The Project Overview

The Setting: Burlington, Vermont, early Fall 2007...

As the leaves turned from a deep green to burnt umbers and yellows and reds, students of UVM resettled into the nooks and crannies of Burlington they would inhabit for the coming year. These first few weeks of the Fall semester are precious. Before long, Winter would be moving in and claiming it's territory until late April. It's a final chance to play bacci ball, go for a bike ride, or jump the fabled Red Rocks.

It's also the last chance to switch your schedule for the upcoming semester, which is exactly what I did when I dropped an expository writing course, and snuck my way into Art 139 - Animation.

The class was a comprehensive look at different forms of hand-done animations, including evolutionary drawings, cell animations, stop-motion animation, "clay"mation, cut-out animation, among other techniques. Very cool stuff. As our society moves more and more towards computer animated films, I find myself moving more and more away from them. Often I can't see past the computer effects, and I get caught up in a visual tangent which seems so removed from the film. This class re-affirmed the merits of animation for me, and brought the medium back towards an art form, instead of a distraction.

It was in this class that I got to know Lewis Rapkin, who was working on animations for his documentary Neon Notes. This film is the starting point for our current endeavor, Live From Tokyo. Lewis had been to Tokyo the previous year for a semester and had, as a musician and music fan, begun filming shows and interviews with underground bands. He was trying to get a sense for the underground scene there. We all know what Seattle Grunge was, and of course the British Invasion (as is so commonly applied by Wes Anderson), but was there a sound of Tokyo? Well, as the semester came to a close, Lewis finished the documentary, and I got a chance to see it. WHHHAAAAAA!!??!?

As the film illustrated so well, there was some of the most diverse and eclectic sounds being produced over there. What does music from Tokyo sound like? Well words will not suffice. It seemed like every band in the documentary were pioneers on a different plane of audible spaces. I was interested.

So, later that year, as I sat with a previous collaborator and film student Eric J. Mintz, I was astonished when he mentioned he'd be going to Tokyo with Lewis to re-film this documentary with a more polished look. Months away from graduation, with no jobs on the horizon, and a great sense of anxiety at having to figure something out, I couldn't help but want to partake in this adventure.

As I finished a senior thesis film, Able Galloway, a philosophical look at the future of our consumer based society, I began meeting with what would become the Live From Tokyo Partnership.

As of now, Lewis is already in Tokyo, and Eric and I will depart this week. We'll be spending 2 months in Japan, most of which will be in Tokyo, as we explore the music in the Shibuya and neighboring districts.

Our website will be revamped in the following week or two, but check out http://www.livefromtokyo.net/ for some video clips / images. This website will also be serving as a database where bands wil have bios/photos/reviews so if you're interested in finding some new music from Japan, this a great place to start.

This blog will be my place to share a few photos and thoughts with friends/fam, so I hope you enjoy what you see/hear.

sayonara

ian-san