Chaos Royale

In Shibuya on Friday 13th April, at “Trump House” starting at midnight, you can come to Japan’s first-ever Steampunk club event, to enjoy hookah, absinthe, live music, gadgets and handicrafts, and a special performance by Chaos Royale featuring Bellydancers E-chan and Milla.

I’m excited about this- the “club scene” in Tokyo has been moribund for years, full of non-stop boring techno music by and for 40-something media types, and Steampunk finally seems to be catching the imagination of extemely talented young fashion designers, artists and animators that Japan can be proud of, such as my friend Kouhei from Harajuku-based watchmakers “a story” .

Organizer “Tokyo Steampunk Society” is the brainchild of my friend Kenny Creation, and as such I’ve become heavily involved in the planning, and he’s asked me to play some of my next album- a mix of ambient 19th century opera noise, death orchestral and “steam-step”. Yep.

If you can make it, wear 19th century style for a discount. If any ladies should wear Meiji period fashion I will put you on my VIP list for being amazing.

Even if you can’t make it on Friday 13th, Tokyo Steampunk Society will continue to run all manner of retro-futurist events and you can follow us on Twitter and Facebook.

First- here’s a downloadable “This means War” HD wallpaper for you.

Right now some very talented (and in one case, very unexpected) artists are working with us on an entire remix album. This will re-interpret the music of “You realize, this means war” through the senses of a variety of musicians. There will also be Chaos Royale’s own re-imaginings of  tracks, including at least one absolutely ridiculous “***step” anthem.

The tentative title is “One Angel, One Kill”.

Whereas “War” focused on polyphony and layers of sound, “Angel” will focus more on rhythm and purity. There will be no “abstract noise” tracks this time but the sonics are just as overpowering as you expect.

Finally, poledancer Alk is currently recovering from a minor but temporarily disabling injury sustained while performing a long-distance arial drop. I’m sure all her fans are wishing her the best, and when she recovers we will be shooting a video for one of the tracks off “War”.

After a year of false starts, the first real Chaos Royale album “You realize, this means war” is finally available.

Initially this was intended to be an album full of heavy but crowdpleasing tunes like Anna Supernova or Spartan Ogre, but for reasons I’ll go into another time it expanded into something more ferocious.

A highlight for me is the inclusion of a track featuring the 8-bit sounds of NYC gameboy guru Bit Shifter, plus a duet with {name removed} which…you’ll understand when you hear it.

The whole album is guaranteed to upset dubstep purists, chiptune purists, and noise purists alike but if you like to really dig deep into massive, complex, layered sounds, there’s a lot to discover in it for you.

Also, the basslines are fucking savage.

In the leadup to the new album: here is a short trailer featuring live video to a track off the album, “Spartan Ogre”.

The album is crazy, I’ve finally overcome my doubts about it, and it will drop in December 2011.