Ramping Up Collxn Beta & Kyoto Record Fun
Hey fellow record dreamer,
The TL;DR: I'm looking for a few more Collxn beta users, and I do a recap of some year-end record fun in Kyoto.
And here's a little accidental collab from my wife Ryoko and me for New Year's:
Read on for the more. Or share Collxn with someone who's up for jumping in on the beta this month.
Up for the beta?
Happy new year! If you followed along with Collxn last year, you saw:
- Collxn get incubated at NYU's ITP Camp
- Daily Drops start selecting items from your record collection
- Related Picks, Artist News, and Music Service links get added to the Daily Drop
I'm in the home stretch of getting Collxn ready for more vinyl record heads to discover and join. To do that, I need a few more beta users to jump in, try it, and give me feedback.
If that's you, you can reach out by emailing me at ash at this domain, or just reply if you're reading this in your inbox.
Btw, my personal Daily Drops for the turn of the year were:
Makes sense to me!
Collxn featured by Kyoto, in Sound
My thanks to Kyoto, in Sound proprietor Simon James French for including Collxn in The Kyoto List: A Living Map of Creative Corners and Kind Humans.
The idea behind Kyoto, in Sound is that Simon takes guests on "sound tours" of Kyoto. Simon and guests do field recordings during the tour which he later uses to create a podcast episode that illustrates in sound whatever adventure they had.
The podcast is an absolutely unique listen. And it's not filtered to give you only what you expect. In fact, the latest episode is a real roll-with-it kind of journey:
I visited Osawa Pond, the oldest garden pond in Japan, in search of silence. Instead, I found a wood chipper and a construction crew. In this episode, I explore the accidental "Industrial Zen" of a noisy Monday morning in Kyoto, and how a wall of sound can sometimes become its own kind of music.
I suspect that at least a few readers of this newsletter can absolutely relate to a "wall of sound" being music.
You can find out where to get the podcast or even book your own sound tour with Simon on the Kyoto, in Sound website.
Kyoto record fun
December in Japan is super busy. Like, I think Christmas season in the U.S. is busy until I'm back in Japan at the end of the year and the events and gatherings don't stop. My wife Ryoko even wrote a little about this phenomenon in her HanaYou Ikebana Journal last month.
In our little world, this season frequently means being in rooms where there are people DJing. For example, one of the bonenkai (year-end party) we went to last month featured some folks from Nintendo DJing (it is Kyoto after all).
I'll close this newsletter out by sharing a couple of fun record adventures here in Kyoto from the end of the year.
Audio-Technical Hotaru event at Ginza Music Bar Kyoto
Last month I was invited to an event in Kyoto put on by Audio-Technica and Japanese fashion magazine LEON. They brought us to Ginza Music Bar Kyoto to check out Audio-Technica's limited edition Hotaru turntables.
While Hotaru is limited to 1,000 machines worldwide, Audio-Technical had 5 in the bar, 4 of which attendees were able to get hands-on with (the number nerd in me was impressed that we were in a room with 0.05% of global stock). The listening stations had stacks of records which went beyond the standard fare. I naturally gravitated towards Tame Impala's latest release Deadbeat and the late Nujabes' Modal Soul.
It was a cocktail party vibe and definitely not a silent listening situation, so I can't speak to the sound quality that one might be able to expect at, say, home with the Hotaru. Still, someone on Reddit's r/turntables asked me for my take, to which I responded:
... it could be fun if you have a budget where you wouldn’t notice the price tag. I’d be surprised if it’s anyone’s daily driver, but there are situations where it will be used as an accent piece.
For me personally, I’m happy I got to experience it once, but it’s not something I’m clamoring for. In general, I don’t love color LEDs, be they in a turntable, Hue lights, or whatever. The built-in speaker also isn’t for me.
But I wouldn’t fault someone for enjoying the Hotaru. I love having my Sound Burger among my gear, so I get the appeal of something different.
Overall it was an incredible night in a room full of record enthusiasts. Thanks to Audio-Technica, LEON, and Ginza Music Bar for the invite.
RRRRR Records
My family stopped by local coffee shop Sunny George in late December for an event with local craft beer and a DJ spinning records. The first thing I noticed when I entered (other than the New Jack Swing tunes playing) was a box of records for sale with a weird name scribbled on it:
Turns out that RRRRR Records is relatively new record store in Sakyo Ward near Ginkakuji (which you might remember from last month's newletter). RRRRR owner Jason was the evening's DJ.
Well of course I had to pop by and check out the shop before the year was over. The shop is full of retro analogue and gaming gear.
And I picked up these two records from RRRRR:
Btw, there's a marketing lesson in here somewhere... At first I thought the store name was sort of nuts ("how do you say that?"... says the maker of an app called "Collxn") but it's incredibly easy to search for on Google Maps, Instagram, and whatnot. Just keep tapping that R button and it's going to be the only thing left. Nice!
Thanks for being here. More soon.
- Ash