The Coin Locker has new songs.

I think I went a bit overboard with praising bands and releases this time, haha.

But yeah, the new Porori maxi is absolutely cool, no horrible wannabe visual kei crap, just lovely Porori genkiness ♥

The CANNONBALL vol.1 compilations isn’t that good, overall. Quite mediocre but still damn good for a visual kei compilation, that is ^^; (Even the 2 respective Porori and Hotaru songs are pretty average.)

Mei are one of those identitiless visual indies bands so I won’t say much about their CD. Each of the songs reminds me of a different band. They even have a baroque song with the vocalist rapping and all o_O; Just imagine a guy singing like that wearing make-up and mismatching clothes. -_-;

Well, I think I haven’t showed my enthusiasm about the new Ash album here yet. I was a bit surprised myself, I haven’t really _LOVED_ anything the band put out after 1977 (the album, not the year ^^;). But Meltdown, the new album, just blew me away really. Tim’s lyrics still have that sort of charming teenage boy quality to them but that’s part of what Ash are all about after all. I swear I feel like dying from happiness every time I listen to Orpheus. (The chorus! The chorus!)
Ash’s early stuff, especially 1977 are so important to me… I never thought they’d make an album I’d enjoy as much as this. Awesome. Wonderful.

Idlewild are still working on their new album… I guess a summer release isn’t very likely anymore but hopefully it’ll finally come out in autumn cause I know I’m gonna need some strong mental support by then ^^;

ポロリ超大好き~~~ ♥♥♥

[♬ Annie Lennox - Into The West]

I hope I’ll manage writing more than just a oneliner-style entry. My recent entries have been pretty short but that’s because I’ve been spending very little time online. Working 24/7 ~~

I’m still a little puffy-eyed because we saw RotK. It’s absolutely brilliant to watch it on TV – the sharpness, the clarity, the wonderful colours… so much better than in a noisy theatre with annoying people around you ^^; (Plus we have a huge TV and no silver screen can beat its crystal-clear image quality yo!)

The bonus featues on the 2nd RotK DVD are a bit lame though :( I think I’ve seen both TV specials and the ones from lordoftherings.net (though it’s nice to have them in perfect quality); that National Geographic special is hilarious. In a bad way. The trilogy trailer is nothing new as well. It came with the special edition of the RotK soundtrack CD which I own (of course ^^;). And no preview for the Extended Edition :( Guess it’s too early in the year to present a preview clip…

So what else happened? I wrote little about mine and my dad’s little car accident but that’s because it wasn’t really that bad. Some truck lost a few stones from the load it was carrying and they smashed through our car’s rear window while we were driving past the truck. Fortunately, neither of us got injured. (Thanks for inquiring, Amy! ♥)

I wasn’t in the least suprised about Moore’s new film winning at Cannes, after Elephant last year and all. I think the Asian movies in the competition were quite strong (as far as I can tell from the trailers and clips) and my sites are getting hits with the search string ‘Yuuya Yagira’ from Google because the boy (he’s only 14!) won the award for best actor. I really hope I’ll get to see Daremo Shiranai (the film he stars in) one day!

I’ve been working so hard (-_-;;): at the record shop to help finance my taste in expensive clothes and CDs from Japan. But additionally, I’ve also been working on a few personal projects… one is a translation project and the other one is a new site. Both probably won’t see the light of day (i.e. go online) before July because of the trip to Sweden…

I also got a few really cool new CDs from Third Stage but I haven’t had the time to encode any samples :( They’ll follow tomorrow. Probably.

One thing I learned last year: LotR 2-DVD sets hit stores one day before their actual street date.

Same thing this year: The RotK 2-DVD set was already in stores today!! I’m so happy ♥ (And tired too. Couldn’t sleep from the excitement of possibly being able to buy the DVD today ^^;)

It’s kind of strange to finally own the whole trilogy… though to me it won’t feel like the ‘complete thing’ until the RotK Extended Edition comes out, of course.

Car accidents are so not fun.

~*~

June 1 – day X. Sweden.
I love stereotypical vacations so please, o God, let me see moose!

Anime marathon I: Arjuna 1-12 on TV this past weekend. (No ep. 13 ;_;) This title hasn’t lost any of its quality. I’m still loving it to bits and pieces. It’s kind of like the Hugo Boss Baldessarini (’Separates the men from the boys.’) among anime (’Separates the intelligent from the dumb.’).
Aww, that wasn’t meant half as snotty as it sounds like.
No actually, it was.

Anime marathon II: Hagaren! I was stuck somewhere between 16 and 19 for weeks and I managed to catch up until episode 32 (the most recent one) until earlier today. Go me!
I thought the beginning of the second season was a bit of a let-down but it’s getting so much better again. Love this show!

Tried watching Gantz. The first episode was quite interesting but from then on it turned into the typical shounen (seinen?) junk show. Gory, vulgar, dumb, obscene :(

Monster, on the other hand, is a great suspense mystery series. It took me a while to start watching this but so far I’m glad I didn’t ignore this show because I’m highly enjoying it.

I’m still watching Mujin Wakusei Survive (Uninhabitated Planet Survive).
Madlax is getting better and better too. It bears resemblances to Noir but then I again, I only saw the first 2 episodes of that series so I don’t mind at all ^^; Just like in .hack, Kajiura Yuki’s BGM varies from wonderful to absolutely annoying. And for the ultimate audio stimulation, Madlax 5 featured Irino Miyu voice acting godliness *raburabu*

And now for something entirely different:
Last night in bed I suddenly realized I’d forgotten what the linguistic/phonetic term for the small ‘tsu’ is (when you have to stop your breath). It was driving me mad because it was on the tip of my tongue and I was always so close to remembering what it was called. Argh!! I had no textbooks with me in my room so I had to go online and google for the expression -_-
Glottal stops they are called. I won’t forget this again. Not in this life.

I’d kill for a chance to attend this year’s Festival de Cannes. New Wong Kar-Wai, Coen brothers, Michael Moore and Hirokazu Kore’eda films plus Ghost in the Shell 2 amongst other great stuff. Consider me in tears.