Ian (F) Martin

A second preview track for these young lads' madcap debut album is now up:

Man, I could slam one of those right now.

Absolutely. The essence of pop operating at the highest level there, I think: something so instantly familiar you feel you’ve known it all your life, complicated by an element out of left field that throws that familiarity out of whack and drags your attention into the moment.

Europe seems at least aware of the problem, though untangling itself seems more difficult. I'm not sure how general attitudes to Trump have shifted within Japan, though all the anarcho-punks who were saying "Both parties are as bad as each other" and "At least Trump won't do wars" are quiet lately.

Obviously I'm not gonna ask them why, because then that's basically inviting them to send me YouTube links for the rest of my life.

All the divorced dads in their fifties I know seem to get really into Jiddu Krishnamurti for some reason.

Magnificent song. I think this might be the last Erasure song I remember having a lasting impact on me in real time from the first listen. Like, I thought I'd grown out of this sort of music (from the impossibly distant past in the 80s!) in 1994, but no, this song just wouldn't leave me.

I’m not saying they pulled them right. I’m saying that being in a coalition with them was holding some of them back from how far right they actually wanted to go.

Yeah, that funding scandal or whatever was really the last straw. But while the hawkishness of the Jiminto right gets a bit overplayed by some people, I think elements there were glad to be rid of this nagging pacifist voice in their coalition too (and had been angling for it for a while).

Big fan of Construction Time Again here. I wouldn't go that far really!

As soon as Vince Clarke left, just to be on the safe side!

I'm sure they're great guys. But what the party's up against, fairly or otherwise, is public memory of its own 20 year alliance with the LDP, the fallout of the Abe assassination, widespread suspicion over religious influence on politics more generally, and its own fading ability to mobilise.

I'm more and more relieved that Japan will never give me the vote.

Yeah, though Reina are a bit of a conspiracy theory party too in some ways. At least they’re *our* weirdos though.

It definitely felt like a losing bargain for them from at least the Abe era onwards.

If people like your mates are able to revitalise the party, maybe that'll help them, but there's a huge and very understandable amount of distrust of Komeito and Soka Gakkai from the liberals and the left. And among the population generally tbh. People just see them as a religious cult party.

Komeito votes have been in decline for ages. Maybe politically active members relish the freedom now they're not shackled to Jiminto, but rank and file Soka Gakkai don't seem to be doing their duty so much anymore. And like I said, Minshuto made a classic centrist error by hooking up with them.

Rikken Minshuto also drove a truck through the electoral cooperation they'd built up with Reiwa, the Communists and Social Democrats and showed their ass (with a big "fuck you" painted across it) to their left-leaning supporters by abandoning it all with such glee for a futile "Centrist Alliance".

It didn't count for much in the recent election. To an extent, none of this matters because Japanese people by and large see Jiminto as the automatic party of government and elections are purely referenda on their vibes, but the Rikken Minshuto-Komeito alliance alienated a LOT of lib/left voters.

I've been not enjoying seeing her disgusting melted racist face everywhere I go in Tokyo, but a critical mass of fuckheads seem to love her.

It's also in how the atmosphere of unpredictable but always-imminent destruction touched songs not directly about nuclear war. Hiroshima Mon Amour by Ultravox is really about something much more abstract, and Morrissey's "Come, come, come, nuclear bomb" is more about Thatcherism than the Cold War.

I find it fascinating, looking back over the music of my childhood, the extent that the Cold War and adjacent sorts of atomic age paranoia were embedded in so much of it.

Here Comes President Kill Again (2001 Remaster) YouTube video by XTC - Topic

You seem to be on a run with these! Here's another: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-NuV...

Getting to bed on time stressed me out and ran violently contrary to my normal sleep patterns. (Shane does suck though.)

Whatever it takes! Pollard the fuck out of that shit: hundred-song albums, dozen EPs in a row, let it pour forth one way or another!

YES!

There's something a bit suss about "cozy" games beyond the spelling, too. Something a bit cryptofash about some of these back-to-the-land, happy-farmer, or relaxing-postapocalypse scenarios. I've enjoyed a few of them but always with a bit of gnawing, Pétainiste discomfort.

Possibly the worst thing about getting back into videogames after so many years away has been learning how Americans spell the word cosy.

Respectful of him to at least do it before the Shibuya 5pm outdoor drinking curfew.