. Couldn't remember if it was Ayashi Ayakashi or the other way round - which is the correct one. This one is more recent and like the ones I've watched so far it only has 26 episodes. It has quite an eclectic mix this anime. Cause it has a period/ historical setting, and also some of the events that take place coincide with real Japanese history. It is a ghost/demon slaying anime, but it is told like a detective story, and most of the youi (thats what demons are named in the anime) are huge and I'm talking Ultraman / Godzilla monster huge huge. So imagine Bleach minus funny dressed people, plus more IQ. The series gimmick or novelty is the main character, Ryuudo Yukiatsu's, ability to extract the power behind the etymology and the meaning of a word. And since Japanese also use Chinese characters in their language, so Chinese characters are essentially pictographs. So sometimes he can extract a weapon from a word which he uses to fight the youi.


Been listening to The Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival. Title of the blog is the name of one of CCR's songs. It's quite a thing to call yourselves "The Band", a bit of vanity involved I think, but heck they have reasons to be. The Band is from Canada, while CCR's American. But both of their genre are blues/folk rock.

I remember reading 20th Century Boys and there were a few 1970's bands mentioned in it. One of them was Creedence Clearwater Revival so I just thought I give it a try.

I've been listening to a lot of post-rock and sometimes it can get very sickening. SO! I've discovered how to listen to post-rock without getting sick and feeling disgusted by its noise and tuneless droning. First, listen to a lot of retro stuff - catchy lively tunes that demand your attention, and make you... happy. Until you get tired of it. Then listen to post-rock, somehow they just sound better like that.

Somehow listening to artist like Chuck Berry, Bealtes and Bobby Day make you tired. I think it's because their songs were essentially dance music, and it tends to be able to grab you attention and somehow make you "dance" even though you're just sitting down doing work while listening to them. Quite useful when its late and I need to go on working. I notice this same effect when it comes to disco and ska too. Because like I said they were essentially dance music. And then post-rock seem to be on the other end of the spectrum, quite depressing and meditative. Attention is paid in a different manner - which is spent on listening to the layers and details of sounds and noise in the song.

Gambler of Sideswiper

This band is goooood!
Been listening to them for most parts of yesterday and today.

Its like a very happy, hyper-active, post-rock. It has that fun, energetic, lively feel of celtic punk like those by Flogging Molly or Dropkick Murphys, except that it doesn't have any bag pipes just a very optimistic and uplifting post-rock sound.

And here's an absolutely weird music video for their song Daisy.


On top of that, suddenly I'm listening to Ragnarok Online's BGMs again. RO BGM was a regular on playlist when I was in Secondary school. "Gambler of Highway" is one of my faves - super awesome bass line. Their Christmas songs aren't that bad too and "Theme of Alberta" is a really groovy Caribbean song. And then there's the fan favourite "One Step Closer".

Ambition

Escaped to KL this Chinese New Year. So no visiting or visits from relatives. I guess they understood anyway. Did a lot of shopping, mostly CDs:
Talking Head - 77
Grand Funk Railroad - E Pluribus Funk
Kasabian - Kasabian
Doves - The Last Broadcast
Spiritualized - Amazing Grace
Whisbone Ash's Collection
Deep Purple's Anthology

Was pretty stoked when I saw Spiritualized's Amazing Grace in Rock Corner. It was a no-brainer. A definite buy. Was pretty glad to be able to get Doves too. Basically just thought I'd want to actually physically own these albums :D

Bought V for Vendetta, and a belt cause one of my jeans is really loose.

Had a week off for the CNY break but cause of the work load that we have I decided to get back to Sunway early to do it. So far knocked down only one and a half out of... 5.

All the print shops are closed for a week. And I need to print some stuff, anyway no rush cause that assignment that I needed to print for is only due on Wednesday.

We're proceeding to the usual poster assignment for our Mix Media Illustration, so I've decided to do a concert poster for Coldplay.

But what I really want to talk about is my childhood dream - I wanted to be a pilot. I guess it was a combination of video games and TV shows.
There was this seriously kick-ass air plane shooter games called Raptor: Call Of Shadows, I remember playing when I was a kid on our super old PC, which still ran on DOS and Windows was a separate application on its own. And I remember you had to "park" the drive before you turned off the PC. Anyway why was it so kick-ass was the amount of weapons you could purchase (if you have the full version that is, which I had on that PC). And the detail on it was amazing, I mean it was just mere pixels!



And then there was this other educational game called Mathcopter. Where you're given a math question and you're suppose to shoot down these floating numbers scattered around. However this one had a flight simulation format.

And then there was Disney's animated series TaleSpin. It was the Baloo (that funky hepcat of a bear from Jungle Book) version of Chip And Dale Rescue Rangers, come to think of it CnDRR was kinda like the A-Teams. I mean even the look and the theme song was kinda similiar. I remember Baloo was a carrier pilot and his plane was an amphibian plane. That series was cool, just that it didn't run as long as CnDRR.

However it was just a childhood fantasy. Fitness was vital to be a pilot and there was no commitment to keep fit, I wasn't a fan of exercise - even as a child. And... yea just mere fantasy. But I remember when we were to fill up forms during Primary school my list of ambitions were: 1)Teacher 2)Drummer
I can't be sure if I wrote "artist" but a certain amount interest was there when I was a kid. There was this one classmate of mine who was really good at drawing. He would draw Rockman and this funny comic strip featuring 2 antromorphic Pigs and a dude ala Crayon Shin Chan style storytelling. Can't remember what the stories were about but I know there was a healthy dose of pooping jokes. Anyway he was really good at drawing, not colouring or painting. Would just sit there with an empty book and nothing but those normal Papermate pens. Wouldn't need to have a pencil outline sketch, just ink work. And he had quite an audience. I think I got him to draw a Rockman comic for me. Think I threw it away. Anyway it was then that I started to draw. Really embarrassing to look at your childhood drawings, but it's still me who drew it and it's part of my life. Still embarrassing to look at my drawings now. Paintings I'm fine.

Makes me wonder if there will be a market for me when I graduate. Tell me to paint and I'm really confident, but to draw or do some visual drawings? Wouldn't dare.

There is the nagging thought of doing music. But I wonder if its just a form of escapism, and if I'll end up spoiling the interest like the situation I'm in now. But changing from an art/design line to music? Out of the boiling pot and into the fire. Being in Malaysia doesn't help.

Please bear with my nonsense

The mobile phone jumped out of a tuba and started to have a 17 minutes chat with me about connectivity and emotions, then he suggested that we go comb the beach, remembering to bring a stapler in case of we met paper bags. I scratched my foot on a horse shoe buried in the sand. Phone said that I was lucky. I didn't find it funny, so I broke his screen with the horse shoe. A kettle landed on the shore, spilling out pencil shavings that fell on to the sand only to be quickly eaten up by the hungry putty erasers. Phone who lost his sight courtesy of me breaking his screen walks into the sea, a sand castle tries to stop him but to its dismay melts into the sea. Squealing of a putty eraser who caught sand in its tongue makes me turn away, as I turn back to look for phone, he is no longer in sight.

I decided to head south, because I over heard a horse saying that they have green cornflakes there. So I caught the next train bound south. I shared the train cabin with a test pad who said he was tired of words, a fish who was tired of school and a guitar pick who was looking for his one perfect guitar. They served ginger ale and chocolate biscuits for tea. The train came to a halt after 5 hours into the journey - a scooter had fallen onto the track thus the train could no longer proceed. I got off the train, seeing that it didn't matter when I arrived just as long as I did, I decided to walk the rest of the journey. I met a porter who had the same idea as I did, he gave me a 1 inch tall pot as a sign of friendship, and I put it in my pocket. As we walked down the track we had a conversation about faces and rubber balls. We reached a part where the tracks parted. I gave the porter the horse shoe from the beach as a farewell gift and we both parted ways.

I finally reached a town, and immediately searched for a restaurant. And just as the horse on the beach said, the cornflakes were green, and it was the best cornflakes I ever tasted. Then entered this traveling salesmen selling bottles of sand from Jerusalem. Feeling rather impulsive, I decided to get one. The pomegranate having a bacon sandwich the table beside me told me that it was a rip off. But I didn't care.

Having satisfy my appetite for green cornflake, I decided to go for a walk around town. As I was walking down main street, a shop selling coloured rags caught my eye. Upon entering the shop I was greeted by the shop keeper behind the counter. I was quite taken aback by vast number of rags that they had. As I was passing by the "rags hardened by acrylic paint" section, I meet this girl wearing a multi-coloured afro and yellow boots. She laughed at me saying that with my plain attire I stood out like a sore thumb in the shop. I replied saying that she fit right in. She kept quite after that, so I quickly replied that the afro and the boots looked good on her and not many people could pull of the look. The conversation went on and I got to know that her name was Penny and that she came here for the green cornflakes too, but she heard it from a mobile phone.

We decide to look around town together. We pass a stage in the middle of town, a skiffle band was playing and they managed to draw quite a huge crowd. They play a couple of songs, and then leave. I asked her if she knew how to play any instruments, she said she could play a banjo. I told her I could play the drums. A doe overheard our conversation and said that she could sing. We weren't convince, so she gave us a little demo by singing "Let It Be", an accordionist did an improv while she was singing. And we were convince of both their skills. The accordionist lead us to a music store and we managed to rent a drum set and a banjo. We hurried back to the stage and played away, until nightfall. A music producer approached the accordionist and the doe and immediately hired them, and they sped away in a pink coloured bus.

Feeling rather disappointed that we weren't chosen, both of us headed to the railway station with our heads hung low. We bought tickets for the night train. This time we shared the cabin with a paint brush who couldn't wait to paint, a roof tile who was tired of rain and hail, and a fidgety abacus who couldn't stop counting. The abacus then proceed to count how many times I blinked, how often Penny adjusted her afro, how many bristles there were on the paint brush, and the number of indentations on the roof tile, all simultaneously. Penny was humming a very familiar tune, I tired to guest what it was but couldn't figure out the answer. The roof tile figured it out - "Happy Together". After a while the clicking of the abacus, the little rattle of the train that happened every so often, and the hum of the train soon settle into a soothing harmony. My eyelids were getting heavy and I could feel Penny's head on my shoulder, and her afro in my ear. The paint brush was comfortably curled up in the corner and the roof tile was asleep like a log. Except for the abacus who was still counting how many times I blinked and the bristles on the paint brush. Soon I too drifted off to sleep.

When we reached the station it was already morning. I asked Penny if she was interested in breakfast. She kindly declined, gave me hug and thanked me. As a farewell gift I gave her the bottle of Jerusalem sand that I bought from the travelling salesman, and she gave me her multi-coloured afro. Then she got on a carriage pulled by 4 carrots, driven by a doberman and went away. She stuck her head out, her silky black colour hair blowing in the wind, as she waved goodbye.

Donning the multi-coloured afro, I walked back to the beach. Where I met the tuba and the horse. As we sat there at the beach watching putty erasers eat the pencil shavings that fell out of kettles that landed in the shore, sea breeze blowing through my new hairdo, we had a conversation about green cornflakes, skiffle bands, coloured rags, traveling salesmen, record companies, farewell gifts, connectivity, emotions and a girl named Penny.