phonon_belt: (Default)
If you look at the album Philospher's Propeller, you'll see that tracks 2 through 4 are named "Rubedo," "Nigredo," and "Albedo." Another track later on the album is called "Opus." A quick glance at the Wikipedia entry for the term "rubedo" will tell you that these terms are connected to alchemy and (Mr. Hirasawa's favorite) Jungian philosophy. I've even seen Philospher's Propeller marketed as "Hirasawan alchemy."

But what does this actually mean? Read more... )

So, despite the order of the tracks on the album, perhaps we should try listening to the songs in this order: "Nigredo" then "Albedo" and then "Rubedo." "Albedo" is an instrumental track, but the same melody is presented with lyrics as the final song on the album: "Philosopher's Propeller-2." So, in alchemical order, the tracks might actually be "Nigredo" - "Philosopher's Propeller-2" - "Rubedo."

I'm going to translate all three of these songs to see if the lyrics brings us anywhere interesting in this strange world of alchemy and psychology. :)

Links to the lyrics translations:
- Nigredo
- Philosopher's Propeller-2
- Rubedo
- Opus
phonon_belt: (Hirasawa - Cookie)
Mr. Hirasawa just announced that the first livestream will be held today (Aug. 5) from 9:00 PM Japan time.

As I mentioned earlier, the Ustream channel can be found here.

The stream will show Mr. Hirasawa at work, but will NOT have any audio.

ETA: This first stream is over, but you can watch the official recording of it here. Highlights include Mr. Hirasawa wearing a necklace and briefly showing us one of his cats. ;)
phonon_belt: (Default)
Today, Mr. Hirasawa brought up the idea of making his Twitter account private, so that only people he allows to will be able to read it. It sounds like he's investigating whether he can make his account private or whether he'd have to make a new account altogether, and what a "locked" account entails.

In response to the general cry of despair and questions about what prompted this desire for privacy, he wrote: about how having 50,000 followers makes him uncomfortable, and how he hates people taking his words out of context. )

...

I am not sure what he's referring to. Was there some particular incident that brought all this up? Is he simply tired of people making fun of him or taking him out of context on NicoNico or Youtube or Twitter or 2ch or Pixiv or blogs? He's a public persona and does get talked about a lot.

These statements also made me wonder whether I should keep translating Mr. Hirasawa's tweets here. Read more... )

If he does make his account private, I will not publicly translate his tweets anymore.

I think I will try to translate more of his older tweets, but take more care to make sure that the risk of something being taken out of context is minimized. Perhaps friends-locking those translations would be one step I could take.

If you have any thoughts on the matter, I would really appreciate your input.
phonon_belt: (Default)
Mr. Hirasawa has recently reached 50,000 followers on Twitter! YAY!

In celebration thereof, he announced that he will be streaming 50,000 seconds of live footage on Ustream sometime in the future. (That's nearly 14 hours of video!!!) It sounds like he'll break up those 50,000 seconds into smaller chunks lasting a few minutes or maybe more. He will announce the start of a stream, and apparently each "episode" will be viewable for a limited time after for people who couldn't tune in while it was live. He claims he will announce the start of a stream clearly on Twitter and has scolded everyone for not trusting him to actually do so. ;)

I have no idea what he'll be showing, but it would be really cool to just watch him while he works. Maybe we'll even get to see his cats? I wouldn't be surprised if he just puts the camera on the yogurt he's making or on a plant he's growing and leaves it like that for a few hours for maximum trolling. But I hope it will be fun!

If you'd like to bookmark it, he's made a new Ustream channel for this event called Hirasawa監視5万秒 (aka "Observing Hirasawa for 50,000 Seconds"). There's also an older Ustream channel here, though I guess they'll be using the new 50,000 Seconds one for the upcoming videos.

I'll let you know when more information becomes available. (I'm also making a new tag called "event: livestream" for posts related to this.)
phonon_belt: (Default)
Google has inexplicably disabled the e-mail account I used for this blog, and attempts to have them restore the account or at least explain WHY they deleted it have failed. It was an account used solely for things related to this silly little translation blog, so I have no idea what terms of service I supposedly violated. Let this be another lesson in why you should never trust that "the cloud" will safely store all your information! It was just a relatively minor account that they disabled for me, but I am now backing up my primary Google account to other places in case they decide to disable that one for no reason!

So if you e-mailed me recently or left a comment and didn't get a response, that would be the reason why.

I have set up a new e-mail account at Hotmail and should be receiving comment notifications and such again now.




In Hirasawa-related news, he has made some statements on Twitter that make me question whether I should keep translating selected Tweets as I have been. I think it's good to share some of his tweets in English since many fans don't read Japanese, but I don't want to do anything that seems to go directly against his wishes. So I'm going to mull this over a bit longer and then share his statements here, along with my decision.
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"Siam Lights" is from Mr. Hirasawa's second post-Thailand solo album, Siren. Siam being an old name for Thailand and (apparently) a neighborhood in Bangkok, it's clearly drawn from Mr. Hirasawa's experiences in Thailand. The song reappeared on the tribute album Switched-on Lotus, which makes me think it has some personal significance to him. The sound alone is beautiful, but the lyrics are filled with an almost terrible longing and when his voice soars in the refrain, it's heartbreaking. I simply love these sorts of gentle, powerful songs he makes every now and again.

This is my own vague weird interpretation... )

平沢進 -「SIAM LIGHTS」
Japanese lyrics )

Hirasawa Susumu - "Siam Lights"
Romaji lyrics )

My disappointingly awkward translation )
phonon_belt: (Default)
Below is my quick translation of Mr. Hirasawa's new anti-nuclear power protest song. It's a remake of P-Model's "Boat," so it has a very catchy tune, but the lyrics are sarcastic, angry, and straight-up political. I love it. I hope it goes viral!

Mr. Hirasawa's story is that this song is made by a mysterious being known as "Stealth Man" who attacked Mr. Hirasawa, took over his website, and released this song on it. I guess this is a new personality to join the ranks of Kaku_P and the like? Will there be more songs by Stealth Man?

Japanese lyrics. )

Romaji lyrics )

My rough English translation )
phonon_belt: (Default)
Until June 29, the song "Genshiryoku" ("Nuclear Power") will be officially available for free download here. (Push the gray button to download.)

(Apologies if you've seen this cross-posted elsewhere.)
phonon_belt: (Hirasawa - Cookie)
Hello, all!

Sorry for the lack of translations recently, but life is very demanding right now. Still, I am closely monitoring our dear Mr. Hirasawa's latest actions on Twitter and will probably post a more detailed update on it as things play out a bit more and I find the time to translate it coherently.

But I'm so excited, so I thought I'd jot down some notes about these developments: Read more... )

It'll be interesting to see how this fictional story develops, but it's sounding like he has a whole new character in mind, a superhero Stealthman who fights evil nuclear power, or something like that. What's most fascinating to me is that it seems that Mr. Hirasawa FOUND this storyline within his own actions. I don't think he started measuring radiation or making yogurt at night as part of grand scheme to make a random protest song go viral. I think he did those things and--being the genius he is--discovered the potential story and is now elaborating on it every day, teasing us with more details that paint an ever broader picture. It's also rather interactive, since he seems to be doing it all via Twitter right now (and even though he denies it, it is VERY clear that he does read the responses he gets on Twitter, at least sometimes).

It feels like we're watching a master storyteller improvise a new tale with a few random elements and before we know it, we might witness how that random tale takes the form of a legend. ;)

Perhaps I'm overly excited, but I can't wait to see how this plays out!
phonon_belt: (Hirasawa - Cookie)
Today I'm bringing you a fairly random selection of tweets in which Mr. Hirasawa complains about work and distracts himself by teasing his Twitter followers, whom (as you know) he affectionately refers to as "horse bones" (meaning "nobodies").

Being a musician must be hard. )

I'm not sure what it says about me that I find this entertaining. ♥

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