This Hospital was used as an actual hospital up until the mid-eighties, I believe, based on evidence we found on site, though I don’t know exactly when it closed. Since then, it’s been used as a site for several movies and TV productions, including Pearl Harbor and possibly Scrubs.
Interestingly, according to theShadowlands.net, this hospital is reportedly haunted.
quote:
theshadowlands.net came out of the closet to say:
People who go there have reported seeing lights and hearing a little girl laughing and playing around in there. Screams, cold spats, noises, cries, moaning, lights coming on and off, noises could even be heard from the street at night with no one inside. Hospital is sometimes used for filming by production companies. A doctor has been seen on the main building, corner window, top floor looking out through the window. He was wearing a doctor’s suit and a tie. Lights go on and off throughout the whole building. There is a room full of cages and a group of people claimed seeing a mentally ill patient(ghost) roaming inside a cage in that room. Strange noises are heard around the buildings. Cold and warm spots are felt in certain places.
Boom Boom Satellites are my all time favourite Japanese group – so when I heard that they were releasing their fifth album, On, a mere fourteen months after the previous one, (Full of Elevating Pleasures) it felt like Christmas had come seven months early!
Over their last couple of albums, the band have been developing a more mainstream sound, and my main worry was that On would take the pop direction that bit too far. I needn’t have worried. From the pounding drums and screeching guitars of opening track “Kick It Out,” it’s obvious that these guys still rock!
The second track, “9 Door Empire,” perfectly epitomizes the overall sound of this album. It starts with a repeating guitar riff, the pounding drums join in, and for a few minutes it sounds like a fairly standard rock tune - and that’s when Masayuki Nakano’s keyboards take over and everything warps into the realms of techno-trance. The sheer brilliance of it takes your breath away, and reminds you just how exciting and exhilarating music can be.
“Generator” is a fast moving number, in which Michiyuki Kawashima’s distorted guitar shreds and grinds over the layered keyboards and background techno beat. It sounds like something from the soundtrack of a cyberpunk movie – something that is helped by the fact that the vocals don’t appear until 4 and a half minutes into the song, and consist of nothing more than ‘how many grave pits you need?’ repeated several times.
My favourite track on the album is “Nothing” - a guitar driven, angst ridden tune in which Michiyuki sings “…all I do is crawl in mud… I have nothing left… so sick of it all…” Amazingly, despite the bleak subject matter, it is insanely catchy, and impossible not to tap your foot along to. Masayuki doing a fantastic job of creating a frantic beat with the drums, and it’s this that sets the pace… but it’s the over-laying guitar work that really sets this song alight – the eerie soaring textures created providing both attitude and introspection.
There are a couple of tracks that don’t quite do it for me. “id” is not much more than some random drumming and keyboard sounds looped together for 90 seconds – it’s reminiscent of the crazier moments of modern jazz that appeared on 2002’s Photon, but here it feels wildly out of place. “Porcupine” is even stranger – sounding like the recording of an acoustic guitar played backwards, it’s slow, mellow, and completely at odds with everything else on the album. All that said, it is good to see that the guys are still unafraid to experiment and are continuing to push the musical boundaries. And when the rest of the album is so good, it’s easy to forgive them.
This is without a doubt Boom Boom Satellites‘ best album so far. They’ve established their own unique sound, but they haven’t allowed themselves to be shackled by anyone’s expectations. After previous albums of jazz-fusion, and soul-tinged guitar-pop, they’ve created a heady masterpiece of techno-rock. Yet again they’ve shown that in the field of dance / rock crossover, they are clear leaders, not followers. At the moment, no one else comes close.
, this hospital is reportedly haunted.
