Not long after I've finished and posted the first video for a Control K track, I'm delighted to report that the film has been chosen for inclusion on a new online music video channel.

TheDownloadGeneration are a video channel for unsigned artists and filmmakers, with a clean and easily navigable player for watching through.

They liked what they saw with 'Change' and have included it in their on-demand menu, as well as streaming the clip live.

Take a look at their channel to discover plenty of other new acts.

'Change' is the first video produced by Control K.

'Change' is an overview of the key moments of the 2008 US election, culminating in Obama's victory address at Grant Park in Chicago. With bouncing bass, some spectral notes and a laid-back groove, it is an audio-visual postcard from a historic moment on the world stage.

The video revisits some of the characters and key headlines from the tale, then takes a trip through the speech, all in full campaign colours.

Any comments or feedback appreciated.

The only new Control K song for this year, 'Change', has just gone up on this profile.

At the end of a momentous week on the world stage with the election of Barack Obama as US President, I've just put together my fastest-completed song yet.

For anyone like me who's been almost obsessively hooked to the campaign throughout the year, the song is an overview of the main moments of the campaign and it culminates with Obama's first words from his victory address in Chicago.

Whether he proves to be business as usual or a real radical change for America and thus the rest of world remains to be seen. Right now, it feels like a massive change for the US and leads to the possibility of hoping for the world to be tilted slightly back onto a better groove for the future.

I'm working on a video to go with the track, which will hopefully be completed soon. I doubt that it'll be finished as quickly as the song though, which I put together from start to finish in 5 days.

Post your comments if you like it of loath it and feel free to pass the song around.

I'm somewhat thrilled to announce that one of my tracks - 'Eloise Twisk' - has just been featured in the latest episode of the 'Best Of MySpace' podcast by Gill Mills.

Apparently, Control K was nominated by a listener of the show - whoever you are out there, thank you very much!

As a younger musician, I always really wanted to get a track played on the John Peel show. This must the modern equivalent. While the music doesn't seem to be quite as diverse as his line-ups, it is nevertheless a fine selection of up-and-coming artists.

Jill described the track thus:

Well handled electronica from Japan, which, given the right remix, wouldn't sound out of place on a global phone ad. As it stands you can quite happily drift off to this and imagine the summer you'd like to be having. Under water.

So here's a thought. If anyone out there is interested in remixing the track, perhaps we could nail some sort of licensing deal out of it. I'd be very interested to see what someone else would make of the track too, so here's a good chance to explore the collaborative power of the Web.

If you'd be interested in remixing 'Eloise Twisk', drop a comment on this post and we can take things from there.

For other visitors, do please have a listen. My track appears in podcast 35 and can be found close to the end of the file. There is a link to the podcast with this post, or you can go to the 'Best Of MySpace' page itself, where you can hear it and many other fine tunes.

Two and a half years after the release of 'The Front Line (Redux)' album, I will finally be making my live electronic debut.

The show is in support of Shelf Life , the band that I also front here in Tokyo, and it is one of two final shows for the band as I'm about to move back to the UK. The set will contain extracts from the album, along with my other work and a selection of tracks that I've heard and dug while I've been living here.

It will be at Rubber Soul in Kokubunji on Saturday January 26th, the place where the band began. Entry is free, doors open at 7pm, the music begins at 8pm. A map for Rubber Soul can be found here.

First and last chance to hear Control K live in Japan.

Cost: Free

The first new recording by Control K in two years is finally released, a remix of a Ryuichi Sakamoto song. Constructed over a six month period, 'Rokkasella (New Clear Mix)' is Control K's first venture into remixing.

'Rokkasella' is a radical reworking of a track originally produced by Team 6, comprising of electronic music pioneer Ryuichi Sakamoto (YMO, 'Merry Christmas Mr Lawrence') and US-based Japanese rapper Shing02, amongst others.

Following in the spirit of 'electronic protest music' that inspired Control K's debut album release 'The Front Line (Redux)', this remix builds on the ambient dub vibe that ran through that album. It also draws clear parallels between the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the use of nuclear power, and weaves a narrative of US energy imperialism into the tale.

The track is available for free download from the 'Stop Rokkasho' website, included with the likes of Kraftwerk, DJ Krush and Mick Karn (formerly of 80's band Japan). All remixes in this project are also available for free download from the iTunes Music Store.

*****

The original recording 'Rokkasho' was intended to draw attention to the dangers of Japan's nuclear fuel reprocessing plant in the North of Japan. Japan has previously commissioned reprocessing plants in Europe to reprocess its spent nuclear fuel and then shipped the waste back to Japan, but is now set to resume full scale reprocessing in Japan.

The reprocessing process releases large quantities of radioactivity into the environment. Extracted plutonium can be used in nuclear weapons and reprocessing entails clear environmental, social and safety risks.

An English language petition relating to the reactivating of the Kashiwazaki-Kariwa Nuclear Plant that was damaged in the Niigata earthquake of 2007 can be found here.

I've started writing a small column in the magazine Asia Player on Tokyo-based bands with MySpace pages. It doesn't matter whether the band is all Japanese, all gaijin or mixed but they should be gigging in the city pretty regularly. Any genre goes too.

As you'll all know, trawling through MySpace to actually find stuff you want can be very time-consuming and distracting, leading you to wander well off the point you originally started at.

So, I'm putting out a call here for anyone that fits the above description to get in touch through this page and alert me to the musical wonders out there, so that I can let more people know about it...

Better start picking some tunes to play now...

Peace,

K