Archive for January, 2019

Ill-Advised 90s Superfly

Friday, January 25th, 2019

If you follow me on Twitter (you shouldn’t, it’s a terrible place), you may have seen me rant and ramble about various portable audio issues lately.

I’m not going to recap it all right now, I plan on a full-length blog post about it later, but my iPod Classic finally died and replacing it has been a nightmare. I absolutely abhor the iPod Touch, and I couldn’t get it to work right on my computer. Today, I got a nice high-end Sony Walkman. And it’s a really good music player, but for some damn reason the software that came with it won’t work on my computer. I have a feeling that that 110,000 song library scares it.

Wanted to do an informal poll here, although I can imagine that my audience isn’t really representative of mainstream musical consumption habits, how do you all listen to music these days? Do any of you actually buy music? I’ve felt like a relic for buying CDs for a few years now, but now I feel like a walking anachronism for buying music at all. It seems to me that everyone I know just streams it. And the very few I know that do buy music listen to it on their phone in lieu of a dedicated MP3 player.

So, am I really just that out of touch? I feel that there’s still a market for a good mid-level MP3 player with decent computer software. But literally every major corporation on earth seems to disagree with me. Is music ownership really dead?

Here’s a…not very good song to help you while you ponder these big questions.

Ice T
Superfly 1990 (Mantronix Remix)
Superfly 1990 (Fly Mix)
Superfly 1990 (New Jack Swing Remix)
Did you know that there was a sequel to Superfly? Shit, did you know that there were two sequels to Superfly? The first, Superfly T.N.T., came out in 1973, just a year after the release of the original. That movie is allegedly terrible. I say “allegedly” because I’ve never seen it, as it’s not exactly an easy film to track down. It was never released on DVD or Blu-ray, and I doubt it’s going to pop up on Netflix in the near future. I feel like whoever owns the rights to that one wants it to stay buried.

In 1990, Superfly returned with…Return Of Superfly. Although, not really. The original Superfly, Ron O’Neil passed on the flick, and the character was recast with soap opera actor Nathan Purdee…because yeah why the fuck not.

 

 

While Superfly T.N.T. has vanished off the face of the fucking earth, you can find Return Of Superfly on Amazon Prime right this minute. I imagine the rights holders of that one realized they could get a few views based on the recent Superfly remake. I haven’t seen Return Of Superfly, but based on that amazing trailer, it looks like the entire cast dies? Seriously, how many people get blown away in that trailer? Is Charles Bronson in that movie somehow?

The nearly forgotten Return Of Superfly also had a nearly forgotten soundtrack to go along with it, featuring new songs by Curtis Mayfield, who of course composed the legendary music for the original film. In an incredibly freakish coincidence, the soundtrack came out the same day Mayfield was paralyzed when a piece of stage equipment fell on him. Making this one of the last things he worked on before his accident. Damn.

I don’t have the soundtrack proper, just the 12″ single for the main theme, which features Mayfield alongside Ice-T (with Lenny Kravtiz on guitar and as a producer). It’s an odd number. The Mayfield parts are on point, and it has a real groove to it. But Ice-T really sounds like he’s phoning it in. He’s doing this more like a spoken word piece than a rap track. I really hated this track when I first heard it, and while I still don’t love it, I do have to say that it’s grown on me. Those Mayfield parts are great, and the bassline and overall feel of the track is solid. Honestly, I wish there was a remake that removed Ice-T and just turned the track into a Mayfield solo number with some extended instrumental bits.

Anyone see the new Superfly? Was it remotely good at all?

 

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I flunked out of Berlin School

Monday, January 14th, 2019

Tonight’s post features electronic music from the late-70s, all from albums that are out-of-print.

A lot of times, when I share music like this, I go whole hog and just put the album up in its entirety, but I wanted to consolidate and just focus on some specific highlights tonight. I feel that trying to get a bunch of random people to download an entire album of ambient/experimental electronic music might be a hard sell.

I do have some stuff by more mainstream releases in the pipe, but posts for the next month or so may be sparse. Looking for a new teaching gig (looooong story) has taken up a lot of free time as of late! But things are cool, and I got cool stuff planned, so hang tight and mellow out with these groovy tunes.

 

Hydravion
Etude En Do
Hydravion are an odd sort, halfway between electronic and rock music. While they rely heavily on keyboards and other electronic effects, they also employ more traditional instruments, often to great effect. This track straight up features a dope guitar solo, not to mention an absolutely bitchin’ bassline, the types of things you rarely find on electronic music of this era. Apparently, their guitar player, Patrick Verbeke, went on to be blues musician of some regard, and I can hear it here. Dude has style.

These guys didn’t put out much, just a pair of albums in the late-70s. Both are out-of-print, but neither command a high price in the secondary market. So if you dig this, they’re pretty easy to check out.

 

Adrian Wagner
Chasquis
Andrian Wagner’s great-great grandfather was Richard Wagner, which I imagine kind of sucked. Just think, no matter how great the musical contribution Adrian made to society, his parents could’ve been like, “granddad wrote ‘Ride of the Valkyries,’ what’s you’re problem with this synthesizer crap?”

But Adrian Wagner, who sadly passed away last year, was not only a composer, but an inventor. He was the creator of the Wasp synthesizer, which was one of the very first digital synthesizers when it came out in the late 1970s. While the wasp didn’t sell all that great when it first came out, these days they’re prized collectibles amon synth-enthusiasts, thanks to their unique look and sound.

I don’t know if Adrian used the wasp or similar sytnhs on this track from his 1978s album The Last Inca, but it certainly sounds like it. It has a cleaner and brighter sound than a lot of other instrumental electronic music of that era. Instead of sounding like a Tangerine Dream knock-off, his music actually sounds like the tunes that Tangerine Dream would be making in the second-half of the 80s, except that his music is actually good.

Wagner seemed to have a thing for Incas, this was just one release themed around Incan culture, with Instincts being the other. Neither were ever released on CD individually, but they were bundled together on one disc in 1990 for a release called Incan Gold, if you decide to seek them out.

 

Earthstar
Latin Sirens Face The Wall
Earthstar was a Berlin School ambient/electronic artist much in the vein of Klaus Schulze, so much so that he produced this album from which this track comes from, their 1972 sophomore effort, French Skyline. However, unlike literally every other artist like this, Earthstar weren’t from Germany. They were actually from New York. I’m sure there are other artists of this style that were from America, but they certainly were few and far between – this type of music seems to be distinctly European.

Earthstar put out four albums from 1978 to 1982. Their debut record, Salterbarty Tales, is in high-regard among electronic fans, but since it was an independent release and has never been repressed, original copies go for a mint these days, so I haven’t heard much of it.

This track is, like I said, very reminiscent of Klaus Schulze, but I do feel like the group do bring their own style to it, it has a more ethereal quality than a lot of Schulze, thanks to the choral effects that give it a church-from-another-world vibe. If you ever find yourself out in the middle-of-nowhere around 3am, this would be suitable background music.

French Skyline was reissued on CD about ten years ago, and its still affordable online. LPs aren’t too expensive either. If you dig it, I also recommend checking out their follow-up, Atomkraft? Nein, Danke!, which features shorter songs, and is a bit more diverse in style.

Posted in Adrian Wagner, Earthstar, Hydravion | 1 Comment »

Arranged game music for the new year

Thursday, January 3rd, 2019

Capcom
Ghosts ‘n Goblins (Arrange Version)
Commando (Arrange Version)
These arrange versions are both from Capcom Game Music, a collection of tunes from Capcom games that was released by GMO Records in August of 1986 (according to the VGMdb). It was their sixth release overall, and their fourth collection of game music by a single company, following similar collections featuring Nintendo, Hudson and Konami.

While the Hudson collection featured an an entire side of arranged editions, this album copies Konami’s format, with just a pair of re-imagined tracks. Shame, I wish we would’ve been treated to arranged variations of music from games like “Section Z” or “Trojan” instead of ear-grating audio rips from “1942” and “Higemaru.”  Neither of those games feature much music, so their tracks are mostly just raw game audio, and are very hard to listen to.

Like many other early arranged versions featured on GMO releases, the arranged mixes here are by Yoshihiro Kunimoto. Unlike future arrange albums, which often featured full bands or sometimes even orchestras, these are still largely digital affairs with drum machines and synthesizers abound. Very fun stuff though. I always view arranged versions like these as what the game company wanted the music to sound like at the time, if they weren’t limited by game hardware limitations. Both of these are great, but the “Ghost ‘n Goblins” version is better, mostly because it’s just a better song overall, but also because it has plenty of dope synth bass. Said it before, I’ll say it again – I love me that synth bass.

Namco
Pac-Man A Go-Go
Solo Suite Xevious -No. 1-
Main Theme From “Rolling Thunder”
The early GMO releases would usually feature just a handful of arranged versions. The focus was always on the original music. But by the 90s this would change, and more companies would embrace the arranged version as the showcase tracks, even releasing albums comprised entirely of arranged versions. Makes sense to me. If you wanted to hear the original game music, you could always just play the game. These albums gave the companies and the composers more freedom with the music.

Like I said when talking about the Capcom albu, most arranged albums I have feature mixes that are largely still digital and based around electronic instruments.

But This is Namco!, the album from which these tracks came from, is really different. All of the tracks here focus on live instrumentation, and with some really odd choices too. The “One O’Clock Galaga ’88” track reworks the theme music from that game as a big band jazz tune, while “Solo Suite Xevious -No.1-” takes the game’s rather simple melody and transforms it for saxophone (I think – I’m not up on my brass instruments). It’s a really sparse mix too, so raw and quiet that I can even hear the player’s breath between notes and the clicks of the keys.

There are some bold choices here, but overall I think the variety is a little detrimental to the final product. There’s just too much going on, the album has no focus on defined style. Yeah, the lullaby version of Mappy’s music is alright, but it’s sandwiched between the jazzy Galaga theme and a bombastic as fuck 80s-rock take on the music from Dragon Spirit. There’s no flow. And also, some of this music just isn’t all that great or memorable. Maybe I would feel differently I was more familiar with games like The Return of Ishitar and Dragon Spirit, maybe nostalgia would help. But I have no feelings for most of the games on this album, so it’s just a collection of (sometimes not great) versions of music from games I’ve barely heard of.

There are a few standouts though! In addition to the awesome saxophone Xevious theme, the full-on jazz version of the theme to Rolling Thunder is just an absolute banger. It completely nails the suave, suit-and-tie spy aesthetic the game was going for.

Also “Pac-Man a Go-Go” is great. Because Pac-Man is great. And good on them for somehow making an entire song out of what is probably 10 seconds of original game music.

May 2019 bring us more impressively reworked game music, and less white nationalists hellbent on killing us all!

Posted in Game Music, remixes | No Comments »