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sorry for the extended blog silence. i get older, the weeks get shorter. time flies. i wish i could say i’ve been busy and productive – truth is most of my time has been spent building my new D&D character. he is a monk/conjurer called theo:

i might upload my character sheet later in the week if you are really lucky.

thanks to the people who have left comments on the blog in the last few weeks, particularly those who went the extra mile with some thoughtful responses to my rant on ‘transparent costs of production’ and free music and whatnot. and here i was thinking that the only people who read this blog were complete imbeciles. some of you have brains in your heads. i’d respond to your comments except that i have spent the last weekend watching the 2020 summit, which resulted in an equivalent effect to me having had a complete brain amputation. nah fo serious, i will try and respond to youse bitches with some thoughtfully rendered articulations and shit.

here are 11 things i’m currently loving:
- wax stag! i’m digging sound and safe on wfmu with trent, here is his show featuring the genius of wax stag
- arp – in light easily my favourite album of the year so far
- four tet – don’t think about it too much just enjoy it
- moonbeam “slow heart” and sascha funke “mango” – ditto
- hot chip – one pure thought (supermayer remix)
- kraftwerk – ralf and florian 1973. this is the first kraftwerk album i’ve heard and actually loved rather than just ‘appreciated’ as all of us electronic types are meant to ‘appreciate’ kraftwerk. i love them but this is the first album i’ve heard of theirs thats hit a nerve with me. i tracked it down after seeing it on a list that arp made for dusted magazine – his other recommendations (jards macale, franco battiato, group inerane) are similarly spot on.
- babatunde olatunji drums of passion 1959. so fresh!
- herbie hancock – sextant 1972. so stale! god herbie was a massive dork
- stevie nicks – edge of seventeen

yeah stevie nicks. i really love that a lot of the 70s and 80s film clips uploaded to youtube come from worn and weary VHS tapes that have seen far better days. the scratches and wobbles make for instant nostalgia for those of us who used to tape video hits onto VHS every weekend:

ahh thats only ten things. number eleven: house of cosbys.
ok. more soon!

courtesy of franc

it seems bob from zeal has been on a similar journey rediscovering old 8-bit video game themes recently. bob is currently digging the 1986 nintendo game labyrinth, which was of course based on the bowie-in-spandex movie of the same name. head to bob’s blog for a ridiculous 8-bit version of magic dance…

LUDO FRIEND

hey bob! check this out!

i myself grew up on the c64 version of labyrinth. i could never get very far in it though – this was a pretty recurring theme for me playing commodore 64 games. i was not a good gamer. i tended to give up when things got hard, which is a philosophy that i have tried hard to carry over into my adult life. things would be much easier if david bowie visited me in a freaky dream

last week, i talked about commando, my favourite commodore 64 video game theme… well here it is, as its meant to be heard:

one thing i had forgotten was how the melody of the track dropped out whenever you triggered a sound effect – ie by throwing a grenade, or powering up. so cool. i had also forgotten that the game had only, like, three levels. so it only takes 3 minutes to sit and watch reinhard blast the hell out of all the pixelated military sprite dudes..

my knowledge of computer game music is far from encyclopaedic, in fact its barely even a footnote on a random page of the great book that is computer game music, it is more like a barely legible scribble in the margins, in greylead pencil, that reads something like “you don’t know shit about computer game music”

but a couple of things have happened this week that makes me think i need to get my head back into that.

first up, while preparing to interview luke disasteradio – yes, theres that name again, he pays me in virtual synths every time i mention his name on this blog – i rediscovered my favourite commodore 64 computer game theme, commando. if you ever played c64, you probably played commando. when we played it during luke’s interview, one of the other announcers came in to the studio saying “i’ve played this game… what is it?!” its a song that never leaves you. this game i played a lot when i was a kid, though i could never get past the first few levels. i didn’t realise it at the time, but now i’m positive, that the reason i kept going back to it despite the fact that i was so shithouse at it was obviously just to hear rob hubbard’s amazing theme song over and over and over:

MP3: Rob Hubbard – Commando

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what is amazing about this track, and i guess about all computer game music from this era, is how the composers could make such compelling and innovative songs using only the barest of building blocks. they were under such restrictions in terms of the sounds at their disposal – they were literally constructing music out of the tiniest shards of electrical noise. so they squeezed everything they could out of melody and rhythm. recently several groups have rather infamously started transposing the old commodore 64 game themes into orchestral arrangements.. eg the c64 orchestra… but there is actually something about the original distorted proto-digital sound that i find really inviting and comforting. but i guess thats all about memory, as most things tend to be, that really its just the way this song evokes so vividly a piece of my childhood, thats why it gets my rocks off so severely.

the second thing thats happened – and i see this to be some marvellous confluence of mystical energies that led these two things to happen in such temporal proximity – or perhaps it was a coincidence – it actually happened just a couple of hours ago when i got an email from marcus asking me about my EP changes (i hope he doesn’t mind me quoting some of his email here):

Incidentally, have you ever played the video game ‘Secret Of Mana’ or heard the soundtrack? The first time I heard Changes on the radio it immediately reminded me of a song from that game, which is why I like it so much. Listening to the rest of the EP, it sounds like it was very ‘Secret Of Mana’ inspired. Is this the case, or is it a fluke that they have similarities?

this is seriously one of the coolest things i’ve ever heard about my own music! i’ve managed to do a little bit of googling and tracked down some info about secret of mana, which i’ll be honest i haven’t played before. i think it was a super nintendo game – i never hooked into that generation of consoles to be honest. for me it went C64… xbox… neverwinter nights. and not much in between. except for civilisation. railroad tycoon 2- that shit is hot! but i digress. secret of mana:

The game’s soundtrack was composed by Hiroki Kikuta, and is perhaps his most famous work[citation needed]. It is known for its variety of tunes which tend to focus on the use of percussion and woodwind instruments, ranging from a lighthearted dwarves’ polka to a somber, wistful snow melody to a tribal-like dance.

my music sounds like a dwarven polka! if only! though i will admit – “tunes which tend to focus on the use of percussion and woodwind instruments” – this is not so far from the mark given the liberal doses of sampled drums and flutes that litter the track “changes” and also just most of my stuff in general. anyway, thanks so much marcus for making my day!

the secret of mana soundtrack can actually be downloaded in its entirety from this website. i’m just starting to give it a few spins and some of it is great stuff. here are a couple of samples to whet your appetite:

MP3: Hiroki Kikuta – Dancing Animals (Goblin Theme) (from Secret of Mana)

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MP3: Hiroki Kikuta – Into the Thick Of It (from Secret of Mana)

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