When billy woods raps, “I’m home, but my mind be wandering off,” it comes off as a bit of a paradox. For a large part of Maps, his new collaborative album with Kenny Segal, the state of wandering off is home. But that song, ‘NYC Tapwater’, is about returning to the physical place you call home, which is where this “hero’s journey” begins. “I feel I got to come home from a journey to have anything to really say, right?” woods said in an interview with Rolling Stone. On songs like ‘NYC Tapwater’ and ‘Kenwood Speakers’, he reckons with the cultural demise of the city in a way so cutting and subtle it couldn’t come from the lens of an observer. This is just one of the roles woods occupies throughout Maps, along with that of a passenger, a person drifting from place to place with no apparent purpose other than to document what he finds. This results in disconnected vignettes that say much more about his own rise to success and the wider systems at work than whatever the latest stop on tour is.
Even a cursory, breeze-through listen makes it clear woods has a lot to say. Line by line, as always, there’s a strange pleasure in trying to untangle his knotted, artful rhymes and trace his shifts in perspective. But Maps is especially fascinating considering the scope of his discography; conceptually, as a kind of travelogue, it veers away from last year’s Aethiopes and Church, two vastly different albums in their own right, but at the same time seems to follow the same fragmented, dream-like logic, which woods doesn’t so much rest in as try to rip into. For many like-minded artists, dense lyricism against dreary, diffuse instrumentals is a comfortable vibe; for woods, it’s a challenge to find comfort amidst the unsteadiness. His second full-length collaboration with Segal, Maps both warps and perfects his approach while pushing him to explore new territory.
‘Soft Landing’, which flips the chorus of Nina Simone’s ‘Feeling Good’, paints a conflicting portrait of dissociation, one where the high is illusory and short-lived but offers a rare moment of clarity that’s “nothing in the thought bubble/ From up here the lakes is puddles, the land unfold/ Brown and green, it’s a quiet puzzle.” The sparkling guitar that opens the song, peacefully countering woods’ darker dispatches, fizzles out, not clearing the way so much as passing the responsibility to him. Some of the album’s most transcendent, meaningful moments are like this, brief and dreamy, often compelling woods to lean into simpler, more direct language. You can chalk this up to his masterful ability to, well, map out a song in order to land the right punch, but it always works in tandem with, or even inspired by, Segal’s production. The feverish jazz of ‘Blue Smoke’ seems to tease the fire out of woods’ delivery, which remains cool and wryly frustrated. Then, a song called ‘Bad Dreams Are Only Dreams’ begins with the lines, “I can’t quite grab the new me/ Old self dozing in an aisle seat,” and barely a minute passes before the instrumental evaporates, denying any further self-inquiry.
The perpetual jet lag woods finds himself trapped in invites a variety of moods. Along with Segal’s production, some of the guests serve to pull him out of the haze: ‘Babylon By Bus’ and ‘Year Zero’, which boast verses from ShrapKnel and Danny Brown respectively, turn the blurry darkness woods normally crawls through into a menacing sprawl. Others, like Quelle Chris and his Armand Hammer partner Elucid, linger in the fog as a means of fleshing out a narrative. At their best, these appearances not only feel perfectly suited, but shed a light on woods’ headspace: “Strangely I feel right at home on my own,” goes the hypnotic chorus from Future Islands’ Samuel T. Herring on ‘FaceTime’, trading in his experience as a touring musician. “When you was askin’ bout touring/ I get crux of the question,” Aesop Rock raps on ‘Waiting Around’. “It’s just the bulk of the answers are of another dimension.”
Time and time again, though, woods levels with us. “I say I’m at peace but, it’s still that same dread,” he admits on ‘Agriculture’, as if contesting the serenity of the instrumental – and his own expected growth. On ‘The Layover’, he raps: “I already knew the options was lose-lose/ Baby, that’s nothing new.” Despair is a loop, but there are new feelings and experiences to factor in that send Maps flying in different directions. The strange loneliness of ‘FaceTime’ may have its charms, but it offers no consolation against death, and so woods can’t fully succumb; no amount of poetic symbolism or doomsaying can distract him from the moment. That’s where many of the songs on Maps – especially ‘Soft Landing’ and the striking closer, ‘As the Crow Flies’ – eventually lead him. Whatever you call home, there’s nothing more compelling, so much that whenever and wherever it finds woods, he seems to run out of words. For such a master wordsmith, that certainly says something.
Sum 41 have announced that they are breaking up. The pop-punk veterans shared a statement on social media today (May 8), revealing that they will be disbanding after releasing and touring in support of their upcoming album Heaven :x: Hell.
“Being in Sum 41 since 1996 brought us some of the best moments of our lives,” the band wrote. “We are forever grateful to our fans both old and new, who have supported us in every way. It is hard to articulate the love and respect we have for all of you and we wanted you to hear this from us first.” The band continued:
Sum 41 will be disbanding. We will still be finishing all of our current upcoming tour dates this year, and we’re looking forward to releasing our final album, Heaven and Hell, along with a final worldwide headlining tour to celebrate. Details will be announced as soon as we have them.
For now, we look forward to seeing all of you skumfuks on the road and are excited for what the future will bring for each of us. Thank you for the last 27 years of Sum 41.
Thank you for the last 27 years of Sum 41.
Su 41 have released a total of seven albums, beginning with their 2001 debut All Killer No Filler. Their most recent LP was 2019’s Order in Decline.
Florida hardcore group Gouge Away have returned with ‘Idealized’, their first new single in three years. Check it out below, along with the band’s upcoming tour dates.
“We wrote this song in a Florida storage unit, somewhere on the timeline between tons of touring and the world shutting down,” the band said in a press release. “It’s a culmination of everything we like and always wanted to write, and fits the vibe of where we were at mentally at the time. ‘Idealized’ almost never saw the light of day, but we like this song so much we felt the need to properly record it and put it out into the world. We have been absolutely dying to play it live.”
‘Idealized’ follows Gouge Away’s 2020 single ‘Consider’. Their debut album, Burnt Sugar, came out in 2018.
Gouge Away 2023 Tour Dates:
Jul 28 Miami, FL – Gramps
Jul 29 Orlando, FL – Will’s Pub
Jul 30 Atlanta, GA – Aisle 5
Jul 31 Nashville, TN – DRKMTTR
Aug 2 Richmond, VA – Richmond Music Hall
Aug 3 Baltimore, MD – Metro Gallery
Augt 4 Philadelphia, PA – Ukie Club
Aug 5 Brooklyn, NY – Market Hotel
Aug 6 Boston, MA – Deep Cuts
For gamers looking for their next big adventure, Chrono Odyssey’s gameplay reveal trailer has just been released. Set in the unexplored world of Setera, the game promises players a journey full of rewards, riches, and formidable enemies. You’ll have to use your newly acquired spacetime control as you explore Setera’s unknown regions to conquer those lands. Your alliances will prove crucial to your success as you navigate a world filled with chaos and opportunity. Chrono Odyssey promises to be an adventure unlike any other.
Watch the gameplay reveal trailer for Chrono Odyssey below.
Throughout the week, we update our Best New Songs playlist with the new releases that caught our attention the most, be it a single leading up to the release of an album or a newly unveiled deep cut. And each Monday, we round up the best new songs released over the past week (the eligibility period begins on Monday and ends Sunday night) in this best new music segment.
On this week’s list, we have the lead single from Fontaines D.C. vocalist Grian Chatten’s debut solo LP, the dizzying, introspective ‘Fairlies’; Sweeping Promises’ urgent, exhilarating new single ‘Eraser’; Strange Ranger’s infectious, soaring ‘She’s on Fire’, which leads their upcoming album Pure Music; ‘Year Zero’, a dark, eerie highlight from billy woods and Kenny Segal’s new LP that features Danny Brown; ‘A Lens Turning’, an intricately woven track from Westerman’s new record that’s fueled by existential despair; claire rousay and Helena Deland’s gorgeous, tenderly pleading collaborative track ’Deceiver’; Girl Scout’s ‘Monster’, a catchy, invigorating song about giving in to your worst impulses; and ‘Private Life’, a quietly heartbreaking song from Hand Habits’ upcoming EP Sugar the Bruise.
“When you think of King Kong just plain fighting Godzilla, it is stupid. But how you stage it, the times in which it takes place, that’s the thought process of the filmmaker.”
Ishiro Honda1
The events and phenomena which birthed Ishiro Honda’s King Kong vs. Godzilla (1962) spanned many years. Honda’s original 1954 Godzilla had been a sizable domestic hit, selling more than eight million tickets in Japan, and paved the way for not only a sequel—Motoyoshi Oda’s Godzilla Raids Again (1955)—but similar pictures about monsters and mutants besieging civilization. The genre arrived at an ideal time, when the nation’s major studios were in excellent shape, turning out hundreds of films in breadwinning genres and supported by a ravenous public. In 1958, attendance for Japanese films reached an all-time high of 1.13 billion,2 a contemporary Ministry of Trade and Industry survey finding the average Japanese attended twelve to twenty movies each year.3 With Toho (the studio behind Godzilla) leading the way, Japanese science fiction became the latest marquee brand.
“The moral of all these films was the same,” wrote film historian Donald Richie in 1961. “Japan is ravaged by monsters who are defeated, not by warlike methods, but by technological know-how. […] The Japanese are too afraid and together they work for world peace.”4 On point as Richie’s observations were, the genre was destined for significant change. Released that same year was Honda’s Mothra, which also concluded with an optimistic view of global relations; but this time the monster peacefully returned to its island home. And with King Kong vs. Godzilla, the films began emphasizing humor on the monster level, playing up youngster’s affinity for the creatures. That said, the movies were some time from becoming childrens’ matinees and—especially in the case of King Kong vs. Godzilla—continued reaching for the broadest possible demographic.
In bringing the eponymous monsters together, Honda and screenwriter Shinichi Sekizawa turned to another box office genre: the salaryman comedy. From the hustle of company employees to satisfy their bosses and outperform competitors came a narrative reason for what one character declares “the battle of the century.” The resultant film was billed as one of Toho’s 30th anniversary releases alongside such pictures as Hiroshi Inagaki’s star-studded Chushingura, Akira Kurosawa’s samurai comedy Sanjuro, and Mikio Naruse’s biopic of author Fumiko Hayashi Her Lonely Lane.5 Audiences seemingly didn’t share Honda’s consternation with monsters prone to anthropomorphic antics,6 as the picture sold 11.2 million tickets on initial release and to this day remains (attendance-wise) the most successful Toho Godzilla movie.
King Kong vs. Godzilla was not a thoughtless comedy. In its own satirical manner, the film continued its predecessors’ tradition of using science fiction scenarios to reflect social issues. Whereas dire pictures such as Godzilla (1954) and The H-Man (1958) commented on nuclear weapons—and optimistic Cold War-era spectacles like The Mysterians (1957) and Gorath (1962) imagined future international utopias—the 1962 film mocked a media phenomenon that, like the kaiju genre, had been developing in Japan since the 1950s.
Japanese fascination with electronically transmitted images took root as early as 1926 when Kenjiro Takayanagi of Hamamatsu Higher Technical College successfully displayed a katakana character on a Braun cathode tube, though it wasn’t until 1953 that Japanese TV broadcasting officially began. Steep prices (the cheapest set averaged ¥175-180,000 at a time when most salarymen earned ¥15,000 a month7 and a house could be purchased for ¥200,000)8 meant television was initially a luxury for the wealthy and for businesses. The latter adopted it as a tool for attracting customers, who readily congregated around shop windows, train stations, and public plazas to watch recorded stage acts, talent shows, and sports.
By 1958—the year Japanese cinema hit its attendance peak—the average cost of a set had fallen to ¥60,000, and the number of subscribers grew from 866 to over a million.9 That figure doubled the following year—in no small part because of Crown Prince Akihito’s televised wedding with commoner Michiko Shoda. Prime Minister Hayato Ikeda’s “income doubling plan” of 1960 increased the affordability of at-home entertainment apparatuses, a professor rationalizing the fixation on television as: “There is less to do in Japan; in our leisure time, people here either do nothing—that is, take a nap—or watch television, or do other things inside the house. There are fewer places to go, because of the population density.”10 Some filmmakers reflected the obsession with TV. Yasujiro Ozu’s 1959 comedy Good Morning focused on elementary-age brothers pressuring their parents to buy a set. And in 1962, by which time 64.8% of Japanese households owned a set, Honda and Sekizawa skewered the ratings racket.11
Having become Japan’s first broadcaster in February 1953, NHK (Nippon Hoso Kyokai—Japan Broadcasting Corporation) campaigned to block other competing licenses, failing when NTV (Nippon TV—Japan Television) ran programs of its own that August.12 The war for the public’s attention intensified from there, spawning entertainment of the frivolous sort: quiz shows, on-camera food fights, “talent contests” highlighting the worst singers possible for the biggest laughs possible, and reality/stunt programs such as NTV’s aptly named Let’s Do Anything Show. In February 1957, social critic Soichi Oya cynically remarked to Shukan Tokyo: “When we look at the state of today’s mass media, we see that the masses will become happy to devour anything… A campaign to turn us into ‘a nation of 100 million idiots’ through […] television has developed.”13
“All a medicine company would have to do is just produce good medicines, you know? But the company doesn’t think that way. They think they’ll get ahead of their competitors if they can use a monster to promote their product. Mr. Sekizawa satirized social conditions well. That was his speciality.”
Ishiro Honda14
In his book A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots?: A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953-1973, Jayson Makoto Chun remarked: “TV executives thought that programs needed to be flashy, sometimes grotesque, full of spectacle, and easy to understand. Long dramas or education programs failed to attract casual viewers.”15 Fittingly, King Kong vs. Godzilla begins on such a note. Mr. Tako (Ichiro Arishima), an advertising executive for Pacific Pharmaceuticals, sits before a mind-numbing educational program his company sponsors, every bit as bored as the audience. Sure enough, he receives a displeased call from his boss and comes to discover the show’s ascertained a miserable rating of 5%. From here, he devises a new strategy (something flashy and full of spectacle): bring a monster to Japan as their mascot. “Back then, Sekizawa was working on pop song lyrics and TV series,” recalled Honda, “so he really had a clear insight into television.”16
King Kong is successfully captured on the remote Faro Island, but not before Godzilla emerges from an iceberg and begins carving a path of destruction to Japan. Mr. Tako’s response is one of outrage—that a monster other than his own is consuming media attention. (In a sly bit of commentary, one of Tako’s assistants remarks that a movie’s being made about Godzilla, while another says Godzilla-yaki is currently available in restaurants.) News of Kong’s capture eventually turns ratings in Tako’s favor, and the notion of a monster fight comes up. Envisioning full-page ads of Kong promoting his company’s pharmaceuticals, Tako pitches a tagline: “I’ll pulverize Godzilla, because I use Pacific drugs.”
“Who’s stronger: King Kong or Godzilla?” one of Tako’s employees asks. “Idiot!” another says. “It’s not a wrestling match!” As touched on earlier, the monster antics in this picture are occasionally humanlike, the battle moves often patterned on professional wrestling, which itself remained a TV sensation in Japan. One of Japan’s first television celebrities was professional wrestler Mitsuhiro Momota, better known by his stage name Rikidozan. Capitalizing on anti-American sentiment less than ten years after World War II, Rikidozan won a thrown match with the “American” (in actuality Canadian) Sharpe brothers, to the delight of Japanese spectators. (Adding to the subterfuge: Rikidozan, like the foreigners he triumphed over, was not of his claimed heritage—rather, a Korean.) A few months prior to King Kong vs. Godzilla, foreign wrestler Freddie Blassie gouged the forehead of opponent Great Togo in a broadcasted match, the resultant blood causing two elderly spectators to collapse and die. In response to the tragedy, an NTV manager brushed aside their deaths and commented that ratings soared to 50-80%.17
King Kong vs. Godzilla is not as fierce as some of its contemporary satires—Yasuzo Masumura’s Giants and Toys (1958) is relentlessly cynical, vicious, and unhappy—ignoring the uglier elements of commercialism in favor of spectacle and a feel-good tone. “The main thing I wanted in this picture was enjoyment,” director Honda stated.18 Though the very thing he poked fun at factored into the decline of Japanese cinema—including the Godzilla series. The executives behind Japan’s ratings wars were, unfortunately, all too successful. Frivolous programs kept audiences at home; and by the time Honda’s film was in theaters, ticket sales had fallen to 622 million (about half of the all-time peak five years earlier). The following year, it was down to 511 million.19 “I used to go to [the theater] three to four times a month to watch [movies],” confessed one subscriber. “However, after we got a television, I stopped going. Even in the village, if a traveling theater came two times a month to show movies, now even if we buy tickets, nobody in our house goes out to watch it.”20 Then came the announcement of the 1964 Tokyo Olympics and the nationwide demand to watch the games from home; the introduction of color TV further distracted audiences.21
As numbers for Godzilla shrank throughout the remainder of the decade (in 1967, Jun Fukuda’s Son of Godzilla sold a meager 2.48 million tickets), the loss of audiences impacted the film companies. Studios downsized and once-popular genres such as period and home dramas began migrating to the small screen;22 meanwhile, Toho and others started producing TV shows of their own.23 In 1988, the effects of TV (and later home video) were so strong that attendance plummeted to a miserable 161,000.24 Nowadays, Japanese films enjoy a greater share of the domestic box office, with about 152 million tickets25 sold in 2022, but has yet to regain the market of the 1950s. Even with the modern smartphone epidemic and a slight wane in TV consumption in Japan (a daily average of 159.4 minutes versus the 180 reported in 1980), broadcasting remains a major commercial presence. “Smartphones are undoubtedly convenient as communication tools,” reported The Mainichi in 2019. “However, there are things that cannot be conveyed by anything other than the power of TV images.”26
Works cited and further reading:
Ryfle, Steve and Ed Godziszewski. Ishiro Honda: A Life in Film, from Godzilla to Kurosawa. Middletown: Wesleyan University Press, 2017, p. 187
Yomota Inuhiko. Translated by Philip Kaffen. What Is Japanese Cinema? A History. New York: Columbia University Press, 2019, p. 109
Anderson, Joseph L. and Donald Richie. The Japanese Film: Art and Industry (Expanded Edition). Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1982, p. 412
Richie, Donald. “‘Mono no aware’: Hiroshima in Film” in Broderick, Mick (ed). Hibakusha Cinema: Hiroshima, Nagasaki and the Nuclear Image in Japanese Film. New York: Routledge, 1996, p. 29
Ryfle and Godziszewski, pp. 185-6
Ibid, p. 188
Chun, Jayson Makoto. A Nation of a Hundred Million Idiots?: A Social History of Japanese Television, 1953-1973. New York: Routledge, 2007, p. 55
Partner, Simon. Assembled in Japan: Electrical Goods and the Making of the Japanese Consumer. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999, 165
Chun, p. 72
Riesman, David and Evelyn Thompson Riesman. Conversations in Japan: Modernization, Politics, and Culture. New York: Basic Books, 1967, p. 170
Chun, p. 73
Ibid, p. 54
Ibid, p. 3
Ryfle, Steve. Japan’s Favorite Mon-Star: The Unauthorized Biography of “The Big G.” Toronto: ECW Press, 1998, p. 82
Chun, p. 159
Ryfle and Godziszewski, p. 187
Chun, p. 157
Ryfle, p. 82
Galbraith, Stuart, IV. The Japanese Filmography: A Complete Reference Work to 209 Filmmakers and the More Than 1250 Films Released in the United States, 1900-1994. Jefferson: McFarland & Company, Inc., 1996, p. 471
Chun, p. 132
Richie, Donald. A Hundred Years of Japanese Film: A Concise History, with a Selective Guide to DVDs and Videos. New York: Kodansha International, Ltd., 2001, p. 177
Schilling, Mark. Contemporary Japanese Film. Boston: Weatherhill, 1999, p. 15
Ryfle and Godziszewski, p. 237
Galbraith, pp. 470-1
“‘One Piece’ Tops Japan’s Box Office in 2022.” com. https://www.nippon.com/en/japan-data/h01590/ Accessed 30 April 2023
“Editorial: The power of television still strong despite smartphone era.” The Mainichi, 13 May 2019
Gilbert Fonchin, a French landscape photographer, unveiled an eye-pleasing landscape series that focused on Meneham, a beautiful historical landmark in the Western Brittany of France. Throughout the compositions, Fonchin showcases the serene and rocky features of the place that oversees the English Channel.
For fans of Selling Sunset, the season six trailer has just been released! This popular reality series follows the glamorous and dramatic lives of seven female real estate agents at The Oppenheim Group. The team is battling it out to reach the top of LA’s luxury real estate market. There will be plenty of drama this season, with new agents joining the mix, as well as tensions running high as the ladies juggle personal and professional goals. It looks like season six of Selling Sunset will deliver all the luxury real estate and major drama fans expect from the show, including sleek penthouse listings and unexpected pregnancies. Watch these power players compete in Hollywood Hills and on Sunset Strip from the front row.
For the lovers of the F1, we are pleased to say that EA has finally released the reveal trailer for the latest game within the F1 franchise. A new story mode, dramatic wheel-to-wheel racing at new Las Vegas and Qatar circuits, fresh rewards in F1 World, updated 2023 cars with the official F1 driver lineup, and more await in F1 23!
Peter Gabriel has released ‘Four Kinds of Horses’, the latest single to be lifted from his forthcoming album i/o. The song, which follows previous offerings ‘Panopticon’, ‘The Court’, ‘Playing for Time’, and the title track, features Brian Eno on synthesizer and Gabriel’s daughter Melanie on backing vocals. Listen below.
‘Four Kinds of Horses’ came together with XL Records founder Richard Russell and was originally intended for his Everything Is Recorded project. “He’s a friend (and founder of XL Records), and he asked me to pop into his studio,” Gabriel explained in a statement. “I came up with some chords, melodies, and words on top of a groove he was working on. We tried a few things that didn’t altogether work, and so it laid dormant for quite a while. Then I started playing around with it again and changed the mood and the groove, and something else began to emerge with a better chorus.”
