Melbourne book launch of TSMG

So I'm now back in Tokyo, after a two week sojourn in Melbourne - the more prominent Melbourne in Australia rather than its silly namesake in Florida, which is 32 years younger. I get parochial about this because the Melbourne in Australia is my hometown, and also the setting for my novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat.



I went down this time not only to rendezvous with friends and family, nor just to soak in the sights, sounds, smells and brilliant foodstuffs that the city does indeed boast. Because the novel was only recently published, it was high-time I did a book launch there; any excuse to have a party, and all that jazz. Anyway, we ended up doing the propaganda jaunt at a superb 1853 blue-stone abode in the city called Miss Libertine on Wednesday 10th August, and the turn-out was brilliant.





Suitably enough it was also pissing down with rain that evening.



I got in early to cut my teeth with some beer; I also cut up wads of cheese and a smoked sausage that, in Australia, we call cabana (suitably kitsch old school '70s art exhibition style, and far cheaper than serving up sushi!) plus we had salt and vinegar chips and chocolate teddy bears since they appear in the novel.



There were hiccups - the three-hour background score I'd put together, which included musical influences, soundtracks from appropriate films, my own hack Little Nobody muzak and some self-indulgent ditties, failed to fire-up. We also had technical problems with the DVD projector so we couldn't screen most of what I wanted to show. I skipped out on doing a book-reading - a part of me thought that a wee bit too pretentious in the circumstances - so I opted to opening myself up to an informal Q&A instead.





The only problem was that between the hob-knob of the occasion and scrawling inane messages on copies of the book, I had to remember names, catch up with mates and family members who showed up, and generally remind myself to make time for a sip or two of ale squeezed in between gas-bagging - so the Q&A fell on the back-burner a bit.



But management at the venue were wunderbar (thanks, Bo!), the vibe was fantastic, I had a couple of great happy-snappers (in particular Jason Maher) and no minor problems seemed to matter anyway.



Massive thanks to everyone who showed up and thereby created the vibe I talked up a sentence back - you all rock. While I'll admit to having been a bit stressed before the event, during and especially after I had a ball.



That's Melbourne (Australia) for you.



I forgot how much I missed the place, even now - a decade after I left - and it just seems to improve with age. I think anybody who bothers to read this blog (hello? Anybody?) might've noticed I like to talk up fine wines, and there're some nice drops to be found in Australia. So the image of Melbourne aging away in a dank cellar - since I love my vintage stuff - is actually a positive one.



We're not talking dusty, damp and archaic, though there's plenty of gorgeous Victorian architecture to be found in this city with its fair share of mold. Melbourne has a comparatively short history but has hung on to a lot of that, while at the same time developing new twists and turns as it goes.



But I think being away gave me the detachment necessary to set my novel in a post-apocalyptic Melbourne in which the proverbial shit has hit the fan.





Anyway, a couple of days ago I left again, going straight from around 6°C in the early morning in Melbourne to 36°C and humid here in Tokyo - nice and sizzling in the sun; steaming in the shade.



And I'm buggered, but it's brilliant to be with the girls again. And missing Melbourne already - what a city.



Now I just need time to recuperate.



Photos by Jason Maher & Andrez Bergen. You can check out more happy-snaps at the TSMG website.

Tobacco-Stained & Out There

Well, the novel is now out - in fact it has been for a month now - and slowly starting to garner the occasional review like the one at Forces Of Geek.

My publishers are currently putting together the digital versions for iPad and Kindle (stay tuned), but in the meantime the classic old school paperback - sorry, trees! - is up on Amazon UK, Amazon USA, Amazon Canada, Amazon Japan, and Alibris.

Even better, you can order direct from my cool cat publishers Another Sky Press, where the price for the paperback is much cheaper ($4.74 plus postage), and you also get bonus glossy bookmarks (see above) featuring the cover artwork on both sides.

If you feel like it, while online @ Another Sky you can contribute more so that the publisher, the cover artist (Scott Campbell) and I actually make some dosh in the long run.

The funky postcard is not yet available except here in Japan, but I'm working on it, and eventually hope to achieve world domination with bumper stickers, a Scout patch and iPad apps... even if I don't have one of those darn tootin' gadgets yet myself.

Bah; humbug.

TSMG: the published tome!

One hefty element of happiness is... getting the printed, bound and published version of your novel for the very first time in your mitts!!!

They're here - ZOUNDS!!!!

Talk about insanely cool timing, since we're doing the Tokyo launch party for the novel tonight at the Pink Cow in Shibuya (see post below). Up to this point we were thinking it'd be a paperless affair (weird for a book launch party, I know), but the gods - whomsoever they may be, and regardless of whether or not the blighters actually exist - have been kind.

The biggest ever possible thanks to Kristopher, Bob and everyone else at Another Sky Press for their tireless work, belief and madly cool assistance on this beastie - it's their baby as much as is mine. And cheers to family and mates for all their support and encouragement over the years it took to finish off the yarn.


Here's the back cover, with the barcode - and we even have a darn-tootin' ISBN number! x

I think I'm still a little bit in shock, really - so I'll stop gabbling here and sit down with a strong coffee to pore over one of the copies I have beside me.

If you're interested in checking out more about the novel, head on over to the Tobacco-Stained Another Sky site (just click the highlighted bit).

WOW. Bliss.

Tobacco-Stained Party, Tokyo 東京 25/3

These are strange times here, for all too obvious reasons - and sometimes it feels like we’re collectively treading water awaiting the next Big Thing to transpire. Meanwhile the reactors still belch scary looking clouds and we get shaken by dozens of aftershocks everyday.

I know this cuts a minor issue in the grand scheme of things, but a high percentage of events and parties have been cancelled here in Tokyo, and attendance is lower than usual at the places that're still open.

A lot of the DJ/producers I know are spending most of their time at home, creating tunes – or putting together worthy benefit compilations, like the ones coming out through Shin Nishimura’s Plus Tokyo label and another called Kibou that’s being put together by Japanophile DJ Hi-Shock through his Elektrax label – which features contributions from a wad of Japan’s finest techno bods.


It’s been mad timing for my new novel to come out; teaches me to write a yarn that’s been described as “post-apocalyptic noir.”

I’m supposed to have the Tokyo book launch this Friday 25th March (in other words tomorrow) at the Pink Cow in Shibuya, but the postal service is all screwed up so there's a big chance I won’t be getting the books themselves in time from the U.S.

Not through lack of trying by Kristopher and Christine @ Another Sky Press, but, as I say, our timing has been a wee bit out-of-whack with nature.

I'm still praying to an empty mead hall of Norse gods that UPS will be able to get the books out of Japanese customs - where they've been since Monday - and here into my lap in time. Hell, if not for the party itself, I just want to hold and stroke the beastie that's taken so much time of my life to complete!

Anyway, after much soul-searching, mood-swings, flip-flopping and so on, we’re doing the launch party, regardless of earthquakes and/or radiation levels.

READ MORE HERE @ TOBACCO-STAINED MOUNTAIN GOAT BLOG.

More Ado About Japan

Mad.

Unless you’ve had your head buried deep inside some sandbox in a place a million miles from the nearest social network or wireless connection, you’d already know precisely what I’m leading into - or if you'd bothered to read the entry immediately beneath.

So let's get straight into it.

On Friday March 11th, at around 2:45pm local time, the east coast of Japan was hit by an earthquake that tipped the scale at around 8.9 – 9.0 on the Charles Richter magnitude charts.

I’ve since learned that we survived the fourth or fifth biggest earthquake in recorded history, and the worst ever in Japan – which is one of the world's most seismically active places.

But Tokyo was lucky compared with other places in this country just north of our city, like Miyagi Prefecture.

Straight after the earthquake there were tsunami waves of up to ten metres (33 feet) that struck the Pacific coast north of Tokyo, ploughing inland up to a dozen kilometres – sweeping away the towns and cities along the way.

The footage has been so surreal: That tsunami rapidly filling the streets of the city of Kesennuma as people watched (and filmed) from atop hills; cars and air-conditioning units bobbing and floating by, followed by houses that started moving and weaving between overturned boats; the aftermath with ships and trucks on top of highways and houses. It was like looking at The Day After Tomorrow rolled up into Dante's Inferno.

But the sad truth is that it isn’t surreal at all. This is no dream. It’s been neither fiction nor the unrealistic segment of a disaster movie – it's cold, hard reality.

Somewhere around 10,000 people have been killed, though no-one knows the true extent of the fatalities even now – at the time of writing this – seven days after that initial disaster. Our thoughts go out to all the people affected.

But I say “initial” disaster, because we’ve since suffered aftershocks numbering in the hundreds and varying in intensity depending on the area. The other night night in Shizuoka, near Mt. Fuji, there was another earthquake with a magnitude of 6.4.

I got woken up by an aftershock at 5:00am yesterday morning - rattling doors and shaking bed. When we went to the supermarket almost half the shelves were empty as people are stocking up in case of another emergency.

And yesterday my daughter and wife flew down south to join the in-laws in Fukuoka.

It makes me far happier to know they're safe(r) - especially since there are the melting-down nuclear reactors at Fukushima, 170 miles north of Tokyo.


These babies were initially damaged by the earthquake and tsunami, and are currently out-of-control, spewing forth radioactive particles that are being felt as far south as, well, here in Tokyo.

This past week has been a little too close to home, and I say that not just because I currently live in Tokyo. The quakes and shakes this time were real, not cheap FX on celluloid with high-definition surround sound.

It’s eerily like the plot in Sakyo Komatsu’s novel Nihon Chinbotsu (Japan Sinks) – I saw both the spin-off movies made in 1973 and 2006 – but defies the page or the artificial image of a viewfinder.

Real people have died, and thousands of other bona fide human beings have lost loved ones and friends. They’re destitute, lacking basic provisions, and braving up to zero-degree temperatures up north.

This is going to take a long time to clean up and forget.

And while the Japanese people here have been astoundingly resolute – not here the looting and general mayhem on the streets you see in other lesser disasters elsewhere in the world – it's a mind-numbing situation and an emotionally debilitating one to see this country and these people go through all of this.

In the meantime the best thing to do as hang onto the coattails of a sense of humour about it all – and gaze somewhat wistfully at the Japanese kanji "kibou", which means “hope”.

Which brings me full circle to some untimely, self-indulgent navel-gazing... but I guess that's what blogs are all about, especially ones like this which have only a couple of entries anyway.

Amidst all this madness I'm releasing my novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat, which is coming out through Another Sky Press in the U.S. on 31 March.

As previously mentioned here it's a sci-fi/noir tome that's set in Melbourne, Australia, but mostly rewritten here in Tokyo and heavily influenced by my 10 years in Japan.

I'm going to stop with the hype right now. It tastes wrong. If you're interested at all in checking out the novel, fantastic - thank you. If not, that's cool too - but please think in some way about how, in whatever small or seemingly inconsequential way, you can assist Japan. It all helps.

Rant out.

TSMG: the promo video/trailer/teaser thing

Here's a YouTube teaser for that upcoming new novel I'm going to be a heel and shamelessly flog hereabouts over the next couple of months. Hell, it's my novel, I've never had one published before, and of course I'm completely over the moon about the upcoming publication date. Self-indulgent propaganda shells are to be expected.



Pre-order for this tome is available directly from the publisher, Another Sky Press, in the U.S. by clicking this link. There's also a free download feature there for the first 2 chapters (shh!).

Hyperbole out. For now.

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat - 2011

Hey mates,


I'm dead sure there's a separate entry somewhere here in this blog to stick this update, but I'm chilling out with La Familia as the New Year wind-up and beginning is more important in Japan than Christmas (in my case I get to celebrate both!), so in the meantime I'm putting this here in case anyone's at all vaguely interested.

My debut novel Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat will now definitely be published, through US label Another Sky Press, at the end of January 2011.

It's a bit of a cut-up fusion of genres and cultures (blame 10 years in Tokyo and the rest in Melbourne, aside from six months in London and a little bit of time on the Gold Coast).

My editor (Kristopher Young, who penned Click), when pressed, put it thus:


"The book itself is sort of... well, indescribable, really - noirish, subtly sci-fi, hard-boiled, futuristic; Blade Runner with a touch of Sam Spade, a smattering of Orson Welles circa Touch of Evil, or The Third Man. And a shot of bourbon."

Anyway, though I'd struggle to insert my own work in the same sentence as these cool people (a list that includes Kristopher himself), I like to believe that's what we've at least fractionally achieved...

While we're still in the edit on the book (mostly cleaning up and organizing the cover artwork - front and back both done by the insanely cool Scott Campbell), we have a sneak preview of the original, unedited first two chapters here, plus you can pre-order the beastie if that insane compulsion grabs you - it's retailing at only US$4.50 plus postage.

Cheap is always good.

Plus we've got some great feedback to the tome from magazines, newspapers and blogs like The Age, Vice, Filmink, Forces Of Geek and Impact.


You can find out more plus peruse the better-tuned propaganda and info online at
Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat

Anyway, I'm obviously over the moon about publication of the bugger in the new year and hope you have the inclination to check it out. If you do find the time to potter over something a little different... read away.

I'd love to know what you think!


Otherwise, two wise last words here: HAPPY NEW YEAR. Oops... them's three, not two.

All the best,
Andrez

Like A Sturgeon

Think I mentioned on this blog somewhere at some self-indulgent stage that I released an album through Auricular Records in the US last month, and for once under my real name instead of hiding behind an alias.

Anyway, just for another free plug it's called Hackneyed Record Crate (thanks yet again to the people at Auricular for supporting these kinds of disparate, inadvertently eclectic sounds!) and today I got motivated enough to pull the finger out and hack together a video clip to go with one of the tracks, 'Like A Sturgeon', which I did a while back in collaboration with American noise guru (and a mate of mine) Noisepsalm.

Hackneyed Record Crate

Well, I have a brand new album out but some of it is not so new at all, while other bits are recent ploddings; basically it's a collection of personal eclectic nuggets that scrape around electronica, sampling, industrial moments, and whatever else I could throw into the mix.

The LP is titled Hackneyed Record Crate and it's my third release through US experimental label Auricular Records.

Here's what Auricular themselves have to say about the release - probably better than anything I'd try to conjure up here:

"Point the remote control at the Andrez Bergen digital Victrola of doom and scan the airwaves of all time and space and join us for the last waltz of the mechanodroids on the event horizon of the Slash Cut and Loop universe. Or sip a cup of tea and sing along quietly to yourself with the curtains drawn. All samples have been sanitized for your protection."


Anyway, there're 16 tracks all up and you can listen to sample sounds of these right HERE if you're still somehow inspired to do so.

Time Wasters

I have a couple of excuses for not updating this blog lately as much as I'd like to.

While I usually decry the whole excuses tangent - who cares, anyway? - these excuses are ones that actually warm the cockles of my devious heart and are seriously depriving me of sleep most nights lately.

The first excuse is my new vinyl record - yep, I'm going all old school black wax - which finally hits streets (and hopefully decks) from today.

It's out through my label IF? in conjunction with Gynoid Audio. The record itself is called 'Metropolis How?' and is actually a track I made under my hack Little Nobody alias almost 2 years ago , but comes with fresh remixes by the inestimable James Ruskin, Justin Berkovi and DJ Hi-Shock.

It's already got support from people like Luke Slater, Laurent Garnier, Chris Liebing, Ade Fenton, Dave Clarke, Tommy Four Seven, Ben Sims, Ken Ishii, Perc, Len Faki and Trevor Rockcliffe.

Yep, I guess you could call this techno. Maybe.

Check out the sample sounds HERE.

The other time-waster is the sub-editing of the novel I've been working on for - well, forever, basically.


There are a few are these projects tucked under various beds in Japan and Australia, but this particular one is called 'Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat' and is actually going to be published by the way cool cats at Another Sky Press in the USA once we finish the edit. This should (hopefully!) be done by June.

Oh yeah, and the cool cover is by the very awesome Scott Campbell.

You can read the first 2 chapters online for free HERE - just be aware that there've been substantial edits since then and the new version is a helluva lot tighter. I think.

Maybe.

In the meantime, if you're bored, here's the video clip we did for the original mix of 'Metropolis How?'...

Funk Gadget 'Blah Blah' on White Vinyl

I know, I know - this is not really Japan-related, although the original track (which also appears here) was conceived and spat-out in my hack studio here in Tokyo just over a year ago, with the accidental input of the ever-brilliant Paul Birken (long story).

And the remixes concept was also dreamed up here in Japan over the past few months - but the rest of this story, as they say, was a global effort.

The record label is Slidebar Recordings, the sister label of Kitty Corner over in Germany run by Axel Sohns; the artwork is by Marcin Markowski in Poland.


And the remixes are by: Si Begg (Mosquito/Tresor), Patrick Pulsinger (Cheap/Disko B), Dave Tarrida (Tresor/Musick) and Birken (Bonus Round/Tonewrecker).

Oh yeah, and Funk Gadget is me - another of my silly production aliases (I have about 30 of 'em).

This one's a side-project I do for noisier electro/dubstep/cut-up stuff. So, when granted the insane opportunity to conjure up a record for Slidebar (and this lovely WHITE VINYL one at that), I decided to bring along a few of my like-minded mates.

This baby came out last month (February 2010), and you can check out sneak preview sample sounds (and/or order the vinyl, if it's your cuppa tea) here:
http://www.deejay.de/Funk_Gadget-Blah_Blah_Ep-SLR003__483917

Here's the hack video-clip:

Shikinejima: Flying Fish Island

Just a three hour jet-ferry ride from Tokyo is an island amidst the Izu islets called Shikinejima.

Jima means island in Japanese, and Shikinejima is your basic garden variety jima, even if your first impression, upon approaching (with flying fish spiraling about the vessel in deceptively calm seas), is that it resembles Skull Island from King Kong.

Let me sing the island’s praises first.

It’s a gorgeous, sub-tropical island 250km south of Tokyo, where you can indulge in beautiful weather with a completely relaxed atmosphere, especially in off-season (September) when it’s practically deserted.

There are secluded beaches where you can find Homer Simpson's favorite Japanese cuisine, fugu (puffer fish), lazing in the shallows, there’re overgrown bamboo forests, and shrines in the middle of nowhere.

The downside?

You'll need your phrasebook – nobody on the island that I met spoke even a smattering of English – and for god's sake consult the tome when checking the signs next to the natural hot springs on the beach there. There's no romaji, but apparently the kanji warns against bathing in these onsens before the tide comes in and cools the pools down; something to do with the volcanic heat that pumps into them.

I didn’t take note - namely because I'm a shade stupid, didn't think it was important, and couldn't read the text properly anyway - and jumped in... then nearly par-broiled myself. My legs ended up looking like those of a lobster, post-cooking method

Then there are the bugs.

The beaches crawl with millions of bizarro creatures that resemble a cross between prehistoric trilobites and cockroaches (see happy snap below).


If they were any bigger I would've felt like I'd been tossed onto the set of Starship Troopers or one of those crappy '50s B-movies were the bugs have been irradiated and enlarged and go round crushing and/or gorging on inane people who have no common sense. Like me.

Speciality food? Think those aforementioned flying fish, barbecue-style... which definitely sound better or at least more exotic than they actually taste.

Chewing on their flesh is akin to munching on a well-worn pair of Grecian sandals. Still, better these than eating the bugs. Or vice versa.

Metropolis Magazine's Japanese Clubbers' Almanac

Published today here in Japan (well, in Tokyo anyway) in free weekly English-language magazine Metropolis.

The lowdown on 2009 - and wishlists for 2010 - from some of Japan's top artists, producers and labels including DJ Kentaro, Fumiya Tanaka, DJ Mayuri, DJ Baku, Takkyu Ishino... oh, and my crap 2 cents' worth as well.

You can the article out online HERE.

Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat - the novel

Big news for myself this week relates not to hack muzak but hack writing - my novel is finally starting to emerge from its 18-month sub-editing purgatory!

The first 2 chapters are now online as a bit of a freebie teaser HERE; there're
some typos I noticed the other day, but otherwise pretty much tweaked into (final) submission, with huge thanks to Kristopher and Bob - the two best people I could ever imagine helping me to reign in the beast - and gratitude going out to Scott Campbell on cover art chores (the version here is the initial rough sketch Scott ran by me way back at the beginning of the editing process).

So, Tobacco-Stained Mountain Goat is finally going to be published in 2010... thank god! The people generously running with it are this way cool, semi-punk, ideologically wunderbar publisher in the U.S. called Another Sky Press and I love 'em to death.

Along with Scott, they've become mates and a virtual family over the course of the past 540-odd days of fine-tuning.

So what's the novel all about, anyway? I think my editor, awesome scribe Kristopher Young, put it way better than I ever could in a recent interview with Verbicide:

"We’ve spent... wow, at least a year at this point hammering his novel into shape. It’s a huge undertaking; he’s got this brilliant voice that only he could have, but it needs fine tuning, so that’s what we’re doing. The book itself is sort of... well, indescribable, really — noir-ish, subtly sci-fi, hard boiled, futuristic. Think Blade Runner with a touch of Sam Spade, a smattering of Orson Welles circa Touch of Evil, or better yet, The Third Man. And a shot of some good bourbon."

Anyway, enough blabbering.

If anyone here ever gets time, have a peek, download the PDF, and I hope to hell you dig... No correspondence, however, will probably be entered into as I'm just too goddamned busy finishing this baby and the off-beat travel tome!

Andrezzz