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Events Meta Music

PLAY 03

Cause you can’t, you won’t, and you don’t stop — at least that’s how I feel about PLAY, so yes, Vol. 3 is happening this coming Friday (December 18) at Cafe Pause. This will probably be the last one I do this year, and I think I’ll try to make it a bit Christmas-y. We’re recording a new episode of Radio OK Fred tomorrow, and we’re going to have a Christmas theme, so will probably end up playing some of those selections.

So yeah, come join me at the cafe, from 21:00 to 23:00. For more on PLAY — including last night’s setlist and downloads — go here.

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Events Meta Music

Setlist for PLAY 02

Did PLAY 02 at the cafe last night, and so again, here is the setlist for the night that was, with the mix also available as two downloads. Find more details on PLAY, and previous setlists, here.

PLAY 02 (Part 1) (52 MB)

1. Smokey & Miho – “Ocean in Your Eyes”
2. Yuka Honda – “Humming Song (Alone Together)”
3. 4hero – “Morning Child”
4. Tricky – “Au Revoir Emmanuelle”
5. Portishead – “Chase the Tear”
6. Radiohead – “Everything in Its Right Place”
7. Boards of Canada – “’84 Pontiac Dream”
8. Wunder – “Brazil”
9. Shugo Tokumaru – “Clocca”
10. +/- – “Setting Your Head on Fire”
11. Stereolab – “Vonal Declosion”
12. Marxy – “Intro To”
13. Salon Music – “Groovy Dog”
14. Wolfmother – “Vagabond”
15. Sloan – “Beyond Me”
16. The Apples in Stereo – “Glowworm”

PLAY 02 (Part 2) (51 MB)

17. Broken Social Scene – “Windsurfing Nation”
18. Tokyo Police Club – “Nature of the Experiment”
19. Sonic Youth – “Reena”
20. Rick White – “The Clock”
21. Julie Doiron – “Nice to Come Home”
22. Feist – “One Two Three Four”
23. Sufjan Stevens – “Dear Mr Supercomputer”
24. Peter Bjorn and John – “I Want You!”
25. Stephen Malkmus – “(Do Not Feed The) Oyster”
26. Pavement – “Cream of Gold”
27. Serena-Maneesh – “Drain Cosmetics”
28. Swervedriver – “Rave Down”
29. Ride – “Vapour Trail”
30. The Scarboro Aquarium Club – “All The Good Things”
31. Masakatsu Takagi – “Ophelia”

Update: I’ve set up a feed for the mixes, so that you can simply subscribe to them as podcasts.

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Cycling Design Food Magazines Meta

Paper Sky Renewal

The new issue of Paper Sky (31) is a special one, marking a major renewal for the magazine. The most obvious change is the cover design, but you’ll find English content creeping back into the magazine as well — for now, mostly with intro paragraphs to each article, but Cameron Allan McKean‘s article on sento bathing in Tokyo is published entirely in English.

The Paper Sky website is also about to get a major revamp, and is set to launch within a week or two. The new site will now have a strong English component, of which I’ll be a contributor (but more on that once the site launches).

The other day I had the great pleasure of finally meeting the magazine’s founder, Lucas Badtke-Berkow, who also founded the original — and truly great — TOKION. Seems like this should have happened ages ago, and it was great to have a nice long chat with Lucas about where Knee High Media has been, where it’s heading, and on the state of print media in general. After checking out the KHM office in Shibuya, we ended up getting coffee at this amazing little retro cafe nearby, which I hate that I can’t remember the name (but I’ll be going there again).

Above, the label for Lucas’ new Luke’s Carrots line of organic products — I had a taste of the carrot jam, which was delicious. You can currently buy it at the weekend farmer’s market in front of the UN University in Aoyama, where he and his wife are manning a booth this month. Next weekend they’ll also be offering free rides on some very cool bicycles, as part of the new Paper Sky Bicycle Club.

Update: The cafe’s name is Aoyama Ichibankan, and here’s a map that shows the location. Make sure to get the honey toast!

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Games Meta Web

Game

What do I do on Friday nights? Well, this last one I decided to build a site from scratch from an idea I had earlier this week (last Saturday night, actually) and the result is now online, and called Game. As I explain in the “About” page, the idea is simply to recommend games — these are not reviews, I will only include games I like — using a format that’s short and to the point. Also, I wanted a look for the site that was at an extreme opposite to what gaming websites usually look like.

Why do this? It’s been just over a year now since Arcade Mania came out, as well as me leaving Wired’s Game|Life blog, and I started missing writing about games. Anyone who follows my Twitter feed will know that I tend to recommend a lot of stuff there, but I wanted to do something that had a bit more permanence.

For now, my plan is to add 2-3 games a week, and they don’t have to be absolute new releases — right now, anything released in 2009 is still fair game I feel. Also, games will cover every platform, so expect flash/browser games, iPhone games, console games, etc.

I hope at least a few people find this useful, and I invite everyone to follow along on the site (and you can of course subscribe to the feed as well).

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Events Meta Music

PLAY 02 Tonight

Just a reminder that PLAY 02 happens tonight (December 12) at Cafe Pause, which means I’ll be DJing from 21:00 to 23:00. For an idea of what I play, have a look at the set lists for PLAY 00 and PLAY 01.

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Events Meta

PauseTalk Vol. 36 Participants

A huge thanks again to everyone who made it to this past Monday’s PauseTalk Vol. 36. We were maybe a smaller group than last time — low twenties this time — but we all had a good time with the discussions, as well as the casual chats following the official session.

Below is a partial list of the participants — if you’re not there, please email me and I’ll add you right away. If you check the PauseTalk website, you’ll notice that I’ve tweaked things a bit (something I’d been wanting to do for a while). I’d also encourage everyone who is interested in keeping up with things to join the Facebook group — that’s what I use to send out the reminder before the next event. And do take a look at the latest batch of PauseTalk Portraits by Max Hodges if you haven’t already. The next edition is set for January 11 (the second Monday, because of the New Year holidays).

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Events Fashion Meta Photography

Portraits from PauseTalk Vol. 36

I’ll have the list of participants from last night’s PauseTalk (Vol. 36) up later today or tomorrow, but in the meantime I wanted to share the latest round of portraits taken by Max Hodges, which are all viewable in this gallery. As with last time, I’m really loving these, and I’m hoping that Max keeps doing them, and then maybe culminate in some sort of exhibition to celebrate the fourth anniversary of PauseTalk next year. Max is also talking about compiling PDF books of the shots, which I think is a great idea.

And in case you’re wondering, the t-shirt I’m wearing is Gelman‘s “Sorry I’m Late!” tee he did for Uniqlo a couple of years back.

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Events Meta

PauseTalk Tonight

Just a reminder that PauseTalk (Vol. 36) happens tonight (December 7) at Cafe Pause, with the usual start time of 20:00. I’ll be there from 19:30, hanging out until the official start, so feel free to come earlier.

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Events Meta Music

PLAY 02

I’m not promising I’ll keep doing these on a weekly basis, but I’m having so much fun doing them that I want to keep going, so yes, next week I’m doing PLAY 02 at Cafe Pause. It will happen on Saturday (December 12) instead of Friday, because I’m going to be attending the “Taichizm!” live show that night at Shibuya O-NEST. So same deal as usual, me selecting tracks from 21:00 to 23:00, except on a Saturday.

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Events Meta Music

Setlist for PLAY 01

Had a great time with PLAY 01 — finished up just a couple of hours ago, actually — and again, I’m posting here the complete playlist for my set, which you can also download in two parts.

PLAY 01 (Part 1) (43 MB)

1. Lorenzo Fragiacomo – “Kirby”
2. Stephin Merritt – “Stray with Me”
3. Dijf Sanders – “Babysitters Zen Moment”
4. The Swell Season – “I Have Loved You Wrong”
5. Boards Of Canada – “’84 Pontiac Dream”
6. Sketch Show – “Chronograph (Cornelius Remix)”
7. Royksopp – “Happy Up Here”
8. Sebastien Tellier – “Kilometer”
9. Phoenix – “1901”
10. Air – “Be A Bee”
11. Stereo Total – “Do The Bambi”
12. Solex – “Mere Imposters”
13. Yo La Tengo – “Nuclear War Alt Version”

PLAY 01 (Part 2) (63 MB)

14. Prefuse 73 – “Radio Attack”
15. Biz Markie – “Just A Friend”
16. Run DMC – “It’s Tricky”
17. The Beastie Boys – “So What’cha Want”
18. Danger Doom – “Sofa King Remix”
19. DJ Shadow – “Six Days (Remix) Feat. Mos Def”
20. DJ Klock – “Rounds”
21. Holland – “J.F.A.”
22. Kings of Convenience – “The Weight of My Words (Four Tet Remix)”
23. 6955 – “Three”
24. Peaches – “Downtown”
25. WIT – “I Surrender”
26. Bitchee Bitchee Ya Ya Ya – “Fuck Friend (CSS Remix)”
27. Halcali – “Tandem (Mutable Chromosome Remix)”
28. DJ Codomo – “Cuury & Mice (Feat. Kiiiiiii)”
29. Nagisa Cosmetic – “C.o.s.m.e.t.i.c. Music”
30. Harvard – “Keibunshabooks.com”
31. Neil & Iraiza – “Violleta”