All posts by Danwich

Danwich is terrified of The Man and therefore has very little information about himself online. He is also terrified of attention, but if you insist, you can reach him through his email.
ALBUMS, CHIPTUNE, FUSION, GAME MUSIC, MUSIC

“The Chip Age” – A Review of Joshua Morse’s “Waveform 4”

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“Hey buddy, you got chip in my jazz. Actually, y'know what? Just leave it there. It's rad.”
“Hey buddy, you got chip in my jazz. Actually, y’know what? Just leave it there. It’s rad.”

Joshua Morse‘s newest jazz-fusion short release, Waveform 4, has to be the most charming thing I’ve heard in a good while. Jazz has always been my favorite style of music I know nothing about, and any time I come across an “X-jazz” genre tag I get all tingly. And if you’re a little more familiar with jazz and the word “fusion” terrifies you, I say, “Worry not, citizen!” This release keeps it reigned in, being creative and enjoyable without getting avant-garde or just plain weird. As per his own mission statement, Mr. Morse does indeed prove that not all jazz is elevator music.

Now, I do have to admit, it took me a little while to actually accept that this album is jazz-inspired, but that has everything to do with my skewed perceptions. I lay the blame squarely on my college’s radio station, which plays some really pretentious, fringe nonsense when it comes to jazz. I swear, next time I hear a DJ say “post-bop” on the air, I’m gonna call in and give someone a knuckle sandwich over the phone.

But, I digress. Every track on this short album (or EP, or “chipdisk” as Morse himself puts it, or what have you) is a choice cut. The opening track, “Turtle Dance 3,” brings it old school, straddling the line between honest jazz and arcade soundtrack that the retro gamers are incredibly familiar with. It won’t make you think of a specific title so much as like, all of Sega at once. “Fusion Factory” achieves the impossible by throwing a bunch of genres into a blender and creating a coherent product. There’s funk, there’s disco, there’s jazz, there’s chip, I could go on. Use your imagination, and “You Got Me” is the back-beat to an R&B jam 20 years out from now. I really expected Robotic Barry White to roll out at some point, no joke. “Galactic EQ Bands” sounds like something out of an 80s action movie soundtrack, and I mean that as high praise. The way it opens will put you right back into a Beverly Hills Cop shootout. The closer “It’s Like Flying” not only lives up to its title, but brings a truckload of passion to bear as well. You can put your own love-song lyrics to the synth and piano melodies in certain parts; that’s how much raw emotion this track has.

Naturally I’m gonna gripe about the length of this release, because it’s a knockout and I’d love more of it. At the same time, however, I’m rather thankful that it’s only five tracks long. Each track stands high and solitary, being entirely unique with regard to the other four. This is something I can’t really see as being possible in a full album’s worth of material, or at least I would consider it a feat only pulled off on incredibly rare occasions. Yet it works as an album as well because of the common jazz thread woven through each cut. I believe that balance, that “one out of many” quality is what makes this release truly special.

Danwich has begun work on an amateur American Gothic novel.  You can read its beginnings here.  He would love your votes.

ALBUMS, DANCE MUSIC, FUSION, GAME MUSIC, MUSIC

“Boogieman” — A Review of Jake Kaufman’s “Mighty Switch Force! 2 OST”

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"Everybody out!"
“Everybody out!”

Call up your folks and tell ’em disco ain’t dead, baby! Jake Kaufman‘s newest release, the soundtrack to WayForward‘s 3DS puzzle-platformer Mighty Switch Force! 2, harkens back to the glory days of dancehall greatness, yet still keeps things fresh by throwing in some of electronic music’s more recent innovations. Nearly every track on this album will make you want to stand up and get down. I guarantee it. So grab your white suit and let’s groove!

This album has a very distinct, classic dancehall inspiration behind it that strings the whole album together, but different tracks approach that unifying sound from various angles. Numbers like “Rainbow Love Zone,” “Got2BAStar,” and even the short little “Title” track bring the funk like only old-school-inspired dance music can. I honestly thought Maurice White or Barry Gibb was going to start singing when I cranked up that opener. You can imagine my surprise, then, when “Rescue Girl” comes around at the end and actually kinda delivers on that feeling, in the form of Kaufman himself singing with a couple friends, no less.

Meanwhile, other tracks take the album’s disco sound and brilliantly mix it into something more contemporary. “Exothermic” lays that sound over a drum-and-bass beat that slides into classic dubstep, but without following that old and busted build/drop formula that loses the beat. In fact, the closest thing this album has to a modern dubstep track is “Soak Patrol Alpha,” but even that song has more in common overall with 80’s pop music, and the drop isn’t even really a drop so much as a random section of wubs. Somehow it works, oddly as that may strike you.

Other tracks fit into a kind of gray area between these two extremes, and I think that’s where the album truly shines. “The Afterblaze” has got to be the catchiest thing I’ve heard so far this year, and gives “Exothermic” a run for its money in terms of being my album favorite. Tracks like “Soft Collision” and “Dalmatian Station” owe as much to 70s disco as they do to modern house music, yet both manage to synergize those two genres, rather than imitate one or the other. “Rescue Girl” is so incredibly fun to sing they probably can’t play it in countries where joy is frowned upon by the State, and “Glow” sounds like the opening theme to a Powerpuff Girls movie in the best way that sentence can be read.

My only real gripe with this album is that it can be repetitive at times, but that doesn’t even feel fair considering that’s my default problem with any video game soundtrack. “Title” forms the basis for much of “Got2BAStar,” while “Rescue Girl” is just a longer version with words. This isn’t inherently bad, but I could definitely understand people taking issue with it. Beyond all that, the album in general is built upon the soundtrack for the previous game in the series, which Kaufman also made. However, where the MSF1 soundtrack had chip, MSF2 has disco, so if you’re familiar with the previous OST, you may or may not prefer this one.

The album closes with several remixes by other artists of some the album’s core tracks, which are great from a standalone perspective but might feel repetitive if you’re listening to the album cover-to-cover. Under his “virt” handle, Kaufman turns “Rescue Girl” into a slow-jam R&B song, which was pretty rad, while his remix of “The Afterblaze” lives up to its “Bonus Chip Mix” subtitle. Coda drops the dubstep trappings of “Soak Patrol Alpha” and replaces the main melodies with delicious funk basslines. Finally, DJ Bouche‘s orchestral remix of “Glow” could easily be a tune in a Zelda game.

Just like the firefighter heroine of his song, Jake Kaufman is here to rescue us. His disco- and funk-inspired music rises above the jaded wastes of modern dance and reminds listeners that, in the future, electronic music can still have a soul. This is the music we’ll be listening to when we’ve all got virtual reality glasses grafted to our faces and we’re dancing in German diskotheks in the Metaverse. Except we haven’t left out living rooms.

 

Danwich once deconstructed a post-modern novel.  He is still too irradiated to risk personal human contact.  You can reach him through his email or his radio show’s page.

ALBUMS, CHIPTUNE, MUSIC

“Warrior-Poets” – A Review of Chipmusic Heroes II: Reditum

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Chipmusic Heroes II: Reditum

Bolstered by the success of their first release and back for a second helping, global chiptune collaboration group Chipmusic Heroes has released their second album, three months to the day since their self-titled debut. Reditum picks up where the debut left off and goes even bigger and louder. Thirteen different artists from countries as far-flung as Norway, the Netherlands, Canada, the U.S., the U.K., Russia, Israel, and New Zealand are represented here. With one exception, every contributor to the debut returns, as well as adding new blood like Octobox, Aimm, and Super Robotic Encounters.

The opener, “Side By Side,” sets the tone followed throughout the album, striking a balance of sounding like video game music without actually being that. This album showcases a range of chip as diverse as the contributing artists, though there are definite high points.

Kartmaze‘s nine-minute romp “Across the Nebula” gets my vote for best track, and that has surprisingly little to do with my obsession with lengthy songs. This track has a very story-like feel to it, as though the listener is flying through space visiting different planets, where the music shifts every so often to sound like it was inspired by video games as diverse as Castlevania, 2D-era Final Fantasy, Contra, and Metroid.

Several other tracks deserve specific attention as well. Grimmy‘s aptly-named “Arcade Nights” opens with a build that makes you feel like you’ve stepped into Flynn’s Arcade before kicking into something I would best describe as 80’s synth revival, like the Hotline Miami soundtrack with chip tossed in. “Pixelated Sunshine” by Freq is a joy, a jaunty and bouncy little tune that somehow evokes both old Mario tunes and old rap beats. “Worker Ants” by Same Type Attack Bonus sounds like someone attempting, with success, to give MegaMan a boss stage theme of his own. Finally, Mr. Lenix & Thunder Fox‘s collab track “Frustration,” complete with random angry soundbites sprinkled in, shamelessly throws what sounds to me like an elevator track into a chipstep song. And it works! It’s like “Welcome to Rapture, enjoy your wubs.”

Something that doesn’t stick out right away and – yet strikes me as incredible after giving the album a couple listens – is that this group is all fairly new talent. To name just a few examples: none of these artists have been on soundcloud more than a year, __twc is a mere sixteen years old, and Octobox is a newly-minted Calarts grad.

Overall, the album is solid from cover to cover, with every track worth listening to and offering something fun and enjoyable. The video game influence on Reditum is very prevalent, with most of its tracks sounding very much at home alongside arcade and 8/16-bit era music. But as I said above, this album never sounds derivative or uninspired, which I think is its greatest strength, and why I would highly recommend it. This is a great starting point for anyone thinking to themselves “Just what the blazes is chiptune anyway?” or any long-time listeners looking for a reminder of what got them into this in the first place.

 

Danwich is terrified of The Man and does his best to minimize his online presence.  But you can reach him through his email or his radio show’s page.