Friday, December 5, 2014

JP DECERF IS GONNA MELODY YOU

hey there, im super sorry i keep forgetting to update the blog. hopefully the QUALITY of what im offering up and the history supercedes any QUANTITY, hehe. i want to share a beautiful album by jean pierre decerf and myriam chadcar, its called synthetic music. some of the tracks have a great holiday feel so i thought to share. have a listen and see for yourself!


super lush melodies here from jp decerf, ive got a dozen or so albums by him and this definitely is one of the albums i prefer more. just have a listen and see if tracks like rythmic and thematic dont do something for you. very nice layering of synth sounds on this, but the rhythms definitely arent to be scoffed at. i think this album even now is very ahead of its time. maybe you'll agree. enjoy.





jp decerf & myriam chadcar - synthetic music

Friday, August 8, 2014

MECHANIZATION FROM THE L SERIES

hey there, sorry i was a little late on making a blog post for ya'll, ive been working hard on my own music actually. today im going to share a great bruton from the l series with various composers such as paul hart and harold fisher. this 17 track release had a great driving futuristic feel that you must check out, blogger and youtube wont cooperate, so here's the album and a link on youtube to the titletrack. enjoy and give some feedback!


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uQLeOcMbN74






http://www.mediafire.com/download/fshy0df6146x4qn/va_-_mechanisation_(bruton,_brl10).rar





Friday, July 25, 2014

James Asher is FM AND ELECTRO BBOY BADNESS

Greeting from TSSBAY01. Today I wanted to share this amazing album by James Asher, entitled Flash Music. James was a producer/multiinstrumentalist who wrote for New Southern Library, Rogue, and Bruton among other labels. He was a big deal in the production music world, he had licensed soundtracks to MTV and Studio Four among other places. While 'Flash Music' may be his most experimental and bizarre album, its also the most accessible, so I figured it would be a good idea to let you try this one on for size. Here, have a listen to 'Process Y', a great B-side album favorite.



To not mention that this album is very FM oriented and saturated sounding would be remiss, but theres also some other great synths and the way they mesh together is great. To me, this is very fun and organic electro music, but it's faurky still beat oriented. The kind of thing that will work for both porno or party music. Pets like it too. James has a great sense of melody on this album and the songs arent too long, so they feel very stacked with groove most of all. Recommended for you if you are into Teddy Lasry, Proxyon, Arsenal, Andy Clark,
and Keith Mansfield. So without further ado, heres Flash Music.

James Asher - Flash Music

Thursday, July 10, 2014

birdy is space discoey rock goodness

Hey again. I wanted to lay this album on you because theres some serious things going on here melodywise, beautiful synthesizers and choices of instruments here. But between what you hear in the playing and the beautiful songs on this album, well, it is certainly hard to say what the main goodies even are..but i'll say its gonna stick with you.

Tracks like "Caressed by the Sun" and 'On The Move' have such a great feel, you absolutely get treated to sensibilities that you'd hear in a real verbose NWOBHM metal track, but theres a ton of pop to this. Think simply that _feel_. I guess it's best to say you get those polyharmonic good-feelin chords across many instruments, which is a big plus, but these guys are a lot like Landscape, aka The German YMO, who I will get into another time.

Some songs are certainly spaced-out and driving, some have really nice acoustic guitar driving the songs, but you'd be hard pressed to not be able to compare it to all of the following things: Final Fantasy, The Fucking Champs, Frederik Mercier, Com Truise, Polka Music, Folk Music, Space Music, Krautrock, and IDM Music. Just check it out.

Anyways, this album was recorded by several German doods in 1979 and 1980. Eddy Mueller, Steve Jehring, Wolfgang Jarger, Klaus Meyer, and Dicky Hank on Track 4. They recorded 5 or 6 albums in the 1980s, this happens to by my favorite. Please to enjoy 'On The Move'.









http://www.mediafire.com/download/pxsa6sz72ybn4o0/birdy_-_on_the_move_[selected_sound_0127,_1980].rar

Wednesday, June 25, 2014

Trevor Duncan and his ambient library sounds

Hey again, told you i'd be back. Today, I have a great library/production album by Trevor Duncan. He was a british arranger, conductor, and composer who released only a handful of albums, but they're all classic and worth checking out. He really had a way with incorporating melody and making rhythm unimportant with his unique soundscapes.

Sharing his 1981 Impress Records release 'Other Worlds' with you today, I think this album serves as a great starting point of what this genre has to offer if you are new to library music, or just looking for something new. Enjoy!



http://www.mediafire.com/download/xad59f8xw372ztr/[impress]_ia_428_-_trevor_duncan_-_other_worlds_(1981).rar

Wednesday, April 30, 2014

a discussion of essence with tim of year 200x

First and foremost, our apologies for my absence from this blog. It is totally unacceptable! Things have been busy, but time will certainly be made for this here webspot moving forward.

As some of you know, We at TSS have been involved with video game cover music for quite a while now. We love all of these bands for different reasons, be it the music or the feel or the people involved. A lot of bands can come and go, but theres a few bands that stick with you over whether they break up or whether they go on hiatus and come back with even stronger material. One of those seminal VGM bands to us is certainly Michigan's Year 200x. Fairly early on in our own travels, we met Tim Lydon, mainman and super sweetheart of the band. After many years and the bands incredible album 'We Are Error', Year 200x has released 'World Of Ruin', a 6 song offering that showcases a lot of that flair that drew us to Year 200x so long ago. An interesting conversation about VGM and all things considered follows.
 
TSS: 'World Of Ruin' has a ton of character and finesse involved for a relatively short release. There are some killer tones and the playing and arrangement is top notch, as expected. It definitely makes the wait since we are error worth it. Do you feel that maybe less is more in terms of offerings for bands these days with interest shifting to sites such as Bandcamp, iTunes, and Spotify?

Y200X: I’ve definitely noticed a shift towards shorter releases, and even releasing single songs at a time. Sometimes bands will just one-off songs and then when they have an album’s worth, they’ll bundle the songs together into an album. That’s definitely not something that was possible when I started making music, and I think it’s pretty neat. It provides an opportunity to release music without needing the budget of recording and releasing a whole album at a time. The budget required could discourage people from releasing great music, so it’s nice to have a way around it.


As far as that applies to World of Ruin, we definitely went the shorter EP route for budgetary reasons, but also because due to our busy schedules, we just didn’t have the time to write a full album’s worth of material. I really believe that if we had stuck our guns to try to release a full LP then we would have ended up releasing nothing at all. All of the tunes on the EP are ones that we had at least played a few times live, so the arrangement was there; it was just a matter of adding the extra layers (extra instrumentation, vocals, fadeouts, etc) that can be done in a studio but not necessarily in a live setting. I also think that focusing on a smaller set of songs really helped us to spend more time on each song, allowing us to realize our vision for the songs more fully than we might have otherwise. 

                                                                  



TSS: Year 200x sticks out to me as being one of the most honest and solid vgm bands out there both live and on recording. Can you tell the readers a little bit about what keeps your inspiration and desire to progress with both production and playing going as the years go by?

Y200X: Man, it’s hard. Like...really hard. As tends to happen, our lives have changed a lot since we started playing together in 2006; kids have been born, marriages have occurred, members have moved out-of-state, things like that. Just look at how long it took for us to produce the new EP...we recorded the drums back in 2011. Almost three years to record six tracks.

Despite all of this, we still have this music inside of us, along with a love of the original music and appreciation for those people who enjoy our particular flavor of video game covers. From these things we draw our inspiration. We feel we owe it to our listeners and ourselves to progress in terms of playing skill, arrangements, and production, to show that we still care and that regardless of all of the things going on in our personal lives, we’re going to give as much of ourselves as we can in order to make music that makes people feel good.

TSS: If you had to pick one Year 200x song as your favorite both in playing live and recording that you guys have done over the years, which one would it be, and why?

Y200x: I’d have to say Dancing Mad from Final Fantasy VI. It’s a tune that we never thought we’d be able to flesh out, for many reasons including its length, its complexity, and how different each movement sounds. However with lots of work and brainstorming, I think we were able to come up with a pretty good version. Good enough that when we play it live, it doesn’t feel like an 11-minute song, it just kind of flies by.





TSS: I would have to agree, personally it beats out Silius and Zelda 2 as my fav. And when you can get a song that encompasses that much feeling together, and still feels shorter than longer and flesh it out how you want, well that is a huge victory. What advice would you like to give younger bands getting into vgm or even fans who are struggling to find others who are into it to get a scene going? Any things you regret doing, or anything you may have done differently?

Y200X: Try to do your own thing stylistically, and try not to be influenced by what songs have been covered by other artists. Do what feels right to you. Do you really want to do a cover of the moon level from Ducktales or Wiley stage 1 from Mega Man 2? Do it. Have fun. I’d rather listen to a well-arranged version of a tune I’ve heard a million times than a crazy obscure song that doesn’t hold my interest because there’s no nostalgic connection involved. Find other people that have the same love of video games and music as you, and just enjoy making music.


There are a few small things that I might change about our performances and recordings (so many wireless guitar cable issues, I kind of can’t stand the snare sound on We are Error) but no big regrets. It’s been super fun and the friendships I’ve made far, far outshine any negatives.

TSS: One last question: as you get older, do you feel like your impact as a musician who plays and performs video game music has left an impact, and do you think that its an artform that has room to grow? Where do you see gaming and the fandom surrounding it when we are in our 50's?

Y200X: I do think that there’s plenty of room for video game music and vg covers to grow. It’s a perfect way to take two things that many people are passionate about--video games and music--and express them at the same exact time. There’s not many things I can think of that can accomplish the same result. For that reason alone I think it’s an artform that will last.


As more time goes by, there will be more and more talented people creating video game music, and other talented people interpreting that music and molding it into something of their own in order to pay tribute to it.  I really can’t imagine this changing, and I can’t wait to see what brilliance the future holds.


'World Of Ruin' is available at Year 200x's Bandcamp, and you can check it out right over here -------> http://year200x.bandcamp.com/

Special thanks to Tim for answering our questions! See you again next time, it wont be in 6 months, promise!