Albums I Adore (and Why You Should Too!): Gorillaz - The Now Now

I'll admit it. I'm a pirate. As soon as I heard word of leaks, I got to them pretty quickly. That's how I'm able to write the post you're seeing now this fast, after all. I'll be repenting for my sins by buying the vinyl set soon (and who wouldn't, with all the cool art inside?) Maybe even the cassette, too, because if there's one thing I love, it's novelty. Although I'd snap up a physical release for this anyway, with just how damn good this thing is. I'm getting too ahead of myself, so I'm resetting myself and getting back on track to review the new Gorillaz LP, The Now Now.

1. Humility - Summer jam of the season confirmed! This album is starting off pretty damn strong, as this track is in my top three on the album, and surely one of my top 10-15 Gorillaz tracks of all time. Let's start by saying I love the guitar on here, provided by one of only three guests George Benson. It's just so damn groovy here, and it really slides in well with this bright track. Does anyone else think that this reminds them of Ghost Ship from The Magic Whip? This song seems like it could slip in perfectly on that album. Plus this song is easily one of the group's most replayable. I've heard this track close to 30 times by now and I still can't get enough of it.  I had honestly been in one of the happiest moods I had ever been in thanks in part to this coming out. I felt like I was 2D in the video, happily skating along through life, finally being someone at ease with myself and not letting things get me too mad anymore, feeling almost invincible. If a song can make me feel like that, then there's really gotta be something to it, shouldn't there be?

2. Tranz - DO YOU LOOK LIKE ME? DO YOU FEEL LIKE ME? I see we're only two tracks in and already at the "punk" song. Looks like Murdoc may have had more of an influence on this album than he thinks. This song always gets me pumped up every time it's on and never fails to get me chanting along (however horrific I may sound in the process.) It feels almost hypnotizing, but I can't imagine why...

3. Hollywood - I thought when listening to this feature packed single live months before the album release that this was gonna feel more like several of the cuts off of Humanz, being a little faster paced and upbeat. What I got in this studio version was something a little more chilled out, and I honestly think I like this direction a little better after giving the studio version several spins. It's got a nice hook from 2D, some fun if not as polished verses from Jamie Principle, and a great verse from Snoop Dogg. It's always nice to have Snoop Dogg around it seems. Makes me wanna check out the real Hollywood for myself someday.

4. Kansas - The beginning of this one certainly reminds me of Every Planet We Reach is Dead. "I'm not gonna cry" was exactly was I was thinking listening to this whole album. It works as a pretty infectious hook by the way. This has a pretty great beat to go alongside it too! It's just so pleasant to listen to as 2D goes on this lonely journey through Kansas with a broken heart. Songs like this were exactly what I was hoping for in a purposed 2D solo album.

5.Sorcererz - This was my second favorite single off the album. I just love that Junior Dan from the self-titled album is back on bass here! It's got this super catchy chorus that's just absolutely infectious and it's gotta be the one that gets me dancing the most off this album (however horrific that may be in the process.) Did I mention that "Everybody mining their own inner vision" is such a cool lyric?

6. Idaho - When I heard the live version of this back in fall, it seemed like a somewhat straightforward country song done entirely though acoustic guitar. It was an intriging choice of song to play a few months after the very dance focused angle of Humanz and a fine and calming song in its own right, but not something I came back to much. This studio version blew that original performance out of the water. The production was what really made this song work in my view. It's a lot more atmospheric and feel almost otherworldly now in its fully finished stage. Plus I noticed how the lyrics got completely switched around for this, so sadly no Bruce Willis namedrop like in the live version.

7. Lake Zurich - It's a miracle! Somehow a transition from atmospheric country music to 80's synths works! It's the best instrumental Gorillaz has ever done, hands down! While I was a little weirded out as to exactly why any sort of instrumental got released as a single, it works as a great proof-of-concept to the album's direction towards 80's synthpop. The synths knock it out of the park on this track by the way. I love the weird mumbled chatter going on towards the middle of the song too.

8. Magic City - This one is very close to my top three on this album, like it's soooo close.  I adore the beat here, the lyrics are so precious and I love the guitar here from Noodle. I have heard that Graham Coxon playing guitar here on this track, and I wouldn't be surprised if it was. The guitars feel ripped straight out of something like Lonesome Street off Blur's The Magic Whip. I love the imagery of having a billboard on the moon too, I'm just not sure why.

9. Fire Flies - Really feeling some strong Everyday Robots vibes here in this slower, atmospheric track. It's nice that this track experiments with having different time signatures compared to the rest of the album, it really helps give this a unique sound. It's just ok during the first verse, but it really takes off by its chorus. "All you ever get from the sonnet is the court of the fallen man" is another beautiful lyric in an album in an album that seems full of them.

10. One Percent - I was floored when I heard this track for the first time. It's another track that carries with it echoes of Everyday Robots, but it's honestly better than almost anything from that album, as much as I love it. By far one of the most emotional tracks that Damon Albarn has ever written. The most impressive thing about it is how it can carry all this emotion and deliver it in just over two minutes, being the shortest of the record's eleven tracks. Everytime this song comes on brings chills all over me, bringing me the same otherworldly sensations that Idaho does on this record and tracks like Stop the Dams from D-Sides or A Soldier's Tale from The Good, the Bad and the Queen do at other stops in Damon's discography. The first time I walked away from this track, I knew that it was an absolute masterpiece and one of the best Gorillaz songs ever put on record. However, it somehow does not take my number one spot for being the best song on this album, settling for number two. Now what does?

11. Souk Eye - This may very well be the best song Gorillaz has ever made. There. Attack me in the comments all you want, throw negative karma at me on Reddit, it doesn't matter, I'll take it on! Never have I loved every facet of a Gorillaz track so much since Stop the Dams, the track that had up until this point been crowned the honor of best Gorillaz song. I love these lyrics, lines like "If loving you's a felony now, then I'm a renegade" are just so great. I absolutely adore the beat change, turning from a Latin-influenced ballad to incredible dance song all the while feeling completely natural. I love the piano clinking along throughout the ending. I love that Demon Strings seems to be back for this track, particularly for the outro. That fade out is giving me some serious Tracy Jacks from Parklife echoes and it sounds gorgeous. There couldn't have been a better pick for a closer than this, it's perfect in every way.

That ends The Now Now. At this point and time, it's equal to Demon Days as my favorite Gorillaz album, with so many highlights and gems that make up some of the best of the animated group's discography. Ace is a great replacement for Murdoc while he's out being a jailbird, he's really holding it down on these tracks. I seriously cannot thank Damon Albarn and James Ford enough for bringing this brilliant cycle of introspective tracks to fans, and to Jamie Hewlett for bringing some of his best live visuals and awesome artwork to the album and shows. I see The Now Now as what The Fall could've been with more time attached to the songs. All in all, it's Damon's best work since The Good, the Bad and the Queen all the way back in 2007, which i will be covering very soon. Well I gotta run soon, so enjoy the album! It's truly something special to me, maybe it'll be to others.

Albums I Adore (and why You Should Too!): Puffy Amiyumi - Nice.

Ever since May, I have been on a roll reviewing albums for the Circle of Friendz project, taking a look at an album from almost every single Gorillaz collaborator. Another common thread between those album is not just the animated band that they worked with on a track, but also the fact that I am very new to the vast majority of these records. When I see what album I review next, it's one that I have never heard in full or at all before I started the project. As I was working on one of these reviews, I had the idea to do another album review series, but with works I'm a lot more familiar with. While Circle of Friendz focuses on a great Unown of sorts, going into albums and even genres I wouldn't have looked much into otherwise, I wanted to do a series that focused more on charted territory. This series takes a look at the albums most near and dear to me, ones I have recognized from front to back and have become very familiarized with ever since I started taking a dive into the world of music. While I will be covering some albums that people who like Circle of Friendz may already love very soon, this time I want to go completely in another direction, not getting myself involved in any of Damon Albarn's shenanigans for a minute.

I want to talk about J-pop, more specifically Puffy Amiyumi. I had already covered them in a past article, talking about their three-season animated series on Cartoon Network from back in the mid-2000's. I had started rewatching the show last year, and after getting some ways into the series I had already grown fond of what music from the band's discography was being used. Soon enough, I had tried out their two-disc compilation album 15 and absolutely adored it. The album was close to two hours, but I didn't feel that at all. Right after that, I dove straight in to the albums themselves, first diving into a compliation album made to tie into the TV series. My next stop was Nice, the 2003 album that had come out not long before the show went into production, using a handful of tracks from this in the show itself. While the two compliation albums I had heard before were fun, light pieces of J-pop that I really got into, Nice was when I knew I had stumbled upon one of my favorite bands as the album absolutely floored me in ways japanese music hadn't before. 

On a side note before i begin, the ways reviews will be handled is a little different than from the Circle of Friendz posts. While in those reviews, albums are talked about in a more general sense, as I dive into what makes the album listenable as a whole as opposed to dissecting each individual track, Albums I Adore will go a little more in-depth. These will be handled as track-by-track looks into just how great these records are, focusing in more on every track's strengths. The numerical scores will be ditched as well for these. Now with all the intro stuff out of the way, let's dive into why Nice is one of the nicest albums I've heard.

1. Planet Tokyo/Akai Buranko - This album goes on a powerful start, and I definitely see why this got an English version. This song of any of Puffy's tracks that weren't used as theme songs seems to be the one people remember, although I think Cartoon Network using the song constantly when advertising the show helps out with this. It also helps that this song gets you SO PUMPED UP! It's got a catchy hook and there's some of my favorite guitar work on the album. I don't think there could've been a better opener choice than this!

2. Tokyo Nights - I keep getting the I'M IN LOVE part stuck in my head and try to keep myself from yelling out the hook whenever it comes on. It's a very nice piece of electropop that won't leave your head for weeks. You'll notice that lots of tracks all across this record have some pretty infectious hooks, and this could be one of the best examples.

3. Angel of Love - The weirdest thing about this track is that sometimes I honestly forget this one was on here. Usually when people say that, that's for tracks that are super boring or forgettable. This one isn't boring at all though! It's one of the slower tracks on here, something you turn on just to chill out. It's very relaxing in that way! I love the horns during the instrumental break too, they really make this song feel like something off a Round Table ft. Nino record.

4. Sayonara - This was in the top 3 tracks on the record for me when I first discovered the record, until I listened to the final tracks of the Japanese release some time later. It still stands as an album highlight for me, however. This is a great piece of guitar pop about leaving behind a friend you love as you set off on a new path for yourself. The marimba really adds to the song too.

5. Invisible Tomorrow - Now the album steers towards more energetic pop rock again like on the first track. This has to be one of the best tracks to sing (or scream) along to on this entire album. There's also three different versions of the track for different releases. The one on Nice, no matter what country you got the album from is the original Japanese. Then there's an English version that's on the Scooby Doo 2 (of all things!) soundtrack and on the Hi Hi Puffy AmiYumi album tying into the TV show. There's another english version of the track on the mini-album 59 that came out the year after this. All three of these tracks go in very different directions lyrically. Invisible Tomorrow is about heading out towards an uncertain tomorrow, never looking back. Friends Forever is basically what the title says, a song about friends staying together no matter how tough things get. So Long Zero describes a breakup and leaving someone you didn't love anymore. Of these, So Long Zero is DEFINITELY the weakest of the three, the vocals feel unusually weak compared to the rest of the discography. It felt very unsure and kinda uneven. Invisible Tomorrow and Friends Forever are on equal footing in vocal delivery, but I like Invisible Tomorrow the best. It's got the strongest message of the three.

6. Thank You - Yumi wrote and sings solo on this charming little piece. This track is about having boys and girls coming together to talk with each other and connect as people and it's so charming and adorable and I really like it. I had been watching through the series when I heard this one and it was really funny to think that Yumi had made this one when what I had in mind was less her real-life personality and musical style, which I hadn't done much research into then, and more the Yumi of the animated series, who I expected to be behind more rock focused tracks like Planet Tokyo.

7. Long Beach Nightmare - Right after a Yumi-driven track comes an Ami driven one. This one is a pretty fun summer jam (and I will be talking lots about summer jams in my next post!) It feels so breezy and like I'm hearing this playing out from a portable radio on the beach (you know, if I was a beach person...) This is another fun sing along of the several on this album.

8. Your Love is a Drug -  Love is an addicting thing for sure, and I can certainly attest to this. This song feels so damn accurate and close to home describing the way I felt the first time I fell in love back in middle school. When I did, I felt like I was on cloud nine whenever I saw her, and just how much i felt like my life turned around after I started talking to her. This song totally captured that special time in my life in the form of a fun rock song, and one of the duo's most relatable tracks in my eyes. I also see this track alongside Planet Tokyo as being an attempt to get on pop radio and it honestly wouldn't stick out too much I think.

9. K2G - My second favorite song on the album. For the readers who remember Teen Titans, this song played in Mad Mod's introduction episode during season 1. When I watched that season a few years ago, I thought the episode itself was terrible and almost none of the jokes landing. What I did like though was the montage that used this as background music. I loved the music in that sequence and I really appreciated having this track on here, really gave the episode a bright spot. It's a fast, upbeat and super catchy ska track (First my kablam post, then the selecter and now this? I seem to be attracted to ska lately.) A great track to bounce around the house to.

10. Shiawase (Happiness) - My third favorite song on the album. This is a soothing, lowkey acoustic track. It feels like I'm hearing Ami and Yumi gathered around a campfire singing this to each other late at night before heading off to bed. It's a good way to settle things down after K2G and honestly would've been a great comforting way to end off this great album. Everything about the track, from the guitar to the harmonies, feel very comforting to me. It's happiness in song form!

Here's where things diverge. I alluded to earlier about different versions of this album. There's one track listing for the Japanese release and a different one for the North American version. The Japanese version starts with a Japanese language version of the opening track, with an English version for the NA release. The tracks afterward carry on just the same until after track 10, Shiawase. The NA version may have had different tracks because the last two tracks of the Japan release were tracks that had been released on the U.S. exclusive compilation album An Illustrated History just a year before. Let's dive right into the NA version before doing the Japan version.

11a. Urei - This track feels like this should've been a background song during one of the fights in Teen Titans. Heck, this song actually went along great with the fights whenever I read the comics based on the original cartoon. It's got a powerful hook and could go great with whatever fight it gets paired with. This one is a NA exclusive, but is only in Japanese, for some odd reason.

12a. Teen Titans Theme - T-E-E-N T-I-T-A-N-S TEEN TITANS LET'S GO!! ANYONE born after the early 90's who watched Cartoon Network could probably recite this bad boy from heart. This one honestly took a bit to grow on me but damn if this isn't one of the best cartoon theme songs out there. It's catchy as hell and that chant is damn near hypnotizing!  I totally get why this song was on Nice, the series had just started around that time, and it was a perfect opportunity to advertise.

Now let's move onto the softer Japanese tracks

11b. Atarashii Hibi - This is a sweet little track about a woman buried in stress from relationships and works, never able to have much fun with her life. She dreams of escaping this life just for a little while, wanting to go on a trip without anyone knowing or going on a treasure hunt. This one doesn't go for a radio-friendly chorus in the way that the other tracks do, a little odd but it's so fun that it works.

12b. Tomodachi (Friends) - I'M HERE, I'VE BEEN WAITING FOR THIS! Not only is this my favorite song off this album, it's also my favorite Puffy Amiyumi track and one of my absolute favorite Japanese songs in general. First off, just the name makes it feel like this would've been a great ending song for the cartoon. Second, This song is the definition of comfy. It's so calming and I will admit that I teared up just a little when I saw the live performance. God, this song is not just a great little summary of this album's strengths, but also just what I love about this group. It's the ultimate feel good song for the ultimate feel-good album.

Nice is a charming little album that's packed with great moments. It's also extremely consistent in ways even other Puffy albums weren't, it's all super good! This is a pinnacle of 2000's J-Pop in my eyes, and I can't thank Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura enough for this gem of a record. Here's to hoping that a new album is down the pipeline soon, but I'd be just fine with the single-focused angle that they have gone in the last six years. Anything to keep them making music.

Next on the Albums I Adore, it's gonna be a surprise! Let's just say that it's a great summer album...

Bye Bye Boo~

Circle of Friendz: Pauline Black/The Selecter - Celebrate the Bullet

Before I begin, I will be reviewing the Now Now very soon here. Leaks have come and BOY I have some things to talk about! Aiming for a June 29 release date for that post. See you then, and let's get to the review.

Who is this? Pauline Black, lead singer of 80's two-tone ska group The Selecter
What did she do for Gorillaz? Sang on an alternate version of Charger found on the Super Deluxe version of Humanz (which unless you want to shell out hundreds of dollars for the vinyl set, can only be found through less official means.)
When did this come out? February 27, 1981
Where was this recorded? Horizon Studios
Why should you bother? So far, I have reviewed five different albums for this so-called Circle of Friendz project. In each of these five album reviews, I had talked in very general statements about the music involved and how they made me feel. When I made those past reviews, I had focused much more on the instrumentals and how the lyrics can blend in with them. With this particular album however, it was the opposite to an extent. I wasn't very concerned with the instrumentals on this album as much as I was the lyricism found within. That's not to say that the instrumentals were unimportant or bland. The darker take on ska presented here works wonders with its lyrics (I guess you could call it Dark Pop?) I was just utterly fascinated by the songwriting here. I believe that a few, if not all, of this LP takes on some kind of narrative. While I only started thinking about a narrative around track seven, I could see elements of one looking back at my notes from the start of the record. First, let's set the scene.

The setting is sometime on late 70's-early 80's Britain. Britain is going a recession, and naturally people feel... uneased with themselves. They're growing poor and it feels like the whole world is crashing down around them. It's here where we find our protagonist. They're a somewhat typical person, devoting their life to work and their relationship. On the news, however, they see stories of financial crisis, of homes getting taken away, and maybe they're wondering if or when the very same could happen to them. Let's just say that it did. Track one opens up with a song about a failing relationship, (Who Likes) Facing Situations. The relationship is one frought with communication problems or maybe just a lack of sympathy for what the other is going through. The next track, Deep Water, was originally a reflection from Pauline about her frustrations on an American tour, but I saw it as a fictional character study. This song dives in deep, alongside the third track Red Reflections, into a person finding themselves in a personal hell. Their house has been sold off, a relationship has been shattered and they find that they have dark thoughts inside in a moment of self-reflection. The next track, "Tell Me What's Wrong," could be the person trying to talk to a friend they go back years with before avoiding them and asking why they were abandoned. This encounter sets off a further spiral towards madness. The next track could be seen as an aftermath of this meeting. With many relationships broken and being in serious financial trouble, the protagonist goes insane. The next track involves the protagonist making a bombscare (it's literally called Bombscare!), possibly as a way to stick it to the former friend that they talked to. Washed Up and Left for Dead feels like this character's entire situation summed up, as "nobody told him he was just not wanted," one left out by friends and never fitting in, feeling washed away by the world but hungry for fame. After getting jumped by thugs and nobody helps out, he's left out in the cold at night, able to reflect on how everything has gone to shit, signaling a change in themselves towards anger. They're fed up, and ready to burst. Side one ends there.

Side two picks up on an explosive start, the title track single describing just how the anger felt throughout the album manifests itself. The protagonist turns violent, and the track acts as a warning from Pauline to the protagonist that using violence won't bring back everything that they had lost, their money, their friends or their relationship.  Selling Out Your Future shows the protagonist going into hiding after committing the crime, complacent in the fact that they're selling out their future for a peace that may never come. The narrative I find with this album seems to come to a pause with the next track, Cool Blue Lady... or does it? The character in that track is one who gives others everything despite never getting it in return, one who's shut out by society. This isn't exactly unlike our main character, and in fact I read Their Dream Goes On as an intersection of these two characters done from the main's perspective. I took the line "I look at you turn electric blue" as The Cool Blue Lady and the main character see each other on a street corner, if only for a quick glance. Maybe they could have found things to share in common, finding some strength in each other. The final track doesn't add to either character's narrative, but instead focusing on the world those two live in. Bristol and Miami tells a tale of two places on entirely different parts of the globe suffering the same thing. Both are in states of ruin, the people within them turning to music, possibly as a means of escape. To "listen to the echo of the street" is to hear out about the troubles people are facing, and to go help them at a time for need. Even if they're from different countries, they still go through many of the same struggles.

Celebrate the Bullet is a great representation of the troubles found not just within members of The Selecter themselves, but also within the world at large. It's got some fascinating stories to tell, with a moving way of doing so. I encourage anyone to give this disc a spin or six, just to see what they can take from it. It's just as relevant now as it was back in 1981, in my eyes.

I give Celebrate the Bullet an 8.5/10.

Talking Too Much About Cartoons: Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi

Welcome back to the next installment of Talking Too Much About Cartoons, where I... well you get the idea from the title I think, so let's get to it! I promise this won't be as long as the last one of these I did.

In 2004, Cartoon Network was going through a major transformation. The most noticeable one was in its advertising. The channel went through its second major rebrand in the 12 years since the channel launched. Gone were the days of the "powerhouse" bumpers, for something more elaborate. Cartoon Network started the "CN City" era, having every commercial and coming up next bumper be intertwined within an experimental new concept. In these, all of the original shows on the network all crossed over and seemed to live within the same city, with Miguzi happening underwater and Toonami in space as it always had been. Characters from completely different series interact with each other inbetween shows in an attempt to bring all of the channel's shows together and have more unified advertising and marketing compared to the competitors. Even the logo had changed after 12 years!

Another, maybe less obvious change was in its schedule. By this time, older Hanna Barbara cartoons had been pushed to the wayside, off the channel entirely and off to the spin-off channel Boomerang. Even the first of the original shows, the "Cartoon Cartoons," had been pushed to early mornings. Instead, CN had looked towards newer originals alongside acquired works, mostly anime. Anime had dominated the channel during the early 2000's, playing every afternoon on Toonami, alongside early Saturday mornings and late on Saturday nights. This transitioned to Miguzi as well, which played anime alongside cartoons that took lots of inspiration from anime, like Teen Titans and Code Lyoko. So to say the least, Cartoon Network, for a time was infatuated with Japanese culture at the time in the midst of the ongoing anime boom. In some ways, it only felt natural that the subject of today's post would happen the way the network was moving.

I mentioned Teen Titans a few sentences ago, and for good reason. When Teen Titans started in 2003, the show had blown up in the ratings and did very well for Cartoon Network. But one popular aspect of the series in particular was its theme song. Since Teen Titans tried differentiating itself from the rest of the DC Animated Universe by taking animation cues from anime, they also tried keeping up its "anime-ness" by actually getting a Japanese pop group for its theme song. This is where many American viewers had first heard of Puffy Amiyumi. Ami and Yumi had been popular in Japan since the mid 90's, and Teen Titans having them sing the opening may have been what swayed Cartoon Network to pick up a series based around them. Around the same time as the first season of Teen Titans was ready to release, Sam Register, then Vice President of the channel, pitched a show about the J-Pop duo. Renegade Animation, coming off of two failed pilots for CN and having only worked on commercials and shorts beforehand, had a stroke of luck when the network picked up the pilot for what would be Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi. The pilot itself definitely felt different from the final product in a few ways.

The main girls themselves got some different designs, Ami's look especially. The different artstyle certainly gave off more of a UPA vibe than the final designs did, a look similar to Gerald McBoingBoing (which also happened to get on Cartoon Network two years later.) Instead of nabbing dedicated cartoon voice actors like the final product did, this pilot got two Japanese women to voice them instead. The culture shock element of the show ended up being scrapped too. Honestly, the animation is somewhat smoother than in the final product, and my favorite part of the pilot overall (other than that brief use of Tomodachi off of An Illustrated History at the end of the pilot, although I'll be talking more about how good that song is very soon.) Comedywise, the pilot doesn't seem that different from the main show itself, I enjoyed it about as much as the series.

The final product is about animated versions of Ami Onuki and Yumi Yoshimura and the different adventures they go on inbetween gigs on a seemingly endless world tour taking them to practically every part of the world with a stage, alongside their penny pinching manager Kaz along for the ride. The dynamic duo face off against insane fans, talent sucking vampires, former band members wanting to take over and just about whatever else the writing staff has in mind. Pink-haired Ami is the typical optimistic girly girl, loving shopping and pink things and seems to fluctuate between drums and guitar in addition to vocals, just depending on the episode. Yumi is more of a sarcastic punk rock type, dressed up in purple. As you might expect, the two contrasting personalities clash pretty often in the show. So about the show itself? It's pretty ok. The comedy can be kinda hit or miss earlier on, as the staff is figuring out what they can do with this show. The dialogue can get hampered at points by some kinda weird voice direction, making them miss their mark. More often than not, thankfully, the direction works! The voice actors they got for Ami and Yumi are great. Ami was voiced by Janice Kawaye, who voiced Jenny-XJ9 in My Life as a Teenage Robot. Yumi has the voice talent of Grey DeLisle, who did Frankie Foster in Foster's Home and TONS of other characters for cartoons. Good on this show for getting them, because they really play a big part in making these characters feel memorable and endearing. They both do great jobs despite the occasional slip-up, and really fit the characters well.

Although I can't deny there are two more parts in the equation that make this show stand on its own as a pretty alright entry in Cartoon Network's original lineup. It's cute as hell and there's J-Pop involved. As you readers will soon find out and what friends I've had already know is that I'm a simple man. You don't need a ton to win me over. A show that combined two of the cutest character designs in western animation mixed with a genre I love and some great voice acting and decent comedy to go alongside it and I was totally sold. There are many moments in the show that use Puffy Amiyumi's music, mostly during montages. It runs the gambit of the group's career, from their debut AmiYumi to the then latest album at the time of the pilot, Nice. They also played songs in small music videos occasionally in the first two seasons. I really liked this aspect because it got me to dive into the discography of the real band, and it was some of the most fun I had listening to music this year!

Season 3 had downscaled two elements I really liked about the show. The music had showed up much less, as the short videos disappeared and less episodes used tracks. Another aspect that seemed to disappear later on were the live action segments. For much of the show, the real life Ami and Yumi showed up to do skits at the beginning (and in season 1, at the end) of each episode. They felt a little awkward at first, especially with how disconnected they were with the segments, but they really began to grow on me, kinda like the show itself did in a way. It helps that the real band were super cute like their animated counterparts were. After Cartoon Network stopped broadcasting the show, the latter half of season 3 dropped these segments entirely. At first, I had thought that it was a mistake on the part of the network that the last five or so english episodes got captured from, but that got proven wrong because the final episode had a live action bit in the upload which was a montage of Ami and Yumi having fun on the set over the seasons. Maybe they thought that the videos and live action were too distracting and got in the way of the show? The tradeoff seemed to be that season 3 was all in all the funniest of the seasons. The writers seemed to realize that the show wasn't gonna last long and reveled in that by doing more fourth wall breaking gags and bringing back characters as opposed to just whatever the new setting of the week was, even if there was lots of that in season 3. My biggest wish was that Julie from the final episode had been used more than once, her design is just as cute as Ami and Yumi's and the idea of her constantly trying to destroy the band sounds like it could've been pretty funny to see in new ways.

I saw this show a little bit when I was younger, mainly on Cartoon Network Fridays, as it didn't have tons of reruns compared to the other originals on the channel. I was ok with it, but it didn't leave much of a lasting impression on me. On a rewatch, Hi Hi Puffy Amiyumi was fun. A lot of fun. Like, more than I was expecting going in. The songs are great, the plots are fun if maybe generic at times with almost sickeningly sweet endings, the comedy works and Ami and Yumi are a great pair. Cartoon Network seemed to like it for a while as well, as it became a mini marketing machine at the time. Several online and console games, an complilation album, a decent bit of advertising and even a thanksgiving day parade float! Maybe it was not the best Cartoon Network had at the time, in an era of modern classics like Megas XLR or 80% of the Toonami lineup at the time, but I certainly had a good time with it. This could've only happened at the exact time in the exact place on the exact channel it was on. So maybe it's a good time capsule into what was happening with animation during the mid 2000's. I'm a sucker for time capsules, anyway.

Thanks for reading this word vomit all the way through. This didn't have the sort of personal narrative that my last cartoon review did, but I just finished a rewatch of the show and I just had to talk about it. I wanna bring up the music one last time, because the first post of a new segment I'm calling Albums I Adore (and Why You Should Too!) will be covering the antics of the real band behind these colorful characters, covering my personal favorite album of theirs, Nice. This will be after the next Circle of Friendz. Hope you read it.


BYE BYE BOO~!!! sorry i couldn't help myself.

Circle of Friendz: Sweetie Irie - DJ of the Future

Yahallo! So somehow it's been the longest amount of time between Circle of Friendz posts (one week.) Well I did say that there isn't a schedule (at least I'm pretty sure I did...) However, I wanna try to make these posts somewhat frequent.  Don't wanna seem like I'm slacking after all, and there is lots of material to get through with this project. There's just one more thing before I start. That new Gorillaz track, Fire Flies? It's great. Like, really great! I'm a big fan of Everyday Robots, Damon's solo album, and the track really gave me some Everyday Robots vibes, or maybe like a tidied-up version of a track meant for The Fall. At the same time, I could also see it going on the latest Blur album, The Magic Whip, as it could fit well alongside tracks like Pyongyang. Now with that gushing out of the way, let's get on to the review, taking a look at another less-known and discussed collaborator with Gorillaz.

Who is this? Sweetie Irie
What did he do for Gorillaz? Rapped over the Ed Case remix of Clint Eastwood on the self-titled record, as well as on the rare track Dub Dumb, found on the PS2 game MTV Music Generator 2.
When did this come out? Sometime in 1991, haven't found much info about an exact date.
Where was this recorded? Pavilion Studios and Easy Street Studios
Why should you care? It's a pretty ok summer album, so it's the perfect time to reviewing this! It's got some bright, summery instrumentals to it to listen if you just wanna chill out a bit. However, Sweetie Irie's vocals were a little rough on the ears for me at first, even if I started to settle with them somewhat quickly. Speaking of quick, this record is a pretty quick listen, or at least it felt that way. It's ten tracks long, but it felt like maybe 5. I really dig the piano on Winery, even if I didn't care that much about the rest of the track. My favorite tracks come towards the album's end, with Sweetie's best deliveries on Good Understanding and having a nice contrast to Aswad on the album closer On and On. Speaking of that, the guests all do a pretty good job on this one. They all seem to bounce off of Irie well here, the aforementioned Aswad and and the guest on the track Call Me being the most notable among them. All in all, it ended up being an OK listen, even if I won't be particularly reaching for this much in the future or slotting it into playlists.

I give Sweetie Irie's DJ of the Future a 6.5/10.



P.S. For those still reading, I have another new "segment" of the blog I'm adding in soon, alongside my other new segment Talking Too Much About Cartoons, which you can check out here. I'm doing another music related series of posts called Albums I Adore (and why you should too!) AIAWYST is gonna be about, as the long title says, about the albums that are near and dear to me, those 9's and perfect 10's that I keep reaching to listen to often. It's about the albums I can't stop thinking about, those whose songs have been buried deep into my brain and cannot leave, making a great impression on me. The way the reviews are structured will be somewhat different to Circle of Friendz as well, but will have some albums very related to Gorillaz and its close friends along the way, alongside whatever extra unrelated goodies I wanna share (spoiler: expect lots of J-pop.) It's a series I'm already feeling really good about, and I haven't even written any of the things yet! My first post in this series will come directly after my next TTMAC, which I will keep secret. I will say to think of the first album post as almost a companion piece to the next cartoon post I will be doing. Be on the lookout for both those segments, and of course more Circle of Friendz and anything else that comes to mind soon!

Talking Too Much About Cartoons #1: Kablam!

Yesterday, a light bulb flashed in my head. It was 6 in the morning, and like any responsible adult at 6 in the morning, I was watching cartoons with the sun just starting to peek out the window and everyone else passed out asleep. More specifically, I was watching this one show called Kablam. Watching the second episode of it, the memories came flooding back to me like some animated tidal wave. The most important part of this little experience was not just of memories of watching some old TV show, but looking back on the experiences that shaped a large part of my youth. After I saw that episode again, I knew I wanted to talk about this show and my experiences with it, especially since I have in my opinion the perfect place to finally share these thoughts. Now assume the crash position, hold on tight, and take a deep breath as we travel back fourteen years in the past!

The year was 2004. I was only four years old. It was a Saturday morning and me, my mom and my brother were gathered around the TV scrolling through channels when I stumbled upon Nicktoons. My mom had just switched from cable to satellite, so I had never seen this channel before. The first thing I saw was the ending credits to some show called Kablam. I was immediately excited, not because i had already been a fan of the show, but because I had never even seen what a "Kablam" was before. As I would find out a few years later, Kablam was on its final legs by the year I was born, and was quietly hurried off air by Nickelodeon before the launch of the Nicktoon network, so I had not been able to watch this show before. Right after those closing credits was another episode, and as my curiosity for this unknown oddity was peaked, i naturally tuned in. Immediately, I had fallen in love with this show and every single part about it. The catchy ska soundtrack (remember when that was a thing?), the rapid bouncing around between the different artstyles, just how funny each segment and the hosts to tie all of them together were. All of these hooked me right away and I knew I wanted to see more. And see more I did, as I came back to this Nicktoons channel often to watch Kablam. This didn't last long however, as by around 2005 my family switched back to cable so I lost Nicktoons. By the time my cable provider picked up Nicktoons, it had made its rebrand as Nicktoons Network and Kablam had vanished.

"OK, hold on," you might be asking. "So what actually is Kablam?" For all my younger readers and certainly some of my older ones, Kablam was a Nicktoon from 1996 that was able to get through four seasons on Nickelodeon before getting cancelled in 2000. Unlike any other animated show on the channel at the time, which all worked as more traditional sitcoms split into two 11-minute segments, Kablam had 22-minute episodes that bounced around several different animated shorts, kinda like a polished up version of sister channel MTV's Liquid Television for a younger audience. While certain shorts came and went fast, particularly towards the last two seasons, the majority of the episodes had a few staple shorts that served as the faces of the show. One was "Action League Now," a superhero parody (a perfect choice for this show considering the basic concept around it) about a group of bumbling superheroes that are incredibly incompetent at their jobs of saving the world from evil, with powers that don't actually end up being all that useful (one just has the power to melt!) The entire short is animated through live action footage of action figures done in stop-motion. This became the most popular of the shorts on Kablam, spawning an eleven-episode compilation series after Kablam left the airwaves. It also happened to be one of my favorites, appreciating as I got older just how the series took advantage of its status of being made entirely with action figures by being one of Nickelodeon's most violent shows. Just about every episode, body parts can come flying off or get crushed into things and the censors are completely A-OK with this because it's being filmed with action figures and not real people or even animated characters. Looking back, it was absolute genius! Kablam, however, is not one for sticking to one style, as the shorts go between many different art styles and mediums of animation. Shorts like Sniz and Fondue, about two talking ferrets living together, are done in traditional cel animation, blending in well with the other Nicktoons on the channel.

Other shorts went in even more fascinating directions. Prometheus and Bob, a short about an alien teaching a caveman the wonders of modern technology was made through claymation. The hyperactive Life with Loopy, about the surreal adventures of a five-year-old girl, has my personal favorite look of all of Kablam's shorts. The bodies of the characters are puppets animated through stop-motion, with heads made out of metal and metallic facial features. The show also mixed this unique style with heavy use of real actors and live action settings for the characters to interact with. There was nothing else like it on television, making it one of the most fascinating visual experiences on the show. Of course, while all the shorts by themselves are great, my favorite part of Kablam was how these shorts were tied into each other. Now I can finally talk about the basic concept of Kablam, as it took its sketch comedy premise a step further than Liquid Television before and Oh Yeah Cartoons (also from Nick!) did after. Kablam was a show "where comics and cartoons collide" and did it through their hosts, Henry and June. Henry and June, as well as their TV crew exist inside a comic book and "turn the pages" to transition to the other shorts, acting as hosts to the show (and for a little while, hosts for Nickelodeon in general!) This was my absolute favorite part of the show and was the part of Kablam that really drew me into the show more than any other part. The hosts had great chemistry with each other, tying the shorts up with a comic book format was absolutely genius, I loved the rough art style, and most importantly they were absolutely hilarious. I swear I laughed at Henry and June more than I have any other cartoon (even if the first few Spongebob seasons come dangerously close.)

I think what made Kablam entertaining to me relied on two fronts. One was just how hilarious and well crafted the show itself was in its writing and animation styles. Another front was the hunt of it all. Around 2007, as I had started increasing my internet usage thanks to a in hindsight dangerous mixture of parental unsupervision, not having better things to do and access to my oldest sister's computer while she was doing important things in the real world, I had stumbled upon through google searches a site called Guba. Guba was kinda like Youtube except not nearly as many people posted on it, so copyrighted programs ran rampant (like Dailymotion!) It's been long dead for years, but while it was up, there were exactly nineteen episodes uploaded on the site of Kablam, taken from DVR rips of the Nicktoons run. When I found these, i was absolutely ecstatic! I watched and rewatched these episodes all the time and became absolutely obsessed. This time, I fell in love even harder than I did when I found it the first time. I played the two online games of the show a lot and successfully convinced my mom to buy a set of the Action League Now kids meal toys. It had become my favorite TV show by far, and the one time it reran in 2007 on Nicktoons Network on Thanksgiving weekend felt like a godsend, a message from the animation gods saying that they were listening to me and knew what i wanted, even if it was only for just the one episode. I had never seen the episode before, which made it even better. By then, I knew I had wanted more.

When Kablam was still in reruns, not every episode played in reruns, thanks to certain shorts having rights issues. Even of the ones that did play, certain ones were played in the rotation much more than others. The more commonly run episodes were the ones uploaded to Guba and the internet at large. However, into the start of the tens, diligent people were looking to make the number of episodes found max itself out. Unlike many of the other cartoons on at the time, Kablam did not get a home video release, possibly because of reobtaining the many different rights for shorts for home video releases. This, naturally, made the hunt for kablam episodes that much harder. Adding to that its limited run on the air for reruns compared to its peers, which made the search for the rest of its fourtyeight episodes so much more tantalizing. I had started joining my first internet forums just to be able to find downloads of new (for me) episodes as members made progress looking through tapes and recording what they could when the show played on international TV. While I liked that more episodes were uncovered on the first forum I was on, classicnickshows, the other forum I joined wasn't to find episodes, exactly. It was called, simply enough, the Kablam Forum. This was the one I spent much more time on. I was amazed that there were more people who not just remembered what this old show was, but still cared enough about it to form a community about it. Understandably given how old the show was, I could never find people IRL who knew what it was outside of my family (my older sisters loved it when it was on!) so it was such an exciting experience to talk to others about it online. People as along for the ride of finding episodes as I was, talking about their experiences with the show, it was cool! The crowd was a lot older than I was, ranging from high schoolers to people in their early twenties, but I never felt intimidated by them. They didn't look down on me either for being probably the youngest member of the board. Despite the age difference, i felt like I could be on totally equal footing with the rest, because what mattered in the end was that everyone loved the same things. I guess that's the power of the internet!

By the time I made it to middle school, most of the series had been found, and I had been watching episodes all the time. In part because of Kablam, I had gotten super into all the 90's nickelodeon shows that I could get my hands on through DVDs, VHS, shoddy video uploads from old tapes, and of course through reruns. The 90's are All That, a block for the Teennick channel had started up, and of course I was all over it. I was a total night owl back then so I was fine with staying up at midnight. I had hoped and prayed for Kablam reruns, but alas they did not come despite referencing the show in advertising. However, time was starting to pass. The classicnickshows forum had started slowing down. The Kablam forum had new membership and posts drag to a crawl. Eventually, the admin (PrincessJune was her name, I think?) had decided to shut down the Kablam Forum for those reasons, as well as to focus on other forums for older cartoons that had also died off. I had been one of the more active members who was trying to keep the forum alive, but even I knew that the time for everyone to move on was fast approaching. Soon, I had slowed down on watching cartoons in general, not just Kablam, as i refocused my viewing habits towards anime. I had thought that those last few leftovers of unfound episodes would never see the light of day again. I would revisit episodes occasionally, thanks to a streaming channel called Nick Reboot which had the show on its randomized rotation, but didn't seek to revisit the show much outside of those terms. Then I was taken for a spin.

2015 had become an interesting time to be a Kablam fan. First, A lost half-hour valentine's day special for one of the shorts, The Offbeats, was uncovered the year before. I had seen a commercial for it online years before, but I hadn't been particularly looking for the special in comparison to more Kablam episodes, so the finding came as a nice surprise to watch on Valentines Day the year after its discovery. I was late to the party on this finding. The me of just a few years before would have been chomping at the bit for this, seeing it drop as soon as the file had been uploaded. What was much more surprising was when early in the year, a user from the Lost Media Wiki uploaded another half-hour Kablam-related special, one that I had been hoping to see for years. They found the exclusive airing of "The Henry and June Show," a primetime special that took the hosts of their show out of their element by having segements revolving entirely around them without wrapping around the many different shorts. It had been said to have been a pilot for a potential series that would have played alongside Kablam during its run or possibly to replace it. Sadly, it never went anywhere. Nickelodeon never bothered playing the special again after that, so it got lost and buried. Thanks to this find, I did start to watch Kablam a bit more often inbetween anime sessions, starting to pay more attention to wait could be found. There were two more episodes that had yet to be found, and I had been hoping that someone, somewhere could find these. I still believed that these last two discoveries were just flukes, and didn't get my hopes up. Until 2016 happened. It was one ordinary morning, watching Nick Reboot, waiting for kablam to come out. I was ready for my half hour dose of nostalgia, when I had noticed something odd. After the intro, i did not recognize the Henry and June bit at all. "This is impossible!," I thought. I knew every found episode like the back of my hand. Before I had time to dwell on that thought, I had frozen up when I realized just what exactly was going on. This had been a newly found episode. I felt a sense of excitement and discovery (even if I didn't smell like discovery) I hadn't felt in several years. To my shock, after looking the show up again through Google, I had discovered that Mark Marek had uploaded almost the entire series from his personal Betamax tapes of the show to his personal website. My ten-year-old self would have killed for this type of access. After watching the other "lost" episode, my childhood felt like it had closure, as pathetic as that sounds. The one thing I took away from watching that last episode was just how I had developed between when I started following this show in kindergarden to the place I was in then. Even though so much about the world around me and myself changed since I started watching Kablam, I knew that one thing was for certain. My love for animation, the love firmly planted by Kablam, never left.

Hello and welcome to a new segment of my blog, where I take a look at the animation from the west that means a lot to me. Now I will say that the upcoming posts for this will not be as long as this was, but this should give you an idea about what to expect here. While the focus will mainly be on cartoons from the 90's-mid 2000's, there is the chance of more recent shows getting talked about as well. I want to use this series as a way of meditating about animation and how its affected my life, in ways both big and mostly small. So join us again next time, same Kablam time, same Kablam network!

Circle of Friendz: Snoop Dogg - Doggystyle

Man, the last few days have been fun for Gorillaz. The new chat bot to talk to Murdoc has been hilarious to play around with, seeing his many different well-written responses. His answer when people ask about Ace Gangreen would be very interesting to delve into, since the two of them apparently go way back (maybe this could be in the TV show?) Little fun things like that make the Gorillaz project feel more immersive for its listeners, especially with the Alexa add-on featuring his voice actor. The musical side of the project has had some nice discoveries too. The summer festival tour has begun, and with it has come several new tracks from The Now Now. Sorcererz, Tranz, Magic City and Souk Eye all got revealed, and I heard them from the livestream of the Rock am Ring show. However, I will not review these tracks until the studio versions release, but I'm very excited to talk about them soon. Speaking of the new album, I must have gotten real lucky here, with the subject of this post being one of three guests on The Now Now. As with last time, I'll be doing the 5W format, like with the Bashy.com review.

Who did this? Snoop Dogg

What did he do for Gorillaz? Welcome to the World of the Plastic Beach, a live rendition of Clint Eastwood, and the upcoming track Hollywood. Gorillaz also gave back to Snoop by appearing on Sumthing Like This Night on his album Doggumentary.

When did this come out? November 23, 1993

Where was this recorded? In Los Angeles and North Hollywood, recording at The Village Recorder, Complex Studios and Larrabee Studios North and West.

Why should you listen to this? Snoop Dogg, Snoop Doggy Dogg, Calvin, Snoop, Snoop Lion. Whatever you call Snoop Dogg, you have certainly seen him on TV or heard one of his hit singles on the radio at some point. When I just started getting into Gorillaz and music in general, he was one of the few names I had recognized beforehand. With this debut album, I can certainly tell why he became one of the most iconic figures in rap music, even extending way beyond rap. First off, Snoop Dogg makes some very entertaining verses here, spinning tales of sex, violence, weed and gangs, doing it in a way that can put a smile on people's faces with his iconic smooth deliveries The next reason is definitely the hooks. The hooks here are all great and feel specially engineered to get into your mind and make damn sure that they and the man behind them stays in the public mind. Gin & Juice, Serial Killa, Who am I, lots of these tracks have killer hooks attached to them. The beats and production are pretty great, these classic groovy beats headed up by Dr. Dre, coming off an album called The Chronic where Snoop had been a major guest on. This teamup definitely bounces off each together well on these tracks, Snoop's lyrics being well fit for Dre's style of G-funk beats. This is another album on the Circle of Friendz with a revolving door of guests, and all of them lay out some great deliveries here that are utilized well with Snoop. My personal favorite of the bunch here has gotta be Lady of Rage, she did awesome on For All My Niggaz and Bitches! All the tracks here are pretty good, although I'm still not quite sure if Pump Pump was the strongest way to end the album on. It's a decent track, but it isn't as memorable as the work that comes before it. Another problem is found not quite with the album itself, but later pressings of it. The track Gz Up, Hoes Down is taken off of later pressings and not available on streaming services because of clearence issues. It's a damn shame because it's one of my favorite tracks on the album. Even if it falls short time-wise, it certainly doesn't fall short musically, because the sampling is great and the track is just sooo smooth.

Snoop Dogg's debut outing is an absolute classic hip-hop album, filled with tracks that have defined rap for the decades to come. Dre and Snoop have a powerful relationship here that I can't hate. I give it an 8/10.

I know lately that I have been pretty heavy on the music posts lately. This is mainly because the Circle of Friendz project is one that will take me a while, as i still have 70 something albums to get through. However, there will be some anime posting down the line soon. Spring is ending and summer is starting, so it's definitely a good time to start planning some end of season thoughts about the spring anime season. This will still take a few weeks however, since nothing has finished just yet. Expect those and some other fun surprises on here soon!