Welcome to part two of our interview series commemorating the release of Anime Toonz Volume 4, the remix compilation featuring a host of worldwide dance music masters. This time we turn the spotlight to Berlin, where Jason Forrest, better known as DJ Donna Summer (no, not the disco era diva!) makes plenty of musical moves. Though he’s got his hands full running his label Cock Rock Disco, orchestrating the notorious Birthday Party event series, and DJing all over Europe, Forrest squeezed in a bit of time to put together an extremely aggressive hardcore remix for the compilation, and spent a few minutes answering some questions for us. Interview after the jump.

Anime Toonz Vol. 4 hits physical and digital shops today, including iTunes, Traxsource, Beatport, and more. In celebration of this release we at NYT have reached out to some of the key contributors to this project to find out what makes them tick. We’ll be featuring an interview with one of four creators each week throughout the rest of the month and beyond.

First up is Proper Villains, a collective of NYC based producers led by Jon [S]. With releases forthcoming on Fatboy Slim’s Southern Fried label, east coast based Flamin’ Hotz and much more, the villains are quickly making a mark on the eclectic dance circuit. Hit the jump for our interview with Jon.

The Boredoms have followed up on their much publicized 77BoaDrum performance from last year in New York with a pair of performances, doubled (and then some) in size for 2008. 88BoaDrum expanded the performance to two cities, with one in New York led by the like-minded group Gang Gang Dance leading a total of 88 drummers, and the Boredoms themselves helming an 88 person performance in LA’s La Brea Tar Pits. It all went down at 8:08pm on August 8th on the respective US coasts, echoing the recent Olympic opening ceremony in Beijing.

Video of the rehearsal is above, which gives a wonderful sense of the musical cacophony that one might not think to be at all coherent with 176 drumsticks banging. But for all of their bizarre avant-garde sensibilities, the Boredoms manage to inject real musical beauty into all of their increasingly ambitious musical projects.

Boredoms: 88Boadrum LA (via Youtube)

88 Drummers Pound New York and Los Angeles (via Reuters)

By Jesse Mann

New York-Tokyo, in association with Fuego Media (formerly Jellybean Recordings) proudly introduces the 4th volume of the hit Anime song remix project, ANIME TOONZ Volume 4 featuring the talents of Gurren Lagaan (and more) voice actress Yukari Fukui. The songs performed in original Japanese are remixed into techno, trance, house, breakbeat, D&B, and hardcore by various DJs/producers from around the world including DJ Donna Summer and Nigel Richards.

Eye-catching Artwork is by Tokiya, who works in both the mainstream video game field and the underground illustration/comics scene.

ANIME TOONZ 4 is entering worldwide digital distribution via iTunes, Traxsource, Rhapsody, Napster, Beatport, and all other major outlets in either compilation or single format on August 12th 2008!

Next week, New York-Tokyo will be featuring and interviewing four of the artists involved in this project, Nigel Richards, DJ Donna Summer, Proper Villains, and dj A.Q. Be sure to check back with us for that!

Check out some audio samples below:

1. Saint October - “Michinaru Basho e” (END Theme) - Proper Villains Vocal Remix
2. Lucky Star - “Motteke Sailor Fuku”(OPENING Theme)- dj A.Q Almighty Handsup Sub-Vocal FX Remix
3. Bleach - “Houki Boshi” (END Theme) - Darkhalo Vocal Remix
4. Romeo x Juliet - “Inori You Raise Me Up” (OPENING Theme) - DJ Sharpnel Trancecore Remix

A full size banner is available for you to help spread the word, the full link is below, including the image and our link to iTunes!

<a href=”http://phobos.apple.com/WebObjects/MZStore.woa/wa/viewAlbum?i= 284820285&id=284819918&s=143441″><img height=”90″ width=”728″ alt=”Yukari Fukui - Anime Toonz, Vol. 4″ src=” http://www.jellybeanmusic.com/myspace/images/AT4Banner1.jpg”/></a>

By NYT

Rhythm Heaven is a DS port of the quirky Japanese classic Rhythm Tengoku for the Gameboy Advance. That title never saw the light of day in the US, but thankfully Nintendo has seen the light and developed the touch friendly version for us tens of millions of DS owners, both in Japan and stateside.

The title involves a series of mini-games that challenge your rhythmic dexterity, pressing buttons and tapping the touch screen in time with some rather unusual visuals and clever electronic beats. The vibe of Rhythm Heaven is not too far removed from another classic handheld game, Wario Ware, and fans of that wonderfully absurd series should lap this one up. Nintendo even posted a gameplay video on their site. Check it.

Rhythm Heaven (via Nintendo.com)

By Jesse Mann

You may remember our posting from some time back about Kali’s veiled tribute to Mega Man 3 on Big Dada, and now another indie MC named Random has made an entire album in homage to the the blue bomber. Entitled Mega Ran, Random takes loops from some of the most beloved tunes from the original Mega Man Series, and adds some pretty beefy production underneath clever and endearing rhymes. It’s clear this guy has some major love for Capcom’s classic series, and even Capcom themselves have thrown their support behind this guy! Having given him an official license to promote his work, it’s now available for sale on iTunes and CDBaby.

Random’s “Mega Ran” is Blowing Up (via Capcom Blog)

By Jesse Mann