Kametron has three modes. In "Kametron" mode he just sits in a corner listening to music with a pair of headphones, not terribly exciting. In "Taiko Kametron" mode he stands up and removes a pair of batchi from a secret compartment. In "Giga Kametron" mode massive speakers come out of his fore arms pounding music. The resulting energy surge usually shorts out his CPU causing him to twitch and dance uncontrollably.
We had a great performance at the Green Show today! Thanks to Claudia, Jess and all the Green Show volunteers. It was great being back in Ashland and it’s starting to feel like a second home now that Kelvin is living there and we find ourselves performing there for the second time in two months. We even made the Green Show poster complete with a nice shot of the LA skyline.
We’ll be spending the next couple of days in Mt. Shasta getting some creative rehearsal time in with Kelvin before we head back down to Los Angeles. More later!
We had a great sold-out performance tonight at the Oregon Bach Festival. Our stay in Eugene has been fantastic and we’d like to thank John Evans, Michael Anderson and the OBF staff for bringing us to their amazing festival. We’d also like to thank the great theater and sound crew at the Hult Center for making our concert go so smoothly. Also a huge thank you goes our to our lighting designer Eileen Cooley for all of her artistry and work. And last but definitely not least thank you to the members of Portland Taiko who helped us pack up and load out!
Tomorrow we head down to Ashland for a performance at the Oregon Shakespeare Festival’s Green Show. More later!
We are currently in the beautiful city of Eugene OR for the Oregon Bach Festival. Yesterday we performed at the opening of On the Road: Two Visions of the Tokaido at the University of Oregon’s Jordon Schnitzer Museum. We spent today in the theater preparing for tomorrow’s concert and got a nice write up in the Eugene Register-Guard.
Tonight we’re going to watch Helmuth Rilling conduct a performance of Joseph Haydn’s The Creation at the Oregon Bach Festival. Should be great concert!
Our music is being used for Jon Goldman’s submission to Netflix’ Find Your Voice competition! Jon is one of 10 Semi Finalists picked from thousands of applicants and he used “…Strikes 13″ a track we did with Patrick Graham for his preview submission! Jon’s film is called Paul Sussman’s Eleven-Step Guide to Self-Actualization.
The films with the highest number of stars will move on the final round and the winner of this competition will get $150,000 plus resouces like film stock, processing, camera rental, and post-production services for a total value of more than $350,000 to make his/her film.
So Jon needs your votes! You do NOT need to be a Netflix subscriber to vote. The 5 films that move on to the next round will be determined by the total number of stars. So go to the Netflix Find Your Voice website, watch Jon Goldman’s 3 minute trailer and be sure to vote at the end!
We got a nice review from Underwire a popular culture blog at Wired.com:
On Ensemble’s most recent effort, Ume in the Middle, is an interesting hybrid that should appeal equally to fusion aficionados and left-fielders in search of something stranger than the average jazz-hop fare found on indie labels like Ninja Tune.
Wired magazine is one of the few magazines I actually buy. Usually it’s at an airport for inflight reading material, but being a magazine on all things high tech maybe I should be visiting the website instead.
BTW a lot of my favorite artists are on the Ninja Tune and Big Dada (Ninja Tune’s hip hop arm) including: Anti Pop Consortium, Diplo, DJ Vadim and the Cinematic Orchestra. So Ninja Tune if you are reading this we are not too strange for you… really… please sign us.
One particular Jason Swinscoe Cinematic Orchestra album that has had an influence on my music is Everyday. It’s a great album featuring vocals by Fontella Bass and amazing drumming by Luke Flowers. I blame the track “Flite” for convincing me that, yes odd time grooves with just a bit of melodic material are interesting for six and half minutes.
Our good friend and super talented composer Christopher Tin gave “Ume in the Middle” a nice write up on his blog.
It’s pretty fantastic work. The On Ensemble is a neo-taiko (or taiko fusion, if you will) ensemble; they blend traditional Japanese taiko drumming with electronic beats, turntables, beat-boxing, Tuvan throat singing, and other fantastic sonic tricks.
Kris and I played taiko with Chris at Stanford and even back then he a reputation of being scary talented. He’s gone on to compose movie and video game soundtracks and is currently working on an album of twelve songs in twelve different languages called “Calling All Dawns”. On Ensemble will be featured on “Madokara Mieru” and I haven’t heard from Chris when the album might be out but what I’ve heard sounds amazing.
We had a great performance at Askenaz last night! A huge thank you goes out to the great crew at Ashkenaz and to all of our friends and taiko family who turned out for the show. It was a great gig to end the tour on.
Today we have a presentation at Stanford for “Perspectives in North American Taiko” the first university level course on the history and practice of taiko in North America. After the presentation it’s back to Ashland for Kelvin and Los Angeles for the rest of us.
I had a nice article written about me in my home town paper while we were through Mt. Shasta. You can read the full article at the Mt. Shasta News website.
…Reduced to its simplest terms, Kameda described the music of the On Ensemble as “World fusion from a taiko-centric perspective,” though as soon as the word “fusion” left his mouth, he began to back peddle…