Tag Archives: cover

ALBUMS, CHIPTUNE, GAMING, MUSIC

Friday Freakout: Inverse Phase + NIN = OH HELLZ YEAH!!

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Chiptune covers of songs are f*cking awesome (like this Genesis one for instance). Personally, I get a real kick out of hearing some of my favorite songs, both old and new, transformed into Chiptunes. It’s a best of both worlds kinda thing. And when I’m in the mood for this niche within a niche, there’s one guy in particular that I always go to:

Brendan Becker
aka Inverse Phase

Whether it’s his collection of nerdy anthems on Retrocovered, a handful of various, awesome singles, or even his Guilty Gear chiptune cover album, the dude has some highly entertaining and very detail oriented covers absolutely worth checking out. Of course, if you want originals he’s got that happening too! Both the soundtracks for Shuttle Scuttle (Three-Stage FTW!!!) and Super Smash Land that he composed are excellent, and so are the original tracks in the Exclusives section of his bandcamp page.

But more importantly…

YES HE’S ABOUT TO RELEASE AN ALBUM FULL OF NINE INCH NAILS COVERS ON JUNE 14TH THAT HE’S BEEN WORKING ON FOR NEARLY A YEAR NOW!!!!  ZOMGWTFBBQ!!!!! 

I’ve always just been a casual NIN fan myself; more familiar with the singles than anything. That said, from the little bits that I’ve heard from this album (yes, I’ve got in on some early listens. I’M SPECIAL! WHAT OF IT?? ;3 ) he’s got me ready to wrestle a pack of Narwhals to own the sucker!! And I’m not the only one! His Kickstarter for the project collected over $3,600 in donations to make it happen, which is $1,000 over the initial goal set for the project. Quite  a vote of confidence from his fans! If you didn’t get in on that action, though, don’t you worry! You can still pre-order a copy of the album on his Bandcamp RIGHT HERE, either digital download ($6) or CD ($9). And you should. RIGHT DAMN NOW. Or Trent Reznor will teleport into your house via a magical flash drive and punch you in the genitals with a pixelated gauntlet of pain and angst. Or maybe not. But you would still miss out on the album and that would suck almost as badly, amirite? IAMRITE. ;)

Also, there will be  one of those crazy awesome listening parties for this chippy goodness on Areciboradio on the same date. Check out the details of that RIGHT HERE. In the meantime, stay tuned to IP’s Facebook & Twitter accounts and listen to Areciboradio for further details & chippy goodness!!

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ALBUMS, GAME MUSIC, GAMING, MUSIC

Friday Freakout: CORY JOHNSON (post-)ROCKS ZELDA \m||m/

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The Legend of Zelda.  Any gamer worth their weight in rupees is a fan of at least one of the games from this long lived series of awesome (and if not, may an octorok launch a spiky ball up your arse!!  :3 ) One among many, many  reasons that this is true has to do with the excellent music that accompanies every  Zelda game. And while there has been plenty of Zelda love among the VGM community over the years, there hasn’t really been any albums that were solely devoted to it.

ENTER CORY JOHNSON.

This dude that I’d never even heard of  before Jmr’s Open Circuit listening party on Areciboradio last weekend just up and released this INDESCRIBABLY amazing 23 track  Legend of Zelda tribute album. Turns out it’s actually been around a year in the making and you can damn well tell  by the quality of it! Stylistically it’s a mix of prog rock, post-rock, blues, western country, jazz piano AND ZORA KNOWS WTF ELSE!!!  Regardless, the end result is this stirring EPIC  – in the TRUEST sense of the word – of Zelda love and musicality far beyond the norm.
IT’S ABSO-F**KIN-LUTELY BEAUTIFUL. I mean, seriously, that sums it up, because how often do you hear someone describe a VGM album with the term “BEAUTIFUL“?? Also, the guy needs to get a band happening so I can see his ass play at MAGFest; would be a killer  show. SO GET ON THAT, VGM MUSICIANS!!!!   ;D ANYWHO, enough words already! HEY LISTEN!!  to it already and then promptly go bug the deku nuts out of Cory on Twitter about how awesome it is so he’ll keep making more fantastic VGMusic. DEFINITELY  will be your good deed of the day/week/month/year/EVAR.  ;)

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CHIPTUNE, MUSIC, PRODUCTION & TUTORIALS

Voltage – Dj CUTMAN’s Nice Sprite Chiptune Remix

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Hai friends. Following up with the three Chiptune covers I posted earlier today is something I spent my whole weekend on: A chiptune remix of Skrillex’s new song, Voltage. Using production techniques similar to my hit Daft Punk – Something About Us remix, including a heavily filtered vocal sample for the original song. I spent a lot of time EQing to get the chiptune sounds to feel “full”, without combatting the vocals or bass instrument I created. As an homage to Skrillex, I have one instance of the synth Massive running in this remix. See if you can pick it out!

I feel like I summed up my feelings pretty well in the Soundcloud description, so here’s a little copy/pasta:

A lot of people rag on Skrillex now that he’s super popular grammy award winning gothic looking twenty something, but something always stuck with me about his songs. Even after the initial “wow-factor” of his trademark dubstep monster sounds wore off, I found myself remembering his melodies. Could it be that they’re actually well-written pieces of music? I took the Skrillex song Voltage and re-created it with Magic 8bit, basic processing in ableton, and a heavy dose of EQ, to create this piece. The harsh and crazy nature of the original dubstep tune is replaced with the light-hearted, optimistic chiptune arpeggios and square lead. An intensely sculpted vocal sample gives the piece context, although I feel it works without.

And the original piece by Sonny Moore, aka Skrillex:

And finally, the piano arrangement I used as a basis for my Chiptune remix was composed by Evan Duffy. Here he is playing his arrangement, which is beautiful.

Finally, the MIDI from Evan Duffy’s cover was programmed by someone who goes by “Tilt”. If you have a passion for rock solid MIDI arrangements ( I mean, who doesn’t?! right guyyz? ; ) check out Tilt’s website.

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