Venetian Snares, aka Aaron Funk, back with a twisted sequel to his wicked breakcore epic, “Hajnal.” Fuck yeah!
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Weekly Music Tip: Light in August
While there’s still some days left in August…
As fate would have it, two of my favorite ambient releases from last year are both titled around the theme of the Light in August.
The first release, by composer Danny Norbury, is drop-dead gorgeous. Massive recommendation, my favorite album of 2009:
Read more about the album and purchase mp3s here.
Norbury has worked with some other top-notch ambient artists like the Boats and Library Tapes. If you like the material above, also make sure to check out his work with Le Lendemain, and his recent collaboration with Andrew Hargreaves.
The second release, Light in August, Later, by Japanese artist Aus, is a little more electronic in nature. But as Boomkat put it, the album could indeed be mistaken as an “unofficial sequel” of sorts:
Lovely stuff! Perfect listening as the summer quickly begins to fade away…
Weekly Music Tip: Mogwai’s Special Moves
A stunning rendition of Mogwai’s legendary “2 Rights Make 1 Wrong”, off the band’s new live album, Special Moves:
The archetypal post-rock anthem. Highest possible recommendations!
Boy do I have fond memories seeing Mogwai live at the Fillmore in San Francisco, in 2004-ish. Go see them live, if you ever get the chance. And you may want to bring ear plugs… they play the loudest show I’ve ever attended!
Weekly Music Tip: Shigeto
After a two-week hiatus, the weekly music tip is back!
Here’s a beautiful, haunting track from Ghostly International’s Zach Saginaw, aka Shigeto:
The whole EP is being given away for free! Get it here. (as seen on the ISO50 blog)
The last track, “Grandma’s Words / Rise Out Of The Stone”, is the standout. I was really moved by the spoken intro – a sobering reflection on Japanese-American internment as practiced by the US government during World War II. The segment, apparently recounted by Saginaw’s grandmother, includes this timely warning:
Fear… does a terrible thing to people. It can change to hate, it can change to discrimination of all kinds…
An important lesson to keep in mind, for sure.
Weekly Music Tip: Quando Ouviu O Meu Samba
This week it’s time for the ill shit – a perfect summer hip-hop beat, oozing with bossa charm:
Hot daaaamn!! I seriously can’t get enough of this. The track features Ohmega Watts, who has also done some excellent work with Lightheaded on Tres Records.
The whole album, by Mental Abstrato, is really stellar. If you like your hip-hop jazzy, look no further.
There’s been a lot of good hip-hop this year, but for me, this track is one of the standouts. Ace!
Weekly Music Tip: Into the 90s, Summer Evening
Here’s a perfect beat for hot summer nights in the city:
That’s Photek, all the way back from 1994. Man, it brings back memories. I’ve had this beat on repeat as I sit here and try to get some work done.
Coldcut picks up on this same beat on his legendary 70 Minutes of Madness mix. He drops it in my very favorite part of the mix:
That whole segment is just so brilliant. It starts with Luke Slater’s “Grace” – one of the great ambient techno tunes of all time – mixed together with a cheesy but beautiful Joanna Law song. Then, after some Harold Budd (man, what a perfect bridge), Coldcut eventually settles into the Photek beat. Those “summer evening, summer evening” samples he throws into the mix really nail the whole vibe of that track. Perfection.
And I love how Coldcut ends that segment by bringing back the Photek beat over an old BDP cut. It colors that rap in such a wonderful way.
Summer evening indeed.
Rückblende, back online for download!
Two years ago, our very own Nils Deneken premiered his small adventure game, Rückblende, at IGF and IndieCade.
The download links have been down for a while, but Copenhagen Game Collective is happy to report that we’re now hosting the files!
Rückblende is a must-try for anyone interested in games, or atmospheric interactive environments more generally.
Nils built the entire game environment in the real physical world, as a large diorama. Then he filmed the set and layered the various “memory” sketches on top of that footage. The aesthetic effect is stunning, to say the least. Plus, the game features a very tasteful and poignant use of Billie Holiday’s “Without Your Love,” which of course won me over instantly.
In the interest of full disclosure, Nils is a close friend and a colleague. Still, I fell in love with the game even before I knew him personally. It was my favorite game at IndieCade 2008.
I see Rückblende as a kind of Geogaddi of videogames – very wistful but also very ambiguous (a little disturbing, even), filled with dark little secrets, anchored around themes of memory and childhood, and crafted with great care and attention to detail. It brings to mind some of my most memorable gaming experiences – Myst, Knytt, and The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker, for example.
Seriously, I can’t recommend the game highly enough. Of all the games that have had a lasting affect on me, Rückblende ranks somewhere near the top, right alongside the best of ‘em.
Weekly Music Tip: July 4th, From Copland to Black Star
Happy Independence Day from overseas!
As the token American on the team, I feel like it’s my duty to mark the occasion somehow. So, here’s a very special Weekly Music Tip – two iconic “American” songs that come with my highest recommendations.
Weekly Music Tip: 8-bit Reading Rainbow
Those photos of LeVar Burton playing B.U.T.T.O.N. got me thinking about the old PBS television show Reading Rainbow (which Burton famously produced and hosted). So, I thought I’d theme this week’s music tip accordingly – with a chip tune remix of the Reading Rainbow theme song!
This one goes out to all of you who grew up in the United States in the 80’s:
To be totally honest, I never cared much for the show. My teachers used to force the show on us when I was a 1st grader, on days when it was too rainy to go outside. To this day, I remember suffering through some of those episodes. I feel bad admitting this, especially because I admire Burton and what the show was trying to do. But to my discredit, I was never much of a reader.
Still, I’m a sucker for nostalgia, and it feels good to hear the old theme song, especially in an absurd 8-bit incarnation.
Lastly, as a bonus, here’s an obscure Burton-related music factoid:
Have you ever heard The Orb’s legendary ambient-house track, “Little Fluffy Clouds“? The song famously samples Rickie Lee Jones reminiscing about the skies in Arizona when she was a child. Popular myth holds it that the interview comes from an episode of Reading Rainbow, and therefore that the person asking the question (“What were the skies like when you were young?”) is none other than LeVar Burton.
Just this week, I learned that the speaker in question is not, in fact, Burton. Apparently, the interview doesn’t come from Reading Rainbow, but from a bonus interview disc as included with a promotional copy of Jones’ “Flying Cowboys.”
Like my friend Matt put it: “Just when I thought I had no more illusions to shatter.”
Weekly Music Tip: Forever Famicom
In recent years, there have been a lot of cringe-worthy hip-hop/videogame music mash-ups. So it comes as a very pleasant surprise to finally hear some videogame-flavored hip-hop that’s, well, really enjoyable!
Forever Famicom, released just this month, features a host of beats inspired by classic NES and SNES games, including Little Nemo, Secret of Mana, Chrono Trigger, Star Fox, and Mega Man. The MC, Random, is best known for his Mega Ran album, a collection of hip-hop Mega Man tributes.
On Forever Famicom, Random teams up with underground hip-hop producer K-Murdock, best known as a member of the group Panacea. Panacea has previously dropped some videogame references on their albums (the cover of The Scenic Route depicts the group playing videogames, and their 2008 album, A Mind On A Ship Through Time, features a track called “Chrono Trigger”), but Forever Famicom takes the hip-hop gamer nostalgia to a whole new level. And I mean that in the best possible way.
My favorite track has to be “Epoch” (above), which turns the main Chrono Trigger theme into an ill, uncompromising beat. What completely slays me are the sampled Street Fighter II shout-outs at the end (“China! Brazil! India! JAPAN!”). They’re clearly a playful nod to the hip-hop trope of filling the outro with international shout-outs (for example, see A Tribe Called Quest’s “The Chase, Part 2” off Midnight Marauders – “Everybody in London rock, rock on, everybody in Sweden, rock, rock on…”). Cheesy, hilarious, and poignant, all at the same time. I love it.
Honorary mention goes to the track “Player Two” for sampling the very memorable game-over music from Secret of Mana (“I Closed My Eyes“).
You can download the two-track EP for free here, and buy the full album here.
Follow the jump for the their excellent Little Nemo throwback.