After a two month break because of the holidays, PechaKucha Night in Tokyo is back on tonight (January 26) at SuperDeluxe for Vol. 79. It kicks off as always at 20:20, and feel free to come and say hi — I’m always sitting at the very front, next to Mark and Astrid (the MCs). Here’s the list of presenters.

A new episode of the Codex (16) is up, and you can download it and check out the playlist here. And it looks like we’ll be recording a new episode of Radio OK Fred this week, so stay tuned for that too.

It’s still a couple of weeks away, but since I’ve had a few people ask me, yes, following a 2-month hiatus, PauseTalk will be back next month (Vol. 47), happening on the first Monday of the month as usual (in this case, February 7). I’ll send the regular Facebook reminder a few days before it happens (and post about it here as well).

It feels like it’s been a long time since the last episode of the Codex, but that’s just because the last two episodes were recorded so close together. This week’s episode ends with a track by Broadcast, to mark last week’s unfortunate passing of lead singer Trish Keenan — strangely enough, it was a track I had already selected to play on this episode.

You can download the episode below, and find the playlist, or subscribe to the RSS feed so as not to miss any future episode — the show is in the iTunes Store too.

Codex 15 (39.7MB)

1. The Magnetic Fields – “I Don’t Believe in You”
2. M.I.A. – “Internet Connection (Huoratron Rum Aid Rmx)”
3. Justice – “The Party (feat. Uffie)”
4. The Forms – “Fire to the Ground (feat. Matt Berninger)”
5. Asobi Seksu – “Trails (Deerhoof Remix)”
6. Belle & Sebastian – “The Stars of Track and Field”
7. Junip – “Always (Prefuse 73 Remix)”
8. Peaches – “Downtown”
9. Wavves – “Mutant”
10. Broadcast – “Pendulum”

I know I recorded episode 13 just a couple of days ago, but I was suddenly in the mood to record a new episode of the Codex, and so here we are. It follows a theme I first visited last year, where I play tracks taken from albums that start with a particular latter — last time it was “A,” this time it’s “B.”

You can download the episode below, and find the playlist, or subscribe to an RSS feed to as not to miss any future episode — the show is in the iTunes Store too.

Codex 14 (35.3MB)

1. Unrest – “Winona Ryder (XY Version)”
2. Digiki – “Wikifi”
3. TTC – “Dans le club”
4. Sebadoh – “Drama Mine”
5. Pavement – “Embassy Row”
6. Kan Takahiko – “Blow”
7. Comesta Yaegashi – “Sanpo – Marunouchi no Nichiyoubi”
8. Marxy – “Intro To”
9. Mice Parade – “Ground as Cold as Common”
10. Pixies – “Is She Weird”

Well, I wanted this to be the “lucky” episode 13 of the Codex, but it took me quite a few tries to get the recording done because of glitches. But here it is, the first Codex of the year, and it also includes a Codex Coda courtesy of Chris Palmieri, the founder and head of the Tokyo-based design studio AQ.

The link to download the episode is below, as well as the playlist, and you can also subscribe to an RSS feed so as not to miss any future episode — the show is in the iTunes Store too.

Codex 13 (46MB)

1. M.I.A. – “Vicki Leekx Mixtape”
2. Toro y Moi – “Still Sound”
3. Mark Ronson & The Business Intl – “The Bike Song (The View Version)”
4. Homo Duplex – “Out of Touch”
5. Julie Doiron – “Nice to Come Home”
6. Lykke Li – “Get Some (Beck Remix)”
7. RJD2 – “The Glow (Paolo Remix)”
8. Said the Whale – “Last Tree Standing”
9. The Inbreds – “Prince”

Codex Coda 02 by Chris Palmieri

1. Kid Sister – “Pro Nails (Rusko Remix)”
2. Wendy Carlos – “Air on a G String”
3. Ladyhawke – “My Delirium”

As promised, here’s the deal with SNOW Magazine and what’s going on.

First off, even though you are now greeted by a hiatus announcement on the front page when you get to the site, please note that you can still access all of the site’s archives.

So why a relaunch? There are quite a few reasons, actually, and I’ll try to cover as many as I can here. I think the first thing I need to say is that for a few months now, I’ve been feeling more and more like updating the site was a chore. I wasn’t having much fun doing it anymore, and so I started thinking about why I was doing it.

If you’ll recall, it was a year ago that the site launched — towards the end of January — and there were a few reasons for doing it. In short, I wanted to continue the art/design/culture covering from Japan I’d been doing for years on my blog, but wanted it to feel less like a blog, and more like a proper site or web magazine. The other goal was to bring together a whole bunch of voices, to build a community out of people I love and respect, to help spread “our” view of this country.

That last part is where the site has mostly failed. Although I did realize that it would be difficult to get a whole bunch of people to contribute regular columns (that I was hoping to be “mostly” monthly) for no pay, that’s why I tried bringing together such a large group — I was hoping that the sheer volume would ensure a regular stream of newness. But if you don’t count the re-posts from Néojaponisme, Papersky, and Art Space Tokyo, the only regular contributor has been Bianca with her terrific “Japanese Package Design” series, and she deserves my eternal thanks for that (and it’s the reason I wanted the final post on the site to be her latest column). Now, I don’t blame anyone, as I certainly know what it’s like to want to contribute to something, but simply getting too busy with all of the other things in your life.

And this resulted in another problem with the site. Since this community aspect of the site was so important to me, I really wanted all of the columns to act as the “meat” of the site, with my contribution being a regular stream of smaller news items and links, to keep the site feeling alive with daily content. While doing this, I also purposely changed the way I wrote these — as opposed to how I would cover them on my blog — giving them a more neutral style. In part it was because I wanted to give the site an authoritative voice (more objective, less subjective).

But in the end, as a friend of mine remarked, what was interesting when I used to do this kind of coverage on my blog was that it was usually placed in the context of how I encountered it — the anecdotes that went with them were part of the fun. On SNOW, it came off as dry, and since the site was pretty much resting on these due to the lack of columns, it made for a relatively boring read.

The other elephant in the room is, well, a big one. I alluded to it recently when I addressed something Momus had said in a recent podcast, and it’s the fact that I’m just not particularly inspired by the creative output of this country these days. This feeling has been growing over the past year, and although I’ve constantly tried to explain it as “just me,” thinking that I’d just been here for too long and that my constant focus on this particularly topic had maybe burned me out on it — and hey, that may really be the case — I do feel like there’s a serious lack of exciting development happening here. That’s not to say there aren’t some amazing creators doing some amazing things, but it’s no longer enough for me to want to base the entirety of my writings on — especially the kind that I do on my own time.

So what do I do? Although I haven’t completely finalized the exact shape that SNOW Magazine will take — and that’s why I’m giving myself a few weeks to flesh that out — I do have a few thoughts on what I’m going to do with the site. Some of these changes include an end to outside contributions to the site, writing longer opinionated/subjective pieces (probably 3-5 times a week), and — the big one — no longer tying myself to covering Tokyo/Japan-related content exclusively. As you’ll notice with The Magaziner, I don’t have a problem writing when it’s something I’m passionate about, and that’s what I want to bring back to SNOW Magazine.

These changes will also bring with them a drastic change in the site’s design, especially since I’ll want it to better reflect the difference in content and frequency.

I would like to thank everyone who has helped me with feedback in the past week or so — your comments and suggestions have been priceless — as well as everyone who has contributed something to the site over the year. Although it may sound like I ended the year with rather negative thoughts about the site, the idea to bring changes has really been invigorating — and liberating — and I’m absolutely positive that SNOW Magazine in 2011 will be even better than what you experienced in 2010, and I can promise that you’ll be seeing other SNOW-related projects happening as well, so stay tuned!

Happy 2011 everyone! We’re just past midnight here in Tokyo, and I’m writing this just before heading out to a nearby shrine for hatsumode (the first shrine visit of the year). As I just tweeted, SNOW Magazine is, as of now, on hiatus for a bit. I’ll be writing a long post later today that talks more about this, and explains the reasons for why this is happening. I’ve been predicting a year of changes for 2011, and this is but the first one.