So looking back at 2025 in Music & Art looking at the Concerts and Art Exhibitions. It was great, in my part of the world (and very aware other places are "not great").
Mattias's FREAK GUITAR WEEKEND was a chance to get a taste of his guitar camp, and meet a few other contributors like TOKYO METAL CITY who introduced me to the CEO of Zanshin Instruments, Mr. Ishida.
I had been worried about being outclassed and out of place at a Mattias guitar camp but it was fine. I saw Ola Englund say the same thing before he actually attended a camp. His music pieces end up being guitar exercises to me where I take a few bars and go off doing my own thing from them. All good. I don't need to learn to play them like he does.
This year was not a great year for exhibitions, and assumed it was because of Osaka EXPO. That was probably true, but then the Masamune Shirow manga artwork exhibition in Tokyo was announced. Getting to see original pages, Work In Progress copies and finals actual size of the GHOST IN THE SHELL and APPLESEED manga was awesome.
The concerts were great this year, as I wrote previously. Real BUCKET LIST stuff. A sound house or theater seating up to 300 is really the kind of concert I want to attend more of now. Kyoto MOJO with up to 100 is extra special. A 1000+ venue s not for me.
TV series Manben neo had THE OTOMO interview this year and examined DOMU. I ended up getting that and all volumes of AKIRA too. It was time. I also got all English volumes of Urasawa Naoki's ASADORA released so far. That you really get to feel for the characters is something special.
In the last few months new music has been ASTERISM, MINISTRY (Moral Hygiene & Squirrel Version), STEVE VAI (Passion and Warefare) and TANGERINE DREAM.
The DJ mix-ish soundtrack in this different MUSIC+COMIC has a clip of my FREAK KITCHEN cover and a bit of my English version of Urasawa Naoki's "Yurei" from this years LOVE SONGS album, sandwiching my "Speed In Manga". Added "MUSIC: name" to show what is playing along the bottom left of the page, which is the way Japanese TV advertisements used to be. That is how I first learnt of Enya! This is is something will add moving forward.
Still considering direction to go next with MUSIC+COMICS.
This single page comic with up to 8 panels and music, but more traditionally drawn seems something I should work with. I think YouTube SHORTS are just a waste of time, as even though they get more views, the whole system is just set up to target people that don't care about what I am trying to do. And with the 8 panel comic page format ( and maybe sometimes just 3/4 panel trips), up to 3 minute songs with lyrics that mean something to me would feel better to me too. Animating the speech balloons the way I have in the last year or so always made them more annoying to read. Changed too slow or too fast, and all on screen at once is more comic like. You can read the comic and not bother to listen to all the music if that is what you want to do.
Other Things
The Fairlight Instruments 50th Anniversary is tomorrow. That will probably be quite something in Sydney tomorrow, but I will just be ZOOMing it from Kyoto here, which I expect to be a lesser experience. I was at the small get together at the 2018 Alan Galt memorial, but they are trying to get together all the previous staff for this big one.
And here I am in the back at the Fairlight Instruments 10th Anniversary:
My main concern is making sure the cat is locked out of my room, so he doesn't interrupt proceedings. Also if the battery in the Lapel Microphone I plan to use will last, but don't expect to say much...
I am not a YouTuber so have the most basic online meeting setup.
AVATAR3 starts tomorrow. I didn't bother to see #2, and read this new one is the same story but lots of fire instead of water. They have a subtitled, NON ATMOS, BIG SCREEN 9:30AM session Monday morning next week. I don't expect going is worth the effort though.
Nagano's first manga FOOL FOR THE CITY from early 1980s published over a year in NEWTYPE is out as a new single volume 2025 Dec 24. Post WW3 AI controlled society with suppressed art & music. At his Nagoya exhibition he had the '70s FOGHAT track FOOL FOR THE CITY playing over the exhibit corner of this.
We can be found at ArtAndTechnology KYOTO JAPAN
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