Hello, how is everyone ( Read more... )

Hello! It's been a while. My new job doesn't leave much time for translating, but I am still listening to Mr. Hirasawa, so all is well.

A while back someone asked about the song "Opus" and I finally got around to taking a stab at it.

As I discussed here, the theme for the Philosopher's Propeller album is alchemy and the process known as the ( Read more... )

Despite the title, this song is NOT about the legendary Bigfoot. (Though Mr. Hirasawa said in the Music Industrial Wastes: P-Model Side book that he doesn't mind at all if you think the album is about a Yeti.)

It's hard to say what this song is actually about, though. (I think I'll eventually translate a description of the album Big Body that I ( Read more... )

"Waste Cabaret" is a song from 1999 (I think), but it feels incredibly relevant to the current state of the world: political movements, harsh military action, terrorism, unemployment, wasted lives, and terrible entertainment. Or at least that's what I think of with this song. XD ( Read more... )

"Song of the Force" (or "Song of Power," perhaps) is another one of my favorites. It seems to be a song about folksongs, and the rhythm and sound effects are fantastic at evoking that magical, spiritual feeling of a night out in the open, when you hear animals and feel how insignificant you are ( Read more... )

平沢進 -「石の庭」
( Japanese lyrics )

"Philosopher's Propeller-1" is a great opening song for the Philosopher's Propeller CD. It's rousing yet whimsical. It's full of techno elements but has that bit of folk music blended in alongside some almost operatic falsetto. And it has lyrics that don't really make much sense to me but that are somehow beautiful. :P ( Read more... )

As discussed here, rubedo (or "reddening") is the final step for creating the philosopher's stone in alchemy. In terms of spiritual/mental growth, though, it is the culmination of the process of self-realization and leads to the appearance of the Self archetype, which Jung apparently described as "the total, timeless man . . . who stands for the ( Read more... )

The melody of "Philosopher's Propeller-2" is almost identical to that in the instrumental track "Albedo" on the same album. Both songs have what sounds like the chanting of some kind of sutra in the background, though it sounds more like a group of many people in "Albedo" and more like one single monk in "Philosopher's Propeller-2." (No idea what's ( Read more... )

As I mentioned here, nigredo is the first step for creating the philosopher's stone--a source of enlightenment, basically--in alchemy, but the concept has been applied to spiritual/psychological development as well.

To quote from this random website:
Psychologically, nigredo is a process of directing oneself to find self-knowledge. A problem is ( Read more... )