Based on my google hits, I see several folks stumbling on DrownRadio.com in search of Bomarr’s newest installation to the Wild X-Mas mixtape series. Sadly, last years volume was the last in the series, but fear not; videogame musician and bead sprite artist Doctor Octoroc has released 8-bit Jesus, a chiptune tribute to christmas songs. The album is currently available as a zip file or individual mp3s, but I get the impression that this is a work in progress, so check back later for more muzacs.
Lots of great stuff happening on the West Coast these days. Nerdcore Rising, the nerdcore documentary that features a healthy dose of Drown Radio in it’s soundtrack, is playing tonight and Wednesday at The Red Vic Theater in San Francisco.
Tomorrow night is a huge nerdcore show at The Uptown in Oakland featuring MC Frontalot, MC Lars, ytcracker and Drown Radio. Drown Radio (aka AllAboutGeorge and Doctor Popular) will be opening the show so get there early! Doors at 9pm. Rumor has it that Lars and yt might join me onstage for the first (and possibly only) live performance of 911 AM!!
Front and co will also be rocking a show at the Knitting Factory in LA later this week too. Frontalot has hinted that Will Wheaton might also join his set to do the hilarious ShellfishCore skit. More info on the tour and dates here.
I was out of the country during the West Coast Wigout in LA, but hopefully we’ll start seeing videos from that online soon.
I’m happy to say that MC Lars and YTCracker’s new studio album, The Digital Gangster, is available now! Digital Gangster features 14 tracks made by two nerds with a real love of hip hop and is “for sale” in Radiohead-esqu donation system. It features production and guest appearances by Beefy, MC Frontalot, and other nerdcore luminaries.
I’ve even got some production credits on the album, having made the beats for both Birth of a Phish and MC Lars’s Facebook Friend Count. Digital Gangster also has one track that I produced and rapped on called 911 AM (Guiliani). It’s is a song that I had been saving for the next Drown Radio album, but after hanging with the Lars and YT in the studio, I thought the song was a good fit for the three of us. It was one of those songs that literally came together in less than 4 hours (writing, rapping, and everything). Those guys are geniuses.
[note: the views represented below are Doc's and don't necessarily reflect what Lars and YT feel about the track] Check out the great fan video (embedded above) by youtuber ShannonLikesConan
In my mind, 911 AM isn’t about the September 11th hijackings, that’s already been covered (pretty well in fact). This song deals with the fear mongering and civil liberty abuses in the name of protecting us from terrorists. Some will tell you everything changes in a “post 9/11 society”, but that’s bullshit. It’s scary to think that someone can be treated as a terrorist because they have a band sticker on their bike or for posting Aqua Teen Hunger Force LEDs. Taking a tube of toothpaste from travelers doesn’t make the world a safer place. Arresting someone for taking pictures of a bridge doesn’t make the world a safer place. When police make a mistake, as the Boston Police did with maker Star Simpson, we can’t let them trump up their charges
Of course most of us already knew it, but now it’s official: MC Lars and ytCracker are Internet Superstars! Lars and YT were in town last week recording their new e.p., tentatively titled “The Digital Gangster E.P.” (according to the interview embedded above), and I got a chance to hang out with both of them. On monday, I spent the day with the guys at the Rondo Bros studio and was totally amazed at how quickly they could write and memorize their verses. They already had finished 3/4 of their album, but I brought them 3 new beats and some song ideas, so we spent Monday working on Drown Radio beats (word!). I did the hook on a Lars song and ytCracker ripped a solo verse on one of my glitchiest beats yet, but what I’m really excited about is our collab song “Giuliani”. Giuliani is about the over-usage of 9/11 to justify arresting people for taking pictures of buildings, or wearing weird shirts, etc.
The Lars/YT e.p. is slated for release on November 1st, no price as of yet, but you NEED this album. I haven’t heard all of it, but I can say for a fact that what I have heard is some of the best material either artist has put out yet!
When constructing music using circuit bent instruments, I tend to spend 10 minutes improvising to a click track then combing over the resulting audio and extracting the most interesting moments to be later chopped and sequenced in Reason. Basically, I’m the enemy of the “purest” bending community. My goal isn’t to make deconstructionist audio collages, but rather to take these little unpredictable sounds and turn them into something catchy. I want to get a glitch stuck in your head, that’s it.
Even when my music strays into experimental territory, as it did in Bentstrument Guitar (off of Atomic Bros VS Drown Radio), the process was still the same. Improvise, record, chop, sequence, publish.
This morning I tried to do something slightly different, instead of chopping up the audio, I decided to construct an atmospheric song using 3 tracks. Although you may still hear chunks of this audio sampled in future works, this is technically my first “organic”, or non-sequenced, circuit bent song. I’ve embedded the song below, but you can grab the mp3 or wav files too. I am offering this song up to other musicians to chop up and use, all that I ask in return is credit (with a link back) and that you post any resulting songs built from this song in the comments section below.
Looking back, I probably wouldn’t have bought Xoc’s newest album, The Beginning of the End, if it had cost one dollar more. Not that I wasn’t interested… GameMusic4All’s description of the Sacramento based musician who performs live versions of video game sound tracks sounded enticing, but without as much as a single preview track, my decision to buy the limited edition 3” CD was ultimately based on it’s price. At $6 with shipping, it was just too good of a deal.
A few days later, the CD arrived, and after a quick household search for something that I could I could play the 3” CD, on I was finally able to see what’s Xoc’s music was about. I was totally won over in the first 5 seconds with the theme to Contra (one of my favorite video games) being played on a Casio SK-1 (one of my favorite instruments). There are 100 video game songs on The Beginning of the End, averaging about 7 seconds each and played on different combinations of toy pianos, distorted guitars, accordions, and drums.
I interviewed Xoc about the inspiration and the process of creating this unique album. Read it after the bump: Read the rest of this entry »
This happened a while ago, but I forgot to brag: Drown Radio’s Geek N’ Spell (from the album Me Geek Pretty One Day) is the new intro music to Epic Fu! I’m so proud to hear one of my favorite tracks mixed with such cool animation. Epic Fu is one of my favorite shows and I hope we will be able to work together some more in the future. It’s also cool to see my low-tech circuit bent sounds mixed with high-tech animation. Here is the YouTube link. I’ve also created an Epic Fu ringtone for the iPhone, just download this file and it should automatically upload into your iTunes.
Internet expert and Drown Radio co-hort AllAboutGeorge has written a brand new song about Google’s Chrome browser. I personally believe the track, About:Internets, is AAGeorge at his best. Feel free to leave your comments on the song below and/or bump the song on TheSixtyOne.
The San Francisco Examiner recently published a list of the “Top 10 Hip-Hop Songs that Sampled a Video Game” which include our friends and fellow nerdites ytCracker and Random (aka Mega Ran).
The list was of particular interest to me since I’ve recently started working on the next Drown Pirate Radio podcast, which happens to be video game themed. This list reminded me of the old hip hop compilations “Game Over” and “Game Over II”. These compilations contain loops built from video games, with some great rappers over them. I’ve wanted these discs since they first came out, but they are hard to find. If anyone has a copy they can share or let me know how to find one, I’d really appreciate it.
The list was of particular interest to me since I’ve recently started working on the next Drown Pirate Radio podcast, which happens to be video game themed. This list reminded me of the old hip hop compilations “