Just a reminder that tonight (Monday, February 7) marks the February edition of PauseTalk (Vol. 47). It all happens at Cafe Pause in Ikebukuro, with a start time of 20:00 — the cafe is reserved from 19:30, so feel free to come early and hang out. For more on PauseTalk, visit the official site, or check in on the Facebook event page .

A new episode of the Codex is up (17), and you’ll find it for download here.

It’s been a long time coming, but yes, following a 2-month hiatus, PauseTalk Vol. 47 is happening this Monday (February 7) at Cafe Pause, with the regular start time of 20:00. The reason for the hiatus was because attendance was getting low at the end of last year, and so I figured it was time for a break. Here’s looking forward to a new edition, and to some good talk! For those interested, here’s the Facebook event page.

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”

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.

I came back home from a night of drinking, and you’d think I’d just want to take it easy, but no, I was in the mood to do an episode of the Codex, and so here you have it. Since it’s the last episode of the year, I felt like it didn’t really make sense to play new music, so instead I cover some of my favorite tracks from film soundtracks of the past few years.

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

Codex 12 (36.6MB)

1. Sex Bob-omb – “We Are Sex Bob-omb”
2. Sondre Lerche – “Family Theme”
3. Wreckless Eric – “Whole Wide World”
4. Mulatu Astatke – “Yekerme Sew”
5. David Holmes – “165 Million Plus Interest (Into) The Round Up”
6. Stephin Merritt – “Epitaph for My Heart”
7. Karen O and the Kids – “All Is Love”
8. A R Rahman – “Paper Planes (DFA Remix)”
9. The Breeders – “Bang On”
10. Meaghan Smith – “Here Comes Your Man”

Not that it’s really worth mentioning, but I updated my Cafe Pause mini-site, taking away the blog and simply keeping it as an info page — basically, somewhere to link to when I mention the cafe in a post (since the cafe’s own site is in Japanese). I used the lovely illustration Luis created for the Cafe Pause Poster series as the header.

And let me take this opportunity to clear up a few things, as a lot of people seem to be confused by my relationship with Cafe Pause. No, I am not the owner of the cafe, I’m just good friends with the owner and staff, which is why I’ve been able to produce events and host PauseTalk there. I was managing the gallery space, but don’t really do so anymore — although I’ll still help out if a foreigner wants to rent out the space for a show.

As the year winds down to a close, it’s always the time where I start to re-think everything I’m doing, and what I should be doing in the new year. After all, it was around this time that I was prepping for the launch of SNOW Magazine (it went live towards the end of January), and now I need to re-evaluate what the point of the site (or platform) is, and where it should be going in 2011. I already have some strong ideas on this, and I’m going to take the next week or two to properly plan this out and figure out what is best.

This “re-thinking” mode also affects every other personal project I have online, in some way or another. For example, the site I have up for Cafe Pause and my involvement there. As evidenced by the level of updates to it, it doesn’t make sense to keep that going as a blog, and I’m certainly going to modify it to make it more static, more of a pointer for info instead of news — and to be honest, I just haven’t been as active there as I have in past years, due to lack of time, and a focus on other things.

And even new projects, like Codex, which was launched less than two months ago. I’m pretty happy with the way it’s working, but I’m sure I’ll be tweaking things here and there. I’m having an absolute blast creating new episodes, and I’ll probably look to expand on what I’m doing with it.

So just a little post to say that I do like when this time of the year comes up, as it’s a good excuse to really re-evaluate and come up with new ideas to get the new year rolling at a good and energetic pace.

It’s Christmas Eve, and so what better time to record a new episode of the Codex (11). It’s my “favorite tracks of 2010″ episode, based on what I listed in my recent “Favorite Media of 2010” post. As I explain in the show, it’s impossible for me to really say what my absolute favorite tracks of the year were, so this is mostly based on my iTunes play count. I hope you enjoy it, and just a reminder that if you’re in the mood for some Christmas music on the Eve or on the day itself, there’s last week’s Christmas episode to download — and if you liked Michael Bojkowski‘s recent Codex Coda contribution, he’s put up a great winter podcast episode as well, the “Antimix Special: Snowbound.”

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

Codex 11 (46.2MB)

1. The Books – “A Cold Freezin’ Night”
2. Mark Ronson and the Business Intl – “Bang Bang Bang (feat. Q-Tip and MNDR)”
3. Royksopp – “Happy Up Here”
4. Black Francis – “Threshold Apprehension”
5. Caribou – “Odessa”
6. Wavves – “King of the Beach”
7. Arcade Fire – “Rococo”
8. Four Tet – “Circling”
9. Stereolab – “Everybody’s Weird Except Me”
10. Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross – “Pieces Form the Whole”

As you get towards the end of the year, it’s usually a time to reassess the way you do some things, and one thing I’ve decided to do is to take my personal Facebook account and make it just that, personal. For the past year or so I’ve just been adding whoever sends me a request — I imagine after I’m discovered through this site — and it’s gotten to a point where my Facebook account is practically unusable now.

What I’ve done instead is create a new JeanSnow.net page on Facebook, which I’ve also added as the “Facebook” link that appears at the end of every post on this site. A few years ago I had created a JEANSNOW.NET group, which I’ve never done anything with, but decided to get rid of it as I think it makes more sense to go as a “page” and not a “group” — on Facebook, SNOW Magazine and The Magaziner each have pages, but PauseTalk is a group, which I think makes sense.

So apologies in advance if you send me a friend request and I don’t approve it — from now on I’ll be limiting interaction with my personal account to people I actually know.