Oh happy joy - just as the snowboard season comes to a close, tax season is upon us. And due to being horrendously busy trying to organize one Elsewhere excursion after another, I've been understandably negligent in managing my books.

So after a very stressful and monotonous week, I am almost 80% done getting my ledger up to par to squeek past the oversight police.

I hate filing taxes. I really do. I really really, truly honestly hate this time of year. The worst thing about it is that it hits at the busiest time of year for me. It stresses me out, I'm naturally cruddy with numbers, and I get squeezed.

Death or taxes....I swear, this is what makes people join the French Foreign Legion.

Okay, so this is a warm year....haven't I been telling all of you to stop driving gas guzzlers! This global warming is what you get as a result of your motorized decadence!!

But seriously, up at Nozawa Onsen, one of Japan's finest ski resorts, last weekend and we were doing the back country when we came across FOUR avalanches. Two of my crew, including myself, were caught in them. Luckily they were small - up to your waist level, and we shouldn't have been there (actually, yes we should have), and the HUGE one that we saw was 100m away. Still, scary stuff.

Life is too short and too precious to do bullshit things like getting caught in avalanches. We knew the slope gradient was too steep, we knew the warm weather was a catalyst for slides, and it was obvious big powder dump earlier in the week sat on top of an ice shelf - all prime conditions for avalanche country. And yet, we went to the Tanuki Chute (the official name of the big backbowl behind Nozawa) anyways. Are we stupid? Foolish? Thinking that we could live forever? Yes, yes and NO to the last one. But two out of three is still bad. Lessons learned.

Anyways, coming up is the last Elsewhere (at least official) Japan excursion - to Hakkoda, in Aomori prefecture. The biggest and baddest of the backcountry regions in Land of the Rising Sun.

It's early in the morning for me, my brain is discombobulated, and so my writing style will be frenetic and in point form.

- trip to Myoko Kogen, with a crew of 18 folks. I totally fucked up the bullet train tickets, or rather my agent, being Japan Rail did. When I asked for 18 tickets leaving Tokyo station at 7:30 on Friday, they naturally assumed I meant 07:30am. Oh come ON! I am pretty sure I clarified (even in stilted Japanese) that I said 7:30 EVENING! So of course by the time someone clocks in and figures out that all the tickets leave in the morning, they had all been already distributed to the crew, all over Tokyo, in different offices and environments. I had two days to scramble all over the city and get those tickets to exchange them for the evening train. Not fun - esp when you are on a motorbike in the dead of winter trying to grab as many tickets off people in a city of 30,000,000 people. I.e., Tokyo is a very large city to cross. Anyhow, I made it and the trip was rowdy, rowdy, rowdy.

2. These trips are getting more and more rowdy, with the ass-mooning party element coming to balance out the hardcore snowboarding  nd  off-piste backcountry silliness parts of it. Who would have thought that by second trip to Nozawa Onsen, we were setting a new standard in obnoxious drunken behaviour? We've been doing this for years, and the crowds have never been this energetic or raunchy! By Myoko, the third trip, we were dancing along with some Japanese punks and geezer salarimen to Michael Jackson being played by some old white-haired bar-owner dude who was groping our women. Oh come on, Wendy. You loved it!

3. The snow is just not that good this year. I hear that Europe has it worse but there are still pockets of powder here and there, mostly where we are looking, thankfully. Recently, there have been some major dumps, but snow levels are not up to their usual face-drowning going-down-the-mountain thigh-high powder conditions of Japan. Instead, the snow is only knee-high powder. Man, I sound spoiled, don't I?

4. Injuries so far this season - two cuts to my leg, a sprained pinky, and a cut on my forehead. The last one was actually from me hitting my head on a hotel door while stumbling around in the dark, semi-hungover.

Awesome. If anyone represents the lifestyle more, can't think of 'em.

Founder of Mo'Wax, UNKLE, and Surrender, movie music soundtrack maker, discoverer of DJ Shadow, DJ Krush, and South, and lead perp for Nigo's A Bathing Ape and Futura 2000.

Can you smell my stink of envy?

Anyways, off to catch the show tonight.

Whistler, British Columbia is an Elsewhere destination. Of course, the definition of an Elsewhere destination is merely based on the history of the Elsewhere Collective. We've always made Whistler one of our stops and therefore, it becomes one of our destinations. While true it's not located in the Japanese Alps, Himalayas, the Andes, Hindu Kush or the Karakoram, spending the holy shopping week separating Xmas and New Years somewhere near the Khyber Pass drinking salty fermented goat's milk doesn't exactly ellicit enthusiasm from us. I dunno about you, but that's just us.  

Anyways, usually when we hit Whistler (two members of the Elsewhere crew were on hand over the last few days), the snow is wet, heavy and dank. However, we were blessed by a dump that preceded our arrival so we had a top layer of pow that actually lasted a few days til a new dump slammed into us via a blizzard. A refreshal of powder was exactly what the doctor ordered. 

Booze, powder, B.C. grown and Peking Duck. Yep, sometime life smiles upon the weary.

I was reading about a new documentary called Behind the Beats, about the politics of rap music and how it affects todays youths, and also how socially-aware rap music (i.e., the earlier form) escapes most youths and how most don't understand it, and so the more prevalent form for impressionable teens ends up being the more simplistic and easier to copy gangsta. The over-riding theme of the director is that this is a CRYING SHAME.

Another theme that he brings up is that him being black, he isn't allowed to NOT like rap music, as that would brand him a traitor to his race. That's bullshit and it's also not, as people are creatures of their environment. If you grew up with a political movements and that's all you know, not following that movement can have you branded as an outsider.

I think that music can be both polarizing as well as democratic but you have to leave your geopolitical perspective to understand the latter. You identify yourself by the music you listen to, it's akin to nationality and ethnicity, but unlike the others, you don't have to ascribe yourself to a musical genre permanently. You can change as many times as you want. It's a sad case when a person only listens to one genre in their entire life. It's like you never left your zip code.

So in this regard, I shake my fist against Top 40 Radio!! ToPopular Radio only plays 2%, if that, of what is actually out there and actually plays a big role in keeping the vast urban populations out there completely ignorant from the the real art forms of aural humanity. It's like being stuck on NBC, ABC, and CBS and shutting yourself off from the other gazillion terestrial television channels.

So frackin' get out there: go to a music store and crate dig, go online to Internet radio, join a community radio service, read Pitchfork and like other URLs, start your own pirate station. Bring down corporate payola, stop feeding Top 40, and realize that yes, Gwen Stefani is untalented and Beyonce really has a terrible voice!

Being a Canadian by birth and having grown-up in Vancouver most of my life, you would think that political correctness has been so steeply ingrained in me that I wouldn't bat an eyelash confronting it face to face.

From time to time, I get a kick out of PC-awareness websites and get a laugh or get angry at the sheer crassness of racism. But then at the same token I get stunned by the level of political correctness thrown at people by those I think need to get a sharper (and meaner) sense of humour. 

And so Western Coastal Canada, being the breeding ground/hotbed of environmentalism (which I support), vegetarianism (which I am on and off depending on the year and how bored I get), women's rights (which I also support) anti-racism (duh! I support), and gay rights (to which I am rather admittedly ambivalent but in no way disenfranchise), actually bothers me.

Vancouver in the 70's/80's was a different place. Back then, there was rampant racism, there were anti-forestry demonstrations, and a sense of "Us vs. Them", with "them" meaning east-coast corporate conservatives.

It's TOO clean here. There is no edginess here, no sense of conflict as everyone here is on the same side. Everyone is the same militant, PC-spouting trooper as the next person. In fact, I think there are some anti-PC people here but they are too cowed by the model majority that they don't make their virulence known and get thrown out.

Is there something wrong with that? You bet there is. Without conflict, without seeing (and understanding) the other side, a lot of stuff gets thrown to the wayside. Namely, a sense of humour about the nasty things in life, the point of view of people who don't have a choice, and grayness that defines what living is all about.

Plus, naked women in a shop window is not necessarily a bad thing, like those 7-story high nude models in the department stores of Ginza. =)

Okay, this is not going to be popular post but maybe I should congratulate Vancouver. Well done, you've so overcome the need for throwing a brick through the window that you need to see why you do things like that again.

Complacency leads to apathy.  And this place was never meant to be apathetic.

Okay, bad analogy but apt.

Starting this weekend, Elsewhere merchandise (samples) hits the streets of Tokyo, San Francisco, Hong Kong and Vancouver. Come January - New York, Sapporo, Nagano and hopefully Sydney.

Off and running. Hope the momentum lasts.

Okay, so I'm drunk a couple of nights ago. I exit one of the three stations closest to home/Elsewhere central, called Shirokane-Takanawa. I've been on a serious binge that night and feeling righteously peckish and since my stomach is full, ramen noodle soup is out of the question. I opt for a burrito from a convenience store instead. Light, cheap, and yet salty enough to conquer my alcoholic disposition.

I'm walking home, gnawing on this microwaved-irradiated burrito and wondering whether I should keep the plastic wrapping in my overcoat pocket til I get home. Japan has an extreme lack of garbage bins so the usual ploy is to keep trash in your satchel or pocket till you find a receptacle to deposit said trash into.

However, I pass an apartment with a Porsche Cayenne parked in front. Now, I HATE Porsche Cayennes. They represent everything that is wrong with this world. First off, they are a big gas-guzzling SUV for people who have never/will never use a SUV for its actual intended purpose. Second of all, only the most pretentious a-hole type of individual would buy a Porsche brand of SUV as frankly speaking, I don't have anything against SUVs but if you're going to get one, don't get one that is so wanker, investment-banker, Eurotrash, got-too-much-money-you-need-to-spend-it-on-a-SUV-from-a-German-sportscar-company. I mean, if you're going to get a European-made SUV and want people to respect you, try a Volvo XC90 or XC70, Audi Quattro, VW Touareg, or a Land Rover. By all that is holy, don't get a Porsche SUV. You basically just signed a contract that stipulates that yes, you are a pretentious dick-head that cares nothing about anything except yourself.

So feeling self-righteous and extremely drunk, I kindly deposit the burrito-trash from my pocket onto the hood of said automobile absently while walking by. In a minute way, I feel empowered into teaching the Cayenne's owners that they made a mistake in their purchase and that someone out there will be punishing them for that mistake for some time to come, for knowing my obsessive compulsiveness, I am going to be doing that a LOT to them in the future. And gleefully so.

So, my environmentally-aware brothers and sisters, next time you see a major dickwad-mobile, do your part and absently/casually place your garbage on top of the hood or roof of that automobile and know that you are teaching the deserving owners a lesson. That lesson is: you fuck with my environment, I fuck with your's.

Well it is if you are somewhat familiar with Japanese Pop stars, talentos, idols, geino, etc etc

It's in French but the meaning is unmistakable. I love the part where he calls Kumi Koda a prostitute....and his comparisons of Japanese dental evolution...

http://jpoptrash.nihon-fr.com/chirurgiens/chirurgiens.htm

Being a strange guy among several strange people, when it comes to electronica, we like to chill out/get bent on abstract/IDM artists like Boards of Canada, Autechre, Squarepusher, Funkstorung (RIP), Aphex Twin, Meat Beat Manifesto, etc etc. Of course, we don't discount 4 by 4 house/techno, dub, or nu skool breakbeat, but I'll leave that to another blog. For this blog is about NinjaTune.

Since the early 90s, like its contemporary Warp Records, Ninja Tune had a longstanding policy of finding new artists that had no relation to pop sensitivities, lyrics, listenability, and hooks. But NinjaTune artists had to have a certain sound that made the brand come alive. Back in the day, DJ Food, Herbaliser, Coldcut, Hex, DJ Vadim and Amon Tobin set the standard of what NinjaTune became. Of course, the label founders also being Coldcut/Hex/Homonculus didn't hurt either. Nowadays, NinjaTune has broadened its scope to include lounge (Blockhead) but still goes out of its way to find artists with the original feel (Raj Pannu).

This iconoclast approach lives on today with other labels, most notable Anticon, the anti-hip hop hip hop label. I doubt ANY of Anticon's artists will ever wet Rush Simmon's pants but I think that is why they are doing it. And that is why they are so cool now.

Anyways, back to NinjaTune. One of their core bands, Amon Tobin, is playing at Unit in Daikanyama - the one big club here in Tokyo that has the balls to play non-Renaissance (best for Womb in Udagawa-cho), non-Global Underground (best for Air in Daikanyama) and instead play abstract trip hop, dirty lounge, fucked-up dub, evil jazz, and everything and anything from the disturbing basements of Deutscheland.