Ged Carroll

Category: culture | 文明 | 미디어와 예술 | 人文

Culture was the central point of my reason to start this blog. I thought that there was so much to explore in Asian culture to try and understand the future.

Initially my interest was focused very much on Japan and Hong Kong. It’s ironic that before the Japanese government’s ‘Cool Japan’ initiative there was much more content out there about what was happening in Japan. Great and really missed publications like the Japan Trends blog and Ping magazine.

Hong Kong’s film industry had past its peak in the mid 1990s, but was still doing interesting stuff and the city was a great place to synthesise both eastern and western ideas to make them its own. Hong Kong because its so densely populated has served as a laboratory of sorts for the mobile industry.

Way before there was Uber Eats or Food Panda, Hong Kongers would send their order over WhatsApp before going over to pay for and pick up their food. Even my local McDonalds used to have a WhatsApp number that they gave out to regular customers. All of this worked because Hong Kong was a higher trust society than the UK or China. In many respects in terms of trust, its more like Japan.

Korea quickly became a country of interest as I caught the ‘Korean wave’ or hallyu on its way up. I also have discussed Chinese culture and how it has synthesised other cultures.

More recently, aspect of Chinese culture that I have covered has taken a darker turn due to a number of factors.

  • On the sofa: The Man from Mo’Wax

    The documentary The Man from Mo’Wax was something that I’d been looking forward to watching for a while. James Lavelle made his name as the guy at Honest Johns who was the go to guy for Major Force Records releases. Major Force was a Japanese hip hop label that featured the likes of

    • Hiroshi Fujiwara
    • Takagi Kan
    • Masayuki Kudo
    • Milo Johnson (who was part of the pre-Massive Attack group The Wild Bunch)
    • “Tycoon” Toshio Nakanishi
    • Scha Dara Parr
    • Ishida Yoshinori

    These were the people who influenced 

    • Bomb The Bass’s first album Into The Dragon
    • The subsequent trip hop movement
    • Japan’s streetwear scene (Goodenough, Fragment) which has a continuing impact on the global streetwear scene

    Lavelle’s impact before Mo’Wax was huge. His column that had the Mo’Wax name and identity was huge. Mo’Wax the record label in its tunes and championing the designs of Swifty and Futura’s art have been hugely influential. Lavelle was the tastemaker that drove BAPE before the Americans like Pharrell Williams got hold of it. He did things in collectable figures and fashion that other labels still haven’t done. Surrender was a great streetwear label. The first UNKLE album was brilliant. 

    But he lost it; drugs and self indulgent projects that burned money and credibility. He was sufficiently narcissistic to document his life two decades before social media, which is the reason why you have a lot of warts and all material that has elements of Spinal Tap. Lavelle lacked the introspection and self examination in the documentary to make a real turn around. It ends up coming across as a two-hour pitch video for James to take part in a pop star re-invention on VH-1 a la Remaking Taylor Dane. The Guardian’s review summed up Lavelle and The Man From Mo’Wax really well. 

    …from superstar DJ to rock bore

    Cath Clarke, The Guardian (August 30, 2018)

  • Naomi Wu & things from last week

    Naomi Wu on the nascent open source culture developing in China. It isn’t just about China taking anymore but contributing. Ironically, China’s large corporates have now tried to start building intellectual property as a weapon cough, cough Huawei.

    Huawei historically leached off the open source community for software and spent a good deal of time justifying why they didn’t contribute to the open source software projects that they so heavily used. It also had a reputation of intellectual property theft, that was allowed to happen unchecked. Naomi Wu, based in Shenzhen, has been doing a lot of work to educate her peers on open source. More related content here.

    Ari Saal Forman’s Menthol 10s took a swipe at corporate culture and big tobacco. Some background for you. Menthol cigarettes were the only flavoured tobacco products allowed in the US. The government banned other flavours. Menthol cigarettes were disproportionately popular with American people of colour.

    Nike didn’t see the social purpose in the message behind the design. In this interview with Vice, Ari Saal Forman tells

    The ambiguous nature of the male host business in Japan is highlighted in this interview. Hosts can be extremely well paid and the roles are very competitive.

    The needs of their clients are surprisingly modest. The client interview section is insane, an 18 year old having $100,000 to spend on drinks in a nightclub – for some people the bubble economy years of late 1980s Japan has never gone away.

    A people’s history of computing in the US. The presenter talks about the early experiences of personal computing and programming languages like BASIC. It is interesting hearing a programmer talk about their ambiguous relationship with BASIC when they went into a professional career of programming.

    It’s the time of the year when 2019 consumer trends are trotted out.  JWT(WundermanThompson) have 100 trends. Trendwatching thankfully have just five.

  • Yohji Yamamoto & things from last week

    Yohji Yamamoto at the Oxford Union. Yohji Yamamoto provides design and fashion gold in his presentation to the Oxford Union. More related content here.

    Key outtakes from Yohji Yamamoto’s address

    Yohji Yamamoto’s favourite english language words : asymmetric, contradiction, opposite, corruption, immoral, absurdity, idiotic, ludicrous, resist, destroy, destruction, disobey, incomplete, enjoy, poignant, morphing & damage. All of which hint at a wabi sabi type sensibility, despite his well known use of structure and texture.

    Yamamoto focuses on the design through his use of black as a colour, which then forces him to be creative in terms of cut, layering and fabric choices.

    More awesome than your Apple Watch – This Casio G-Shock Watch Transforms into Optimus Prime – Technabob – ok this is very different to an Apple Watch, but I love the way G-Shock managed to do some creative design to make this happen

    To coincide with the publication of Miles Davis – Rubberbrand EP – Amerigo Gazaway has done a remix and a mix of Miles Davis back catalogue. The original Rubberband album was recorded in 1985 and was divisive for both Miles Davis fans and music critics when finally released in 2019. The EP is made up of remixes of the title track of the album.

    Davis had left long time label Columbia and moved to Warner Music. If you like Davis early work, then this is going to be different to what you would expect.

    Kemo the Blaxican – Something about love. Kemo was in the original line up of the Delinquent Habits. He has since gone out on his own and has since put out quality albums under his own name whilst touring with his old colleagues in the Delinquent Habits.

    A very complete archive of radio transmissions from the Apollo 11 mission: Apollo 11 : NASA : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive

  • Luxxury I wanna be everything & other things

    Luxxury has released a new track I wanna be everything. Luxxury has the expansive feel of post-disco, pre-house uptempo dance music a la Shep Pettibone, the Latin Rascals and Arthur Baker. More related content here. Luxxury I wanna be everything is digital only.

    A YouTube video on the history of Unix. Now before you roll your eyes and move on to another site. Think about the ubiquity of unix. Key parts of the internet run on Unix. It’s also the reason why URLs and email addresses aren’t case sensitive. Most telecoms equipment runs on Unix or an analogue of the operating system.  I am writing this on a Mac, the core of the operating system is based on BSD – a variant of Unix. If you’re using Windows 10; it owes a lot to VMS – an operating system developed as a Unix analogue in the early and mid 1970s by Digital Equipment Corporation.

    As for Linux; it was originally developed because Linus Torvalds didn’t realise he could download a free version of BSD…. Linux now powers Android smartphones, smart televisions and all of the internet of things stuff that poses a huge security risk in your home. In terms of a written thing; Unix must be right up there with the works of Shakespeare or JRR Tolkien in terms of its importance in the modern world.

    The presentation also puts a bit of personality into what could have been quite a dry subject.

    I found this on Core 77; Nestle posted some epic videos from its Japanese Kit Kat factory. I love the enthusiasm of the presenters in their workwear as they take you through the manufacturing line: K. Kohno and H. Matsumoto are stars. Japanese Kit Kat is not the same as the sad loser biscuits that you pick up in your weekly shop. Instead they are beautifully packaged and come in a constantly changing variety of flavours like cherry blossom or green matcha tea. The process itself is beautiful to watch. In particular look at the packaging automation.

    The New York Times made a lot of allegations about Facebook and its reaction to Russian election tampering. Scott Galloway was on had to do TV interviews that poured petrol on the fire.

    Great video on Johnny Cash’s live concert At Folsom Prison. It is up there with Live at San Quentin also by Johnny Cash.

  • Walter Cronkite & things from last week

    US newsreader Walter Cronkite narrates a 1967 programme on what the future held in the 21st century. The soothing voice of Walter Cronkite makes the future look less scary

    An Unknown Enemy is a Mexican series on Amazon Prime that follows the rise of Fernando Barrientos, Head of the National Security Directorate, Mexico’s Secret Police in the late 1960s

    Panasonic helps workers create their own head space with new crowdfunded device | The Japan Times – the design looks hokey, but it mirrors the transformation of offices with hot desking and always on headphone culture to try and provide distance. More design related content here.

    The People’s Republic of Desire documents China’s online streaming culture that has developed over the past few years. The film financed by the Ford Foundation provides an inside view of the direction interaction between personalities and their audience. Young girls become online personalities funded directly by besotted fans. More interaction happens online than in real life. Of course, all this happens under the ever-seeing eye of the Chinese government.

    https://youtu.be/auHtqCJV4Rw

    Super-excited by an album of Smith & Mighty’s unreleased back catalogue from 1988 – 1994 being released this week. It is available via digital channels, double vinyl album and on compact disc. While the tracks were unreleased, there is no filler tracks in the collection, the quality is all top notch. Here is a taster.

    Have a great weekend.