Eastern Capital (3 Caterpies Mix)

 

The video art for Eastern Capital was created by my old student Ice, whose artist name is SALMON. She created all of the images for the video. I simply used her delicious sushi images and the music track to create the video. This isn't the first time her work gets featured on my blog. There have been numerous times where I posted her artwork on the blog. This was, however, the first time we worked on an organized project together. Considering the fact that it was the first time we co-created a project, I would say that things went pretty well.

The track Eastern Capital gets its name from the definition of the word Tokyo. The reason I leaned towards a name with an allusion to the Japanese capital is because I had visited a second-hand Japanese goods store in Hatyai. We entered the store one day and before taking a look around, we asked if they had any musical instruments. The clerk thought for no more than a second or two before telling us that they had no instruments. I thought that was pretty unfortunate but after we started looking around, we ended up finding about half a dozen musical instruments, one of which was the little guzeng.

The English word for the guzeng is a plucked zither. To be honest, if someone had told me that they play a plucked zither before I discovered the little zither, I wouldn't have known what it was. The Thai word for the guzeng is กู่เจิง - which is actually pronounced as 'goo-jeung'. I played around with the little guzeng for a few days. Then one day, I recorded my messing around with it. That was the day Eastern Capital was born. 

After deciding to call it Eastern Capital, I thought of writing some lyrics. I don't write lyrics to most of my tracks but for some reason I was called to do so. I wrote about the sun rising in the eastern capital. Before the rap verse of the track, I am heard introducing Ace Beaming Sun. During this time, I also repeat the words "rising sun" several times. This is not at all a reference towards the flag of the Imperial Japanese Army which is also known as the Rising Sun Flag. I wasn't aware of this connection until I came upon an article describing some South Koreans who were protesting the use of the flag before the Tokyo Olympics. I have no allegiance to Japan's historical army, known for strong-arming its way through Southeast Asia, among other places. The words "rising sun" in my track are a reference to Ace Beaming Sun being a new and rising star in the world of music. 

I hope you enjoy the music and the art video. Click here to go to my album on Bandcamp or listen to it in the player below.