Click mahh link to listen to my newest single Floatlands from the Album I seem to be taking too long to release!
Check out other songs on my Bandcamp and Soundcloud
Click mahh link to listen to my newest single Floatlands from the Album I seem to be taking too long to release!
Check out other songs on my Bandcamp and Soundcloud
Pretty much done with new single Floatlands. Going to be on new album as well.
Another new song from my upcoming album, which should be due around Thanksgiving.
:LINKS:
New album finished, hopefully the levels are correct.
This album is samples from just plain in the moment recordings with my girlfriend and close friend. Nothing was planned, and I had not even decided that I was going to mix these recordings. It’s a ode to our basement days, drinking, discussing, making music, whatever, basements are a common social institution.
Tuesday and Chris just happened to be playing a Micky Mouse game for Sega Genesis. I set the sampler on record and just picked up a guitar, playing nothing of sorts, making random yelps and such. Tuesday’s voice comes through splendidly and the random chitter-chatter was good backing chorus which in their tiny blips had their own melodic qualities. Each song came from separate nights during that week, I couldn’t really come to any idea of what we might have been doing the first night, but I do recall Tuesday playing her guitar, which sounds beautiful with it’s very thin and delicate strings.
Besides the sampled recordings I additionally utilized my other percussion samples, which happened to have be created in, well, the basement. I did use drum samples from the program as well, considering the percussion needed some amp. Bass and synth were added as well, which I usually utilize first-hand.
Hope you guys enjoy.
Hey guys, just throwing up some more beats on my blog. Take a listen if you would like!
As the name suggests, Pac-man is the focus here. Pac-man deserves his recognition, I mean he has set the highest bar on video game stardom, and has become insanely novel and iconic.
These reasons though are not why I decided to generate a mix of a Pac-man song. But don’t get me wrong! Pac-man, with my love for video games is certainly on my top five, especially because he pertains primarily to the arcade genres.
If anybody has ever played Playstation, I would hope they came across Pac-man World, which earned the honorary, green banded “Greatest Hits” title. It’s a great game if you haven’t played it, also very challenging. Besides the game play, graphics, and characters that strike me, the music really stands out. From the beginning pirate level tunes, to the mysterious temple music, the tracks are extremely well composed. The third world, which is set in space, always had the best music, but what game doesn’t have good music to go along with the space levels anyways? The first level’s music is sooo good, it has slap bass, spacey synthesizers, and a gracious techno vibe.
Give it a listen, but skip ahead to 0:24, that’s the level and song I sampled.
So I sampled the song, and I usually use my “Tascam Linear PCM recorder,” which basically is a handheld, battery operated dual headed microphone. It’s great for “field recording,” or recording audio in a large space, like a live performance or lecture hall. So I turn on the game I want to sample (this case being Pac-man World) then I’ll set up the microphone level with the speakers, but not too close. I’ll set the input levels and start recording live game play, which to me is more… I suppose… natural, getting the song, sounds FX, and sometimes the sound of the buttons mashing on the controller. I take whatever I can get, not just the song, because to me it’s more of a sample of “my” game play, not somebody else’s, no Youtube “rips”. I then I placed the sampled song out on my computer, sliced it into pieces and bits, organized it along with any other sampled percussion from my sample library that I have collected as well.
Here’s my mix then, Pac-man_Chunk_Mix
I’ll soon be posting it on Soundcloud as well, though in due time. Feel free to download the track from my Bandcamp!
Funk Slice? What does that inquire? A slice of funk perhaps? A slice of cake that has reached a state of decay or “funk?” Or maybe it has to do with “funk,” you know? Tunes that induce foot tapping, hip thrusting, occasional sexual desires, and gets the dance floor blazzzin.
Either way you want to convey the idea of funk or shall I say, “Funk Slice,” there really is only one factual reason for such a title. And when I say title [and let me cut the bullshit] I’m saying the title of the new Spaceport Johnson and Yellow Couch EP entitled, Funk Slice. That’s Me (Garret Stark), Spaceport Johnson and he (Christopher Gortowski), Yellow Couch who have taken some downright 80’s funk (or disco if you will) and have thrown a few tracks through a wood chipper. Well… maybe wood chipper [insert more clever analogy] sounds like we are destroying a medium. In a positive sense the “wood chipper,” which spits out our products of “slicing” are two great songs that have been stripped down, broken to pieces, and rebuilt into soundscapes of our own imaginations. So, using two laptops, two separate computer programs, and two different minds, we have created our own reinterpretations of what we think of Funk Slice to be.
I shall now clarify without words, here’s the sounds, I am doing no justice for us at this point.
Our tracks on Funk Slice seemingly have some rougher edges, but I can only think that we were placing the vibes that disco or funk music have into a spiral of chaos (to a sense). A remix is a remix though, the original vibe will never be precisely the same. We both tend to change octaves to strange levels, cut sounds off early, and basically use the voices as instruments. Reverb, delays, stacks beyond, stacks of filters, time changes, pitch shifts, all these aspects fall right into our interests in the electronic music world. We listen to artists such as: Daft Punk, Justice, Para One, and Surkin, which actually are all french electronic music artists. We also enjoy “Chillwave,” such as: Com Truise, Washed Out, Dunian, and Slow Magic. There are though, many other electronic artists and styles we get into, but I wouldn’t want to go off topic.
I can be sure that some could relate to our tastes and I am quite sure if you were reading this blog you would know a few of the electronic groups above. If not, check em out, they all influenced our music creation, and it seems to shine through.
But, even if you decided not to listen to our tracks, I’ll give the skinny on the two songs, and the two separate artists of the original songs. With the order of our tracks on the EP I’ll first begin with Falling in Love, by “Surface.” This song is tracks one, three, and four on our remix EP, and we had both basically did our own variations on both of the songs. Although, my (Spaceport Johnson) mix is actually two songs, but I like to consider it one, RumblePit (RumblePit_Lvl-1 and RumblePit_Lvl-2) considering it is a mix of the one real song, Falling in Love. On the other hand we have Christopher’s (AKA Yellow Couch/ Dalmation Labratory) track, Baybeh is just one mix, which is what I was planning on doing with our original intentions of having four songs on the EP. Though less is more, in my opinion, which he has clearly showed with the song Baybeh.
Suppose I could muster up a bit of info towards the artists themselves… it’s only right. I’ll start with Surface.
I personally have never heard of “Surface” actually, but from what I have found they are under the genre of “Smooth Jazz/ Soul.” They were kick’n it say around 1986 when the dance scene was hot and still basically fresh. They actually only had one album, Surface (Self-titled), which hails from Columbia Records. Besides that, other producers (CBS?, Funky Town Grooves, Sony…) released their songs on CD’s, LP’s, and other types of media. With the repeated releases people certainly were interested, and they probably had their share of dollar bills from the companies that produced their records.
I had hit a wall on the research for Surface, though I tried, but what I have found seemed to cut the cake.
Well maybe there isn’t a whole lot of information teeming about them, but this isn’t an analytical essay on these artists. With that said I hadn’t even done the research to discover the two songs when me and Chris conceived the idea of remixing something, “old” and something “funky.” I like disco! We like disco, and according to what research I have done, it proves that the two songs that Christopher had selected happen to be songs that were buzzing around every disco back in the groovy days of the 80’s. I wouldn’t be one to listen to it off-hand prior to my knowledge of its existence, though disco was just one of those genres I had been more than okay with after all these years, rather than some other genres… Whether or not the song Falling in Love hails from disco roots, or some off genre I may not be familiar within this present age, it sounds pleasing. I mean, old 80’s vibe, thick wet bass lines, gorgeous female vocals, simply poppin synth lines, everything about the song had caught our ears and got our minds flowing. Here, just listen to the original song Falling in Love…
So there’s Falling in Love, I am sure that most individuals could get a few head bobs whilst listening to that. Also if you listened to our songs we hope that you can hear certain parts of the original tracks, we didn’t want to overly modify or “FUBAR” the songs.
Moving on… David Joseph.
Now, the other original track You Can’t Hide (Your Love From Me), by David Joseph. And let me switch gears here and play the song first, I have a hard time organizing myself…
Geezuz, I want that video playing on a bunch of random TV monitors in my house, I can only wish to have been alive back then and been in that video, not nobody got problems in that disco. Regardless of personal opinion, you can think the footage is silly, in turn, I do realize it certainly holds some expired character, but the song is what the focal point here.
This track, You Can’t Hide (Your Love From Me), hails from kool kat David Joseph, along with his crew of course. The correlative mixes that we have fragmented to this song are tracks two and five on our EP. Christopher’s mix Love, You Can and my mix, Funkeeloopz’N’kutz, are clearly separate variations that took advantage of the lovely disco anthems from David Joseph. Both of our tracks are, as I like to call “forcefully funky,” and what I mean by that is we basically could not escape the funk, but we would never try to! All I am saying is the original song by David Joseph is bursting with an insane amount of “funkitude.” So I suppose no matter what you do to the song, it is inevitably going to be funky. Though, I do assume somebody could prove us wrong, but I’ll wait for that day.
So… David Joseph, what the funk is your story? Well I wish he would tell me, the internet has proved itself useless with disco information, that or I just don’t spend the time to find disco information… Which ever the case may be, David Nathaniel Joseph, has had a few years in the spotlight. From, I believe… 1983 – 1988 signed under Island records… he has released albums, EP’s, LP’s, mixes, compilations, you name it! He had done some vocal work for Chris Paul (DJ) and probably many others. He certainly has carved a path for himself, or should I say… had his foot on the disco floor (I’m sorry). One of his more popular albums featured the song You Can’t Hide (Your Love From Me), which had been released as many singles before hand. As I see it, this song was most likely his big hit, and I am only assuming this from the lack of details I could not dig up. I took a look at this link actually, which I also did not find myself… but it says that his profile regards some keyboarding and vocals skill. It says “Hi-tension” vocals, which I can only assume means “high-pitched.” And yes, I can hear this very clearly, he seems to sing with a very young, high voice, although not falsetto, and seems almost as though he had carried on the traditions of the castrato. It melds well though, I can’t imagine a deeper voice overlaying those smooth disco vibes. Anyways, great original track, and we’d hope you would take a listen to ours as well.
I assume though I can end there, with the lack of knowledge, and a depletion of words from my brain. Both original artist’s stand up to their disco roots that they may have very likely sprouted. We give nearly all the credit to the original artists who have made these songs to be available, and I hope that they too can at least appreciate our mixes. So give our mixes a listen and visit our links, we are always cooking up something new and more than happy to chat.
*We would also be open to any extra information towards the original artists, I am sure that there are some individuals or groups out there that are very passionate about funk/ disco/ smooth jazz and would certainly have some more details into the artists. So, feel free to send me a message, I would hate to wrongly identify these disco wonders.
Check out our links, they hold our music, art, and whatever else. You can also email me if you really want to (bottom link).
http://spaceportjohnson.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/dalmatianlaboratory
https://soundcloud.com/space-port-johnson
http://www.tumblr.com/blog/dalmatianlaboratory
Email: gimarobot@gmail.com
If anyone listened to “Tender Love”, considering I had posted it earlier, I have decided to adjust some of the levels of the song and re-post it. I jumped on the gun I suppose, but now I will relinquish myself and upload a more satisfying track. Here is the track “My Girls Session #2: ‘Tender Love’ (SPJ Baby Love Re-edit)”.
I explored the interwebs and found a small pinch of information regarding the song I sampled. “Baby Love”, by Noria is a J-Pop (Japanese Pop) song that I happened to pick up from Stepmania’s growing lists of tracks. Noria, another alias brought to you by B4U, a J-Pop group of four teenage girls that cooked up tracks for a few Benami games including: Dance Dance Revolution, Beatmania, and GuitarFreaks. Benami’s DDR mastermind Naoki Maeda was the producer that brought forth most of B4U’s tracks, including albums outside of the games. “Baby Love”, by Noria (B4U) is a song that I particularly think to stand out on the J-Pop’s library of songs. Consider J-Pop to be very “cute”, expressing soft female vocals and happy, sometimes emotional sounds. “Baby Love” offered ample amounts of endorphin oozing, cuddly melodies that make even violent metal head smile in delight. Well so I could only assume, this song can brighten just about anyone’s day.
So cutting right into the steak here it is, “Baby Love”, by Noria:
Me, finding some sort of fascination in sampling cute female voices was left with a wonderful offering from Noria. I hope maybe others feel the same way I do, but with any subjective view it doesn’t matter, I enjoy it dearly. Especially the first opening synth melody, immediately following the soft vocal intro, exploding into good times.