11-15-11 - "Slow Days It Was Super" ~ Moshimoss

Here's a little ambient / instrumental tune that caught my ear recently.  It's by a Japanese artist, and kind of reminds me of another instrumental track I posted which also has something to do with Japan.  This one has a gentle vibe of bygone years, with children's voices echoing over the subtle synthesizers and bells...

Check out the bandcamp page too

9-16-11 - "Tommib" ~ Squarepusher

I heard this song in the soundtrack for the movie "Lost In Translation."  It's used in a scene (see below) where a character is staring out her hotel room window over Tokyo, feeling alone in a big city, while her husband is off working.  I had a similar culture-shock experience in Japan a few years back - well, without the husband part, and I'm not as good looking as Scarlett Johansson.  But feeling isolated despite being surrounded by people - with that I can empathize.  As an American, the difference between visiting Europe and visiting Asia is drastic.  In Europe, I had at least a rudimentary grasp of German, Spanish, and Italian and used my recollections of high school Latin classes to decipher a decent portion of signs and whatnot in Italy.  But in Japan, ninety percent of what is written is in some combination of kanji, hirigana, and katakana.  Not as easy to get by over there.  Being the only light-haired person in a sea of black-haired folks is pretty surreal, too...

Anyway, the song captures the mood quite well, and is a very simple synthesized instrumental melody.  Check out both the scene and the original tune.

Tommib (audio):

Lost In Translation Scene (once again, YouTube and Blogger have bested my embedding skills!)