Category Archives: Raw Footage

MiNdToUcH – Minor Intrusion Sesson

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It was good news back in the fall, when I heard that MiNdToUcH had released his first album, ToNight aT NoON (you can download it for free at Bandcamp I’ve been keeping an ear out for his music during the past few years, tracking his admirably steady flow of new tracks, in years past on Myspace, and more recently on Soundcloud. I first met him in my Seoul apartment back in 2006 when he came by my place to have a look at some gear I was selling. No transaction took place, but our conversation started.

I appreciate how he’s built and evolved his recording set-up. In a day and age when people (myself being one of them) get carried away with desire for the latest recording gear and functions, MiNdToUcH has so far taken quite a stripped down approach. Much of his music gets made on samplers, like the Akai MPC 3000, which would have cost a fortune in their early 90s heyday and are now affordable collector’s items to be found on eBay and used shops. But, far from being dated by the 90s gear, I find something very sustainable in MiNdToUcH’s approach to making music – it’s refreshing to see somebody recording machine-based music without being dependent on evolutions of Mac or Windows operating systems and the resulting upgrade-itis. He seems to have this love for his hardware, which makes him want to try different stuff out, but he doesn’t seem to stockpile stuff. All gear he has is used and part of his workflow, or else it’s quickly gone. There’s nothing flashy about his approach, no unnecessary gestures – watching him at his equipment you can’t help but admire the certainty of his hand movements, the lack of hesitation.

Seeing MiNdToUcH’s stacks of floppy discs, each disc containing one set of beats, makes me think of a poet and his or her stack of notebooks. Each disc holds 10s of seconds of sounds, not even a minute. He seems to begin with a process of disassembly – then, when all the suitable bits and pieces are treated and gathered, the assembly begins anew, but it is a different work that has been created. After getting everything ready in the sequencer and the right sound on the right pad, he records the output to an external device – he seems to be access most of the tracks from his album right on his Roland SP-4-4. Then, on another day, he can rearrange, refocus, and reconstitute the same fragments into another flow. What exists on these discs is not finished songs, but a set of sounds ready to breathe again once inserted into the sampler, possibilities waiting to be conjured.

It would do an injustice to MiNdToUcH to dwell too long on his gear or his workflow. His music is above its process. He happens to be a photographer par excellence, and, bearing this in mind, I can’t help thinking of him as a photographer of music, circling around the sounds that he samples, shining a light on what was previously dark, overexposing something, playing with the contrasts – some techniques employed later in the dark room and others at the time of shooting. Clicking, adjusting, rotating, freezing, tapping, releasing …

MiNdToUcH’s music does what the name promises – the music becomes part of a thought process – ideas looping, new ones joining, something remembered then forgotten, an idea modified over time, a new notion. This could be a soundtrack to finding keys and then looking for doors.

Having met him in Seoul, having lived in Seoul myself, I can’t help associating his sound with Seoul. When I hear it, I feel the stop-start rhythms of the bus that carries me through central Seoul, the random announcements – I see the little slices of everyday life and occasional drama that catch my eye through the bus window … the minor intrigue of someone getting in or out of a taxi, a couple side by side both on the phone, a kid restlessly waiting … being out too late, needing to get up too early.

On the day, I filmed the brief scenes in this video, I arrived at his place late afternoon. As soon as I got there, he said we’d go out for a drink, as he’d already spent ample time in his home studio that day. But I pried a bit, asking him about this or that, and in the process of demoing something, he stumbled onto some sounds he liked, and a new session started. Finally, one more disc was added to the stack.

Sights and sounds of the Tsukiji Fish Market

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5X5 edit: Tuna Life After Death:

Extended Raw Footage Edit:

I lived in Tokyo for about a year from ’99 to 2000, but somehow never visited the Tsukiji Fish Market, though I realize now it wasn’t far off the route I took to work every day. I even lived near Tokyo Bay.
Anyway, on my recent multi-day stopover in Tokyo, I finally did it. I got one of the first trains of the morning over to the market. I was advised to go straight to the back end as early as possible if I wanted to catch any of the auctions of giant tuna.
I thought about editing this footage into some kind of proper film, even an educational one, and I might yet, but for now I think raw footage tells the story.
Plus, the market has been extremely well-documented in recent years, so I didn’t think further explanation was needed.
If you want to read up more on the market, besides Wikipedia, here’s a few links:
- book: The Fish Market at the Center of the World
- Vanity Fair article by Nick Tosches
- I know I’ve seen a few good videos with Tsukiji scenes on Vimeo. Here is one.

Update: I saw the Cove the other day. If you’ve seen it, you might recognize the lengthy Tsukiji tuna auction time lapse scenes 2/3rds of the way through the movie. In the years, there’s obviously a lot more questions about how long this tuna trade can be sustained. It’s truly boggling to think of this amount of huge fish being caught every day.

Cat and Gopher Play Cat and Mouse

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Wish I had a proper video camera in my pocket, rather than my cell phone cam to film this classic scene. In the steps and grass around a country church, a cat was toying with a terrified young gopher. The cat was disinterested, pawing at the gopher, cornering it, and then letting it run a few feet away, before chasing it again. Such a classic, cartoon-ish scene.

Experience Nature

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After the week on Miyako Island, I passed through the Okinawa main island for a night, where I visited my Okinawan karate teacher’s home. The suggestion was made that I join one of my ‘senpai’ (seniors) to check out the interesting home of someone they knew. They pointed to the distant hillside and asked if I could see the part where there were no trees, owing to a recent mudslide – well, just on the edge of that, lived this person they know
So, we drove up the hill above the little harbor town. Literally, a few feet away from the edge of where the land had slid was his place. He had this kind of outdoor home set-up, like a one-bedroom apartment, without walls or a ceiling, with well-endowed statues he’d made.
I was tremendously interested in this unusual character and abode, but I was just getting eaten alive by the mosquitoes. I was the only one in shorts (and sandals, too), as is often the case for a Westerner in Japan, not good clothing for the jungle, plus the air was chilly, and I was getting cold, as it grew dark. Also, couldn’t help being a little concerned about the stability of the ground itself.
“Experience nature!,” the man enthusiastically said in English.

Women on horses

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Was sitting in a plaza in front of the new iPark Mall at Yongsan Station in central Seoul. The large video screen, which are ubiquitous in Seoul, continually played this footage of Western women in thin, light dresses riding horses, an advertisement for the mall. Kind of weird, in my opinion – I just don’t see the connection at all between these women tremendously enjoying riding a horse with this Seoul shopping mall.

Okjeong Middle School Birdseye

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I live on the sixth floor on a building on a hill. From around noon, the shadow of this building casts itself on the playing field of Okjeong Middle School. From my window, I sometimes look over it and observe. It’s easy to see the social dynamics of junior high in South Korea. Girls chatting in small groups. The minority of boys who prefer basketball to soccer. The awkward boys not good at sports, who play-fight with each other at the edge of the field. Notice all the boys wearing the black school uniform. I pity them, wearing those cumbersome clothes all year. The uniforms are expensive. Students can only afford one or two of them, so they start to smell from lack of washing. I can attest to this because I taught at a junior high in Japan for two years, and the classrooms could really start to reek. Some of the rebellious kids in Japan would modify and individualize their school uniforms, in spite of the helpless protests of the teachers — no such modification seems to take place in Korean schools, where even the hair length of both male and female students is still regulated by school rules.

Dead Turtle in Han River

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If I knew Buddhist scripture or Chinese mythology, I think there would be a really good quotation to describe this turtle. One watches it, wondering where its soul is, what sort of journey its spirit is on, while its body beautifully floats reflecting the sun’s rays.

After the epic yellow-wind clouds of Saturday and Sunday cleared up, some nice weather came in. The sky and weather was amazing on Monday. I noticed that the wind was coming from a different direction than usual, seemed to be blowing more from the East to the West — so, in other words, the dirty air from China wasn’t being blown in. Under that beautiful sky, I rode my bike down the Han River, and stopped for a while along the bank. I saw this dead turtle floating in the water. My first reaction was to assume the turtle died because the river was so dirty — but of course it’s also possible that the turtle peacefully died after a long life. I wonder what species of turtle one would find in the Han River? Would there be a lot of such turtles in the river? Considering that turtles have a fairly long life expectancy, wouldn’t it be unusual to come upon one that is deceased? Do you think that the turtle died because the river is dirty? Just how dirty is the river? What other life can be found in the Han River?
These are questions that I don’t know who could answer.
Or, was this turtle simply someone’s pet? And if so, did the turtle even die in the river or was it simply thrown in here after passing?

Cycling by a few months later, I glimpsed a few kids in the same spot I saw the turtle. They seemed to be looking at something. Had the turtle come back?

Yellow Wind in Seoul

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Set up my camera for a time-lapse from my apartment window, and it turned out to be a pretty epic day for the yellow wind storms from China. Glad I didn’t have to go anywhere that day – I wouldn’t want to be one of those people down there on a day like this.
“Yellow Wind” refers to the wind which comes from China bearing sand of the Gobi desert mixed with toxic particles. Every year around March, this wind blankets much of South Korea and parts of Japan, along with China’s own cities, like Beijing.
Scientists have detected traces of the wind on the west coast of North America.

The Perils of Dogsitting

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Been doing a lot of dog-sitting lately. It’s a love/hate relationship. Here’s what happened when Mocha got into the room I’ve been staying in – my little office/bedroom. Looks a lot like the post-typhoon footage I filmed a month or so ago.

(EDNOTE: insert typhoon footage here)