I finished my Nirvana / Choir remix! You can download it here. It’s both brooding and pretty and other things like that.
proletariat ftw
As of Monday, April the 2nd, I will be doing a co-op term for Propaganda Games, in Vancouver. As such, I will be in Vancouver from April through August. If you’re in Vancity, we should totally hang out.
(I should note here, for the record, that everything I say and do here is my opinion and not the opinion of Propaganda, Disney, etc, etc, etc.)
101 Free Games #6: Plus Or Minus and Cytoplasm
Cytoplasm is a scion of the amazing Experimental Gameplay Project at CMU (again with the CMU!). Although I love the project, this is not one of the hits. It’s nice to look at, but the gameplay is loopy and simple: Grab some guys and throw them at the enemy. Repeat. Done after 10 minutes.
Plus Or Minus, on the other hand, is a game about magnets. While you should avoid the ‘Easy’ mode, the ‘Hard’ mode has the roots of a lovely puzzle game in it. You attract particles to your two charged magnets. When positive pariticles meet negative particles, they annihilate each other. Your objective is to prevent the particles attached to your magnets from reaching the edge of the screen. It needs tuning, but there’s a huge amount of potential there.
keepon dancing
Marek Michalowski, one of the mad geniuses at CMU, has made a robot that dances, named Keepon. This is both the cutest and most brilliant thing you’ll see all day. Watch the video and you’ll see what I mean.
this is what they want: clip
Fractal – This Is What They Want [Clip].
Started this one awhile ago, when I was looking for a new direction for the Nero remix. The bassline came out, and then I did a bunch more clean up on the drums tonight. I’ll finish it off soon, though I don’t know where else it needs to go.
(With apologies to Mr. Ellis and Mr. Immonen.)
remix-ness
I am delighted to say that the two remixes I’ve been working on look to have been approved by the masterminds at Pacific Front. This pleases me. Clips are bellow, and more release info will be up soonest, too.
Dustin H – Receive The Light (Fractal’s Photons Are Data Mix) – basically me trying to be BT. It’s downtempo, lush, and has lots of edits and cute time signature changes. Clip is here.
Nero – Lost (Fractal Remix) – somewhere between Gwill Morris and Leama & Moor. It’s one massive key-shifting melodic hook over and over and over and over. Clip is here.
hush
Playin’ at Hush tonight, with Dave ‘Osiris’ Sanderson – you should totally come.
and dj stands for…
That’s Kool Herc up there, one of the pioneers of hip-hop DJing. I was looking at some wanky academic papers with titles like “Beatboxing As Information Recall” and stuff like that, and I was suddenly struck very, very hard by the fact that vinyl is a non-linear medium.
I mean, it’s an obvious thing, but also a really subtle thing. The next step from that is to realize that house music is linear music, whereas hip-hop is not. As a case in point, ‘way back in the day, house and disco tunes were sometimes play on reel to reel tape players, about the most linear medium every created by man. Hip-hop DJing, on the other hand, doesn’t exist, can’t exist without the ability to do “live re-editing, live re-mixing, and mash-ups!”, to paraphrase a promotional campaign for a certain DJ that we all know and love:
So which is better? The mix or the cut? I’m pretty sure the answer is “both.” I was raised on John Digweed though, so you can guess which way I tend to jump. That said, I should try jumping the other way soon.
get on and ride
If you’ve ever had sex, you should watch SHORTBUS. It is by degrees touching, hysterical, hopeful, depressing, fantastic, real, mind-bogglingly explicit, and deliciously subtle. It also includes some timeless lines like: “Justin, someone just came on your cat”, “She’s got a cunt like a wizard’s sleeve” and the single most amazing rendition of The Star-Spangled Banner you’ll ever hear.
Proton Power
So unless I miss-read the emails, the Tide Pool show on Proton Radio will be airing live and direct on the free stream tomorrow (Friday, March 16th) at 0300 hours EST. I assume that means Midnight on Thursday for us westerners. We shall see, however.