Kapok

Kapok exclusive : Numark IDJ2 i-pod mixer

We will receive this fantastic new i-pod mixer the  first week of September and we can already accept pre-orders.

Numark IDJ2  will certainly become the new standard for DJs. This is really a great jump from the IDJ that you might have seen in the store. SO what's new with the IDJ2? 

• Full control of your music with real–time scratching (via two jog wheels) : DJs can easily change tempo without affecting pitch.

• A fresh and innovative new iPod® docking system that allows users to play and mix two songs simultaneously from a single iPod®

• an over-sized LCD screen

• Users can also hook up : additional iPods®, thumb drives, and external USB hard drives through rear panel USB ports

• iDJ² comes complete with line inputs for audio sources including a microphone, CD players and turntables

The IDJ2 is full of professional DJ features like balanced outputs, pitch control, key lock, seamless looping, and full cueing. DJs can easily manage their music library using the iDJ²'s highly intuitive graphic interface: the over-sized LCD screen offers visual track–profiling. iDJ²'s unique crate feature allows easy organisation of songs to be played and supports multiple file formats including MP3, WAV and AAC (unprotected). The iDJ² also supports iPod® docking and charging, to keep the music playing and the party going all night long and maybe also the next morning.

The IDJ2 will retail at HK$5,780. To reserve one and be amongst the first in HK to play with this new toy, contact us at info@ka-pok.com or 25499254. The first batch will be limited so don't be late.

Key features:

• Large backlit, full-color display with revolutionary user interface
• Key lock support for maintaining key while tempo shifting
• Universal Dock for iPod with adjustable mount
• Seamless looping, pitch control, scratching capability via jog wheels
• Visual Track Profiles to skip through phrases
• USB ports for iPods, thumb drives and hard drives
• Play music from two iPods simultaneously, including two songs from same iPod
• Scratching and mixing for MP3, WAV and AAC (unprotected) files
• Direct Mode supports playback of iTunes music store (protected AAC) files
• Pitch control with range up to +25% and down to 100%
• Beatkeeper™ technology with TAP override function
• Search ability via two large jog wheels
• USB Keyboard support
• 3–band EQ with gain control on both channels
• Dedicated microphone input with tone and level control
• Phono/line inputs on both channels for adding additional devices

In mid air presents : la mouvance des flux by Cedric Maridet

La mouvance des flux - streamed soundwork
A constant hum, hissing, white noise… then out of this background of noises, lending an ear to it, some frequencies stand out. Birds, I suppose.
Then, a plane flies across an imagined blue sky. An emergency siren fades in and out to let place to whistling birds. Everything seems in order again. Only irregular klaxons come to disturb it from time to time.

This is what could be heard on one of the streams from Marseille, France, on a regular Sunday, through the apparatus set up by the French-based audio art research group Locus Sonus. Open microphones located in different regions of the world broadcast their immediate soundscape. I add several open-microphones in Hong Kong to the existing ones.
La mouvance des flux takes its root in these streamed soundscapes, and explores the idea of continuous listening, the complex relationships between flux and sound events. This work proposes to render audible the inaudible and the faraway in ways different from the radio, and to transfer the global streams within a sound field around the listener’s head.

Sounds are mixed and intermingled, confusing the perception of background and foreground within the composed soundscape. It explores sound as a continuous dynamic stream, where sounds rub and crash against each other, and weave into each other to create new tensions. The experience of time is also a way to alter the nature of the listening activity - are these remote sounds static events, or are they changing by nature? In other words, what are we listening to?

text by : Cedric Maridet - moneme

This show is part of  'in midair' - attacks on  background sound environment

We live in a dense population of artificial sounds, passing through streams of them every day- car-engines 'vrooming', air-conditioners humming, faint music murmuring in shopping malls. There are also voices and noises and more discrete sounds like heels of sandals and high heels pounding onto steel escalators, mobile phones ringing in the MTR compartment. To cope with the mass of sonic information, we treat them as some necessary evil that defines a city- we stop listening.

in midair derives its title from the artists- specifically from Su-Mei Tse's air-conditioned solo exhibition presented in the 2003 50th Venice Biennale, and Felix Hess' book Light as Air, and generally, from the way all the sound artists in this exhibition are working with air and its movements to give shape and breathing room for sound. When noise abatement fails, it is time to recover the joy and depth of listening.

The six installation works in in midair create sound-full air pockets in this background sound environment so that we retrain our ears from the simple to-hear-or-not-to-hear routine to listening for pleasant surprises.

Participating artists:
Felix Hess -Netherlands
Anson Mak -Hong Kong
Cedric Maridet -France, Hong Kong
Kawai Shiu -USA, Singapore, Hong Kong
Su-Mei Tse -Luxembourg
Yeung Ngor-wah, Anthony -Hong Kong
Yuen Cheuk-Wa -Hong Kong

Co-presenters -habitus, Videotage
Curator for 'in midair' YEUNG Yang

More information :  www.soundworkshongkong.net

Where: Kapok- B/F 9 Dragon Road, Tin Hau Temple Road, Tin Hau, Hong Kong
When 16th June-15th July 2007
Opening: Saturday  June 16th - 6pm (free admission)

Tel : 254 99 254 / email : info@ka-pok.com

Kapok love - Best of 2006 music

This is what has been on very very high rotation on Kapok's sound-system last year. You can get most of these CDs at the store or any nice friendly record store near you. You can share your favourites in the comments box. What amazing music have I missed ?

1. The Knife: Silent shout
2. CSS: Cansei de ser sexy
3. Hot Chip : The warning (and Hot Chip will break your leg / remix collection)
4. Junior Boys : So this is goodbye
5. Girl Talk : Night ripper

6. Booka Shade : Movements
7. Kitsune : Maison 2 and 3 compilations
8. LCD Soundsystem : 45:33
9. Pet Shop Boys : Fundamental (and Fundamentalism remix collection)
10. Lo-Fi-Fnk : Boylife

11. Charlotte Gainsbourg : 5:55
12. The Rapture : Pieces of people we love
13. Para One : Epiphanie
14. The Strokes : First Impression of Earth
15. Peter Bjorn & John : Writer's Block

16. Whitest Boy Alive : Dreams
17. James Dean Bradfield : Great Western
18. Sonic Youth : Rather Ripped
19. Lindstrom & Prins Thomas : Lindstrom & Prins Thomas
20. Beck : The Information

+1:  Timbaland 2006 : Timbaland tracks on Justin Timberlake's and Nelly Furtado's albums as well as the Timbaland track ft. Justin & Nelly!

I will update soon Kapok's favourite tracks and movies of the year (I know this is late, and the lists season is already over...)

Everything's gone green

After a well-deserved summer break (because French people are VERY serious, well only when it comes to holidays, coffee and croissants...), I was very excited to start working on the music reviews for this issue of RMM. So I happily contacted the editor who told me that the theme for this issue was “green / eco-friendly”... OK that’s a tough one
I (briefly) contemplated talking about happy songs with forest noises and birds chirping or disserting on the merits of Enya vast discography, I decided to go for a more oblique approach. My friend Carlos always tells me “every problem can become an opportunity” but I prefer to say “when  facing a problem, pretend that you did not understand and that it doesn’t exist”
So it’s time for me to write the GREEN reviews (a.k.a. Reviews of my favourite songs with GREEN in the title). Since I feel a little bit guilty about my stunt I have devised an “eco-friendly index” to see how green these songs really are.

New Order – Everything’s gone green (from Substance)
This was originally the B-side to New Order’s first single Ceremony but our friends in Belgium were lucky enough to be able to buy this as a single. This marks really the moment where New Order stops being Joy Division without Ian Curtis and become a band on their own terms. While the lyrics remain dour and Barney is still mimicking Ian’s vocal delivery, the addictive bass line and bright melody pave the way for a happier, poppier and dancier New order...
Eco-friendly index : 2/10 – New order’s first song electronic computer-based sound. With the launch of this trend, just look at a graph showing the electricity consumption after 1981... Dramatic! 

Tom Vek – Nothing but green lights (from We have sound)
On the best track on his debut album, Tom Vek really tried to make his point that less is more. No chorus, a spare bouncy bass line and a lazy drawl in place of any real singing. But Tom’s optimism and the simple groove are so infectious that we need nothing else. If you need more convincing, youtube the video. Where on paper the idea of a gangly Napoleon dynamite skating on a dark empty ring doesn’t sound like a good idea, it’s strangely effect. When the vocals drop, Tom Vek disappears and is replaced by nothing but green light, this is a strangely beautiful moment.
Eco-friendly index : 8/10 There are no better way to convince people to stop using their cars and only move on skates...

Matias Aguayo – The green and the red  (from Are you really lost?)
Ex-Closer Musik Matias Aguayo released his album on critics’ favourite label (well at least two years ago) Kompakt. But don’t look for any minimal techno there as it is indeed a carefully fashioned electropop affair. The green and the red  mixes some plaintive chants with clicky acoustic guitar patterns and an anaemic synth line. But the rhythm always seem out of balance, the song ready to fall and the playful and simplistic lyrics always make me crack a smile – Matias success to infuse some playfulness and sense of fun sometimes lacking in the minimal scene.
Eco-friendly index : 0/10 According to the lyrics, “the red was joking, the green was smoking” How can you be green and smoke, smoking is a terrible sin, don’t you know?

M83 - On a white lake, near a green mountain (from Dead cities, red seas and lost ghosts)
On one of the emptiest, sparest track on the album that revealed them overseas, M83 show exactly where they stand – at the middle point between contemplative spacey music and hard aggressive beats and sounds. It all starts very sigur-rosey with quiet majestic synth lines (I also seem to hear a waterfall at the beginning?) but a menacing beat is soon summoned to bring the track back to earth. There are stronger, more interesting tracks on M83 albums but with this really shows where the attraction of M83 albums and live shows come from : a perpetual fight between aerial inspirations and earthy constraints.
Eco-friendly index : 5/10 – This seems the logical score for this nature vs. machine schizophrenic track.

Blossom deary - Long daddy green (from Love,)
I have to admit I know nothing about Blossom deary and this kind of jazzy loungey swingy music is not what I usually listen to [note : i know so little about her, that i mispelt her name : she is Blossom Dearie; thanks for all the connaisseurs who spotted the mistake]. But thanks to the good people at La troisieme note  who handcrafted the really delicious compilation Love, I succumbed to the obvious charm of this song. A soft almost out of breath voice bounces around, surrounded by gentle pianos, brass and a playful bass – to me this song portrays innocence but not naivety. The singer seems young and fragile but I am sure she is a slightly dangerous seductress. Anyway, if anyone knows more about Blossom deary and if the rest of their output is as good as this, let me know!
Eco-friendly index : 9/10 this is the perfect soundtrack for a lazy day frolicking in the fields

This text is my submission for the music reviews section in Ready Made Magazine (RMM). Records reviewed may or may not be available at kapok  (www.ka-pok.com) – notwithstanding we love them all!

May 06 - music pick of the month : Dungen - Ta Det Lugnt

When Arnault scanned through his all-time favorite collection and introduced to me Dungen’s Ta Det Lugnt, I had totally no idea over this and assumed it should be something big from his home country, France. As soon as I finished it for the first time on my CD player, I tried to do a simple research on this ‘band’ that presumably comprises at least four members, but the result was astonishing. Gustav Ejstes is a 24-year-old Swedish multi-instrumentalist wunderkind behind the one-man band who brought to us this amazing psych-rock album in 2004, shaking up the entire indie community.
Ejstes’s talent as both a multi-instrumentalist and a sunshiny pop melody writer is fully displayed over the thirteen bracing tracks in his third album. Under a Lo-Fi and retro texture created upon the crackling drums and smoky backdrop, the perfect crossover of classical and contemporary musical instruments (Hammond, flute, violin, bass and guitars), greatly enriches the lustrous rhymes and sing-a-long melodies. Dungen’s vocals show a sincere devotion to music, earnest enough to crash all language barriers and reach the audience soul.

The leading track, Panda, kick-starts the album in a terse way, Ejstes’s roaring vocal brings in a classical flow of 70s’ rock song melody, and the rapid drum/ guitar jam session throughout the song perfectly demonstrates his masterly instrumental skills in. The psychedelic guitar playing through Gjort bort sig makes it a fascinating psych-rock descent, and the track ends stunningly when the electric guitar slides back in again.
Festival begins with probably the only comprehensible lyric to me, and the refreshing acoustic guitar opening, upbeat percussive background, and the facile rhymes altogether make it a verdant and splendid highlight, while it still surprises you with an airy guitar interlude and an amusing keyboard ending.
Du E För Fin För Mig starts in a symphonic way but then develops into a speedy retro rock guitar’s solo performance, and the sing-along chorus in it fully demonstrates how Ejstes appeals to the audience through his somewhat pop melodies. The theme track, Ta det Lugent, is a perfect crossover of Lo-Fi piano and Lo-Fi guitar riffs, whereas the saxophone solo in the jazzy second part would be an appropriate transition to the autumnal instrumental track, Det du tänker idag är du i morgon.
The mysterious instrumental, Lejonet & kulan, well divides the album into the bright first half and the dark, sentimental second half. Both Ejstes and his guitar attempt to shout themselves hoarse in Bortglömd, while the piano accompaniment and symphonic arrangement over Lipsill and Sluta Följa Efter contribute to the gloomiest moment of Dungen.

Simply put, Ta Det Lugnt is a boundless masterpiece: Dungen uses an ineffably flabbergasted dramaturgy to handle a chain of catchy, melodic rhymes, tickling the ear and striking the heart of the massive monolingual English-speaking audience without singing a single English word. Review by Mark Cheng

April 06 - music pick of the month : Modular - Leave them all behind

Modular Records, home to Modular People such as The Avalanches or Cut Copy bring to us their first compilation, Leave Them All Behind. The 2 CDs’ compilation, one mixed and one unmixed, features the likes of Bloc Party, The Killers, The Rakes and DFA 1979, and is doubtlessly a DJ mix album that marks the revival of indie-dance.
Leave Them All Behind, receiving overwhelmingly good responses as the re-ignition of the indie-dance fire is now set to be an ongoing series. The first CD, mixed by Modular DJs, presents to you an uninterrupted 51-minute of electro rock beats, showing off 2005’s guitar anthems by the new big names of the Brit Rock Community:
‘Retreat’ by The Rakes armed with 4/4 striking beats and thriving electro, is simply a superb opener to kick-start the indie dance party, and when its looping chorus fades out, then comes the New Order’s prototyped lustrous guitar opening of Cut Copy’s ‘Bright Neon Payphone’. ‘Romantic Rights’ by Canadians Death From Above 1979, begins with a funky bassline, while Erol Alkan pushes guitar noise deep in the red, turning it into a high-voltage indie rock song. ‘Giddy Stratospheres’ by The Long Blondes is more simple guitar pop song that gives you a break among the surrounding thumping indie dance beats ‘. ‘Banquet’ by Bloc Party, the current favourite of the Brit Rock community, emerges as a highlight with Phones setting up a series of pounding big beats that add some power to Kele Okereke’s already mighty vocal. Cut Copy’s magic is enough to turn ‘45 & rising’ into a shining 80s synth-pop song that appeals to Duran Duran fans, whereas the reworking of The Presets’s ‘Girl & The Sea’ is another top notch synth rock moment. Finally, the soaring electro guitar riff manufactured by Jagz Kooner makes The Kills’s ‘Good Ones’ another track to remember from this DJ mix and the Killers perfectly close the curtain with a new classic of melodic pop, ‘Mr. Brightside’.
Modular label, who brings to us this eclectic compilation, is more than just a runner for the imaginary “dance for indie kids” awards (won by no else than Erlend Øye last year), but also a new purveyor of memories for the never-aging fans of the indie-dance revolution.    Review by Mark Cheng