Category: Music

Mass Review Time – Honeymoon Edition

Internet, I have a problem. I’m addicted to Fargo.

Maybe it’s not so bad as addiction, but the summer trip south to Fargo has become a tradition that I can surely not break free of. I need it. I need it so bad that I managed to convince my now-wife that it’s where we should spend our honeymoon. So maybe it is bordering on addiction. I’m not a psychiatrist, I don’t know these things. Surely there’s a better way I could have started this article.

As usual, the trip was mostly to get away, relax, and just be together for a few days. And from what I’m told, that’s mostly what a honeymoon is about too. So to that end the voyage was perfectly successful. Of course we also spent a buttload of money. Like, way more money than we were even allowed to spend while down there. By some random stroke of luck, the amount you’re allowed to spend when crossing the border increased on the day we came home, so we didn’t have to pay duty on what we spent over the previous limit. It’s the first time crossing the border was a truly pleasant experience.

To that end, I should note that this is by no means a complete list of things I bought in the States. I’ve obviously excluded anything The Wife bought, because this website is about me me me me me and God forbid I give anyone else more than a passing mention. I also spend a bit on a few little house things and some clothes that I don’t feel are nearly interesting enough to write about. On that note, let’s take a look at exactly what I judge to be “interesting.”

Continue reading Mass Review Time – Honeymoon Edition

The Amazing Exploding Circus

I’ve been listening to the new(ish) I Fight Dragons CD like once a day for the duration of this month. You should go buy it. It’s a little considerably more radio-ey than either of their EPs, but the quality is still there. And yeah, maybe the lyrics to “The Geeks Will Inherit the Earth” are edging a little too close to Good Charlotte territory, but it’s such a fun song! Really, the point is that they use a GameBoy as an instrument, and that’s more than enough to keep a firm grasp on my attention and my ten dollars.

And to switch up the topic completely, when I was searching for the Kaboom album cover, I found this:

Upon further investigation, I discovered that this cereal was only discontinued in 2010. For the last five years at least, anytime I go down to the States on vacation I spend more time in Wal-Mart’s cereal aisle than anywhere else. How is it that I never once saw this? I understand that it would have had a different, more modern (though less amazing) box design, but I never saw anything close. Too bad. It looks like it would really make breakfast fun. Guess I’ll have to stick with the stupid Fruity Pebbles flakes.

CD Review: The Greatest Video Game Music

Foreword: Just so nobody gets the wrong impression, I really like this CD. I just want to share my thoughts on it. Not all of them are nice. Thanks for understanding.

Among the many, many wonderful things Stephanie bought me that were amalgamated into my wedding gift (that girl spoils me rotten) was a compact disc entitled The Greatest Video Game Music. I can’t help but feel like maybe the London Philharmonic Orchestra was trying to start something with me there.

Calling your compilation The Greatest Video Game Music is setting the bar pretty high, as we video game nerds love us some video game musics. A cursory glance at the back of the cover confirmed my suspicions that it was something more akin to The Most Marketable Video Game Music. More evidence of this is that the image on the cover is a soldier with a cello on fire and a helicopter in the background. VIDEO GAMES ARE NOT ALL CALL OF DUTY. Goddammit. Stupid Sony and Activision ruined everything.

Anyway, that’s starting to deviate from my point. Or is it? I don’t know, I’m confused about where I was taking this. I guess something about how many games are represented on here that I didn’t even know had music, nevermind music that anybody bight consider to be the greatest. Oh, sure, you’ve got representation for the mainstays like Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, and Final Fantasy. There are a few you might not not think of off the cuff but definitely belong there, like the Metal Gear Solid 2: Sons of Liberty and Tetris themes (more on the latter in a bit). Then there’s… the rest.

“I didn’t even know ____ had music.” You can fill in that blank with any of the following games that are represented on this CD: Splinter Cell: Conviction, Fallout 3, Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare, Modern Warfare 2, and Battlefield 2. There are a couple others in there that puzzled me, most notably Bioshock, Oblivion, and Mass Effect. I know that all of these games had music, but none of them had memorable music. Chalk that up to the games being so immersive that I didn’t notice music in the background if you must, but I couldn’t hum you a single tune from any of those titles. The tracks from these games didn’t even seem familiar to me when I listened to them, so that.

Back to that contingent of FPSs though. Is it really necessary to include tracks from both Modern Warfares and Battlefield 2? I can’t imagine that anyone who plays those games cares at all about the music in them. Same thing with Splinter Cell. They probably could have replaced at least two of those entries with something a little more fitting, say a track each from Sonic the Hedgehog 2 and MegaMan 2? You know, games with music that people actually care about. Maybe even too much in some cases. Halo 3‘s inclusion I give a pass because it’s just not a personal interest; I’ve heard many people laud the Halo soundtracks.

The two that really make me scratch my head are the tracks from Advent Rising and Angry Birds. I’ve never even heard of Advent Rising. And Angry Birds. Angry. Birds. Nobody but nobody who is going to buy this particular CD is in the Angry Birds demographic. Yes, I played it. But that was before I downloaded real games onto my phone. Is there even any music in Angry Birds past the title screen?

Uncharted, Grand Theft Auto IV, and World of Warcraft also seemed a little out of place to me. But at least those are gamers’ games and not paint-by-numbers FPSs.

So maybe I think the track selection could have used a little fine tuning. Of course I do. Every single (real) gamer who looks at this CD will have a whole lotta corrections to make. There are so many games out there with fantastic music that it would be impossible to pare it down to a mere 20ish tracks, even if you didn’t double-dip for a few franchises. The real question here is if the compilation that the London Philharmonic Orchestra chose works. The short answer is “Yes.”

The long answer, if you’re up for a few more paragraphs, is just a lot more music/game nerd over-analysis and picking. And the first thing that I want to say is that I hit the nail on the nose: the two Modern Warfare tracks and the Battlefield 2 theme are ultimately forgettable. Generic war-sounding tunes, mainly to a marching drum beat with some technoey stuff thrown in to try to differentiate them. Sorry, LPO, you shot too wide. Reign it in and play for the people who love video games, not the people who play shooting games because that’s the fad right now. Gamers love video game music, Bros do not. Not a single Bro will buy this album, and that is the hard truth of it.

The Advent Rising, Oblivion, Splinter Cell, Fallout 3 and Uncharted tracks didn’t make a mark on me. Its not that they were bad, it’s just that they didn’t stand out in any special way. They sound nice in my ears, but not so much that I’m ever going to have them buzzing through my head when my earbuds are out. The track included from Bioshock made me wonder why it was there, because it was more moody ambiance, and not actual music you might listen to independently. I can see why fans of the games might get into any of these tracks though.

You know, what? No. The Splinter Cell track wasn’t forgettable, it actually sounded kind of like it came out of Metal Gear Solid, just less grandiose. I consider that a compliment; MGS games usually have pretty solid soundtracks.

I was impressed by how much I enjoyed the Grand Theft Auto IV and World of Warcraft tracks. The GTAIV inclusion (“Soviet Connection”) isn’t particularly elaborate, but it’s got a punchy percussion line and some beautifully deep horns. The strings throughout lend the piece a real sense of gravitas and tie the whole thing tegether in a neat little bow. The WOW track (“Seasons of War”) works in a strong but not overstated vocal group, and works up from a very slow, somber start into an almost victorious melody before rolling back down into more of a battle theme that makes brief use of an almost tribal-sounding drum phrase. Again, it’s not big and flashy, but that’s probably what makes it so great.

The MGS2 theme is practically untouched, which is great because that track’s official form is perfect. The same goes for “Liberi Fatali” from Final Fantasy VIII. I guess the orchestral version varies a bit, but it hews quite closely to the original and that is just the way I like it. I was honestly a little disappointed that they didn’t do much in the was of arranging for Super Mario Galaxy‘s “Gusty Garden Galaxy,” because since it was recorded by an orchestra to begin with, a more elaborate arrangement would have been the best way to make it stand out. I love the song though; the string chorus alone is enough to put a big smile on my face.

That brings me to the set of songs that sit in a strange limbo between my opinion poles. “Super Mario Bros Themes”, “The Legend of Zelda Suite” and “Final Fantasy Main Theme” are all fantastic songs. So why was I kind of disappointed with their showing here? These are where the legacy of video game music really begins. These are the big three. It is not my place to question them.

I don’t know why, but I have a hard time appreciating hi-fi versions of the SMB theme. It just sounds wrong when played on anything more advanced than maybe a SNES sound chip. The LPO does a fine job with what they’ve got, but I guess I’d just rather they’d taken a piece from a more recent game. Nintendo doesn’t even re-use the original Mario theme all that often (in the main series), and when they do it’s in its natural state or heavily arranged so that it sounds okay without the blippity-bloopities. The underwater part sounds beautiful on strings, but the rest of the song was not meant for real instruments.

I’ve heard this particular Legend of Zelda suite before. I was sad because I wasn’t expecting a repeat. It’s still great though!

The Final Fantasy theme is a stirring string-based piece with some faint horns to give it a little body. It is the most beautiful track on the album. It is so deeply ingrained in my soul that sometimes I get a little misty-eyes when I hear it in a new FF game. What could I possibly have against it? I was secretly hoping it would be the Final Fantasy IV version of “Prelude”, which I like just a little bit more.

The most surprising tracks on the disc, I found, were those from Halo 3 and Mass Effect. Mass Effect especially because I’ve played through the game twice and never noticed the music at all. But if “Suicide Mission” can speak for the rest of the soundtrack, it must be amazing! The track starts of with a fairly simple beat, and then layers on instruments one by one, until it builds into an incredible “here we go to save the world” kind of thing. It’s deathly serious, but keeps your spirits up by mixing in some uplifting phrases into the generally foreboding melody. It’s perfectly suited to the atmosphere of Mass Effect, and I feel like I should give the game another round so that I can stop to appreciate its musical accompaniment.

As I said before, I expected pretty good things from the Halo 3 song, “One Final Effort,” and I was not at all disappointed. I thought it was really weird how much praise the Halo soundtracks get, but if the rest is as good as this single example, I might have to look into actually listening to the full soundtracks.

The brightest spot on this disc, however, comes totally out of left field both in the fact that I wasn’t expecting it to be my favourite track, and also because it starts way off from the source material. The Tetris theme, of all things, is apparently where the LPO decided to really show their stuff. It opens up with a peppy drum line, onto which other instruments gradually join, and then finally launches into a brief piano solo of the main riff. A horn comes in, and the drums return, then things just go out of control with the melodies and beats changing almost as much as the instrumentation. About three quarters of the way it slows down into a horn-driven waltz, and gradually picks up steam again in layered repetitions of the tune until the end.

Oddly enough, it kind of ends up sounding like it was arranged to fit into the Kirby’s Air Ride soundtrack.

Understandably, you kind of have to work with the Tetris theme to make it compelling. In its natural state, it’s repetitive and basic, not unlike Tetris itself. So it stands to reason that if you were going to have an orchestra play it, they’d probably want to do a little arranging. And this is great! The end product is marvelous! I’m just a little disappointed that the rest of the CD (or at least what I’m familiar with) didn’t take nearly as much creative license as this single song did. Granted, you might also argue that gamers want to hear the music they love in a format that they recognize, but there are entire communities based around remixing video game music. I really think it could work.

Anyway, I’ll stop talking about how this CD could be “better” now. It’s great the way it is. Maybe I haven’t gotten that through enough. It’s wonderful. I really like it. Big props to the London Philharmonic Orchestra for this one. If you’re going to buy an album of video game music as played by a major orchestra… well, I’ve never seen another one, but I’m sure this one measures up nicely to any others that could theoretically exist. There are certainly far worse ways to spend twentyish bucks.

I think if I’d seen it live I would have complained a lot less.

4 (four)

Yesterday was the fourth anniversary of my first date with Stephanie. Between house and wedding expenses, we were too poor to make it one of those stereotypical anniversary date nights, but I got to spend it with her and that’s all I need to be happy. It was a great night, and I’m lucky to be with someone as perfect as her.

Back in January we splurged on tickets for the Trans-Siberian Orchestra, the corresponding concert having been a couple Fridays ago. They were a little more expensive than I’d have liked, but we agreed to claim that the purchase was our anniversary gift to each other. We went to see TSO a couple years ago for one of their Christmas shows, and I guess I don’t really need to mention that they left a good enough impression on us that we went back for a second round. To date, TSO is the only act we’ve seen twice.

The concert’s theme was Beethoven’s Last Night, and I don’t feel like trying to explain it, so here’s a link to the Wikipedia page. All you need to know up front is that TSO is a group that highly values both metal and classical music, and plays a stunning combination of the two. Despite my hipsterish nature when it comes to music, I really love it when rock acts cover classical music, so this kind of stuff is right up my alley.

The show, as I’d expected, was amazing from start to finish. Having a narrative in your concert might seem like something that just increases the delay between songs, but I find it extremely captivating. Musicals and traditional opera, I have a lot of trouble swallowing, but rock operas are one of my favourite things in the whole wide world. It was also nice that after the story was over, the band just kept playing. I think the total length of the concert was two and a half hours? Something around there, anyway.

I don’t really have any strong opinions left, so here’s a really low-quality YouTube video of a couple songs:

Audioddity

At work, I have the luxury of being able to listen to my iPod all day. The only drawback is that I have to keep one ear open so that if my boss is trying to talk to me over the cubicle I can hear her. Having only one earbud in causes a lot of audio loss, excluding me from all the sounds that are specifically piped through one given side. Usually, as long as I’ve got the bud that hosts the lead guitar I’m fine. There are a few albums that don’t use both channels, but those are few and far between.

Anyway, the point of the story is that I was listening to A Night at the Opera the other day, and all was going well until “You’re my Best Friend” came on. It seemed normal at first, but then I noticed a very prominent omission: Freddie’s vocals were only audible on the bud that was not in my ear! The backing vocals were all pumped through my active bud, but I couldn’t hear the main lyrics at all. Actually, it was only for a single verse, so it wasn’t a terrible loss. The song has a somewhat unique stucture lyrically, so I guess it’s the second verse? The one that starts with “I’ve been wandering round” anyway.

I’m used to instruments going to one side or the other, but not the lead vocals. There are harmony parts in “The Prophet’s Song” and “Bohemian Rhapsody” that have lead and backing vocals singing back and forth between channels, but that makes sense. A single verse sung through one side only? A little less usual.

It was a bit jarring, but it seems like it was an isolated incident. I kind of want to listen to the song through the other bud to see if the vocal track used the other channel exclusively at any point, or if it was maybe a mixing error that went unnoticed. I can only assume it was intentional, but it seems like a senseless separation to me.

Xenoworld

I’ve put about a day’s worth of play time into Xenoblade Chronicles since its release date, and it never stops amazing me. There are plenty of great things about the game, but the one thing that keeps hitting me over and over is the gigantic world environments.

Exactly why I’m so impressed by these is beyond me; it’s not a new feature to video games. Hell, I think that in February I spent more time in Skyrim than I did in the real world, and that game is all gigantic world.

It might be that I’m just now starting the really appreciate these huge environments. Hitting the wide open Gran Pulse after spending countless hours of being funneled through linear environments in Final Fantasy XIII was an absolutely exhilarating experience, and the effect wasn’t lost on me. When I first stepped out onto the Bionis’ Leg (pictured above), I got really excited and thought to myself “Oh man! This is the Gran Pulse of Xenoblade! Already! It must be huuuuge!” and then I remembered that I’d just spent almost 13 hours playing in the equally humongous environment of the lake and hillsides around Colony 9.

Colony 9, for those who aren’t yet on the Xenoblade wagon (shaaaaame), is the starting area of the game. And it is humongous. Like I said above, I spent roughly 12-13 hours playing around in there alone, doing sidequests, exploring the hillsides, challenging too-strong monsters. How many JRPGs give you such a large place to play around in right off the bat? Not too many. Unlike Skyrim and its cousins, Xenoblade doesn’t give you free access to the entire world right off the hop, but it does give you a big new playground after every few story bits.

The downside is that even though you have these huge environments to play around in, there isn’t a whole lot to do in them. There are truckloads of sidequests if you have the patience to stalk the townsfolk long enough, but most of them are monster-slaying requests or monster-loot fetch-quests. Monsters in any one area come in many shapes and sizes, but can generally be sorted down into two groups: ones you can kill and ones you won’t be able to kill for a long time. In the Colony 9 area, there are monster groups ranging from level 1-10 and then they rocket up to 70+; nothing in between. So unless you want to grind those weak mooks forever, there is sort of a ceiling to character development, at least in the early areas.

There are also no treasures in the field. Sort of. There are little collectible baubles that randomly appear all over the place as blue wips that you can pick up. You can log one of each in your colletopaedia, and when you complete a category of items or location page, you get a special stat-buffing gem. Once you’ve logged one of each type, these doodads are just good for selling and bartering with NPCs. Monsters drop loot too, including armor and weapon, but they mostly seem to be crap compared to the local shop stocks.

The real reward for running around the world is the thrill of adventure, discovering new places, and looking at those beautiful landscapes. The Bionis’ Leg area alone is so majestic and verdant that I don’t think I could ever get bored of running to the top of cliffs and looking down on the scenery. It also helps that the field music tracks are fantastic and I could listen to them forever. This is most likely because the uber-talented Yoko Shimomura is one of the composers of the game’s soundtrack. I desperately want to import a copy of said soundtrack, but with an Amazon price tag of $75, I can’t convince myself to pull the trigger on this one. It would definitely be the crown jewel of my video game soundtrack collection though…

And that’s all I’ve got to report for now. I’m not very far into the game yet, so I’m willing to bet you that there will be more thoughts on it in the future.

Aptlty titled

Last weekend I ventured down to the local shopping center to chat up a pretty girl that works there. While in the HMV, I casually perused their stock of Queen CDs, hoping to find The Miracle, the last studio album I needed to complete my Queen collection. I didn’t think it would be there. It’s never there. Except this time it was there.

Yay! I almost feel like I should start typing out the lyrics to “Happy Happy Joy Joy.” In fact, that’s what I am singing now, as I type this. Just trust me. So now my Queen collection is complete enough. I think I’m still missing a couple silly greatest hits rehashes, but I have like seventy of those already, so that’s not going to count towards my 100% here. I have all the albums pictured on the Queen poster in my room, and that’s good enough for me.

Now it’s just a matter of being not-lazy enough to rip the damn thing and get it on my iPhone so I can listen to it on the way to and from work. And wherever else I drive.

What? I have a blog?

You know what sucks? Finding a house. It’s not really a terrible process but it sucks up so much of your free time… Actually it’s not that bad, but between that and wedding stuff and work it’s very hard to make time for stupid things like maintaining a blog. I don’t even really have that much on my mind lately, so it’s not like I have a need to blog that is going unsatisfied.

Anyway. You ever heard of Lana Del Rey? I hadn’t, but for the duration of January, my Xbox decided that I really needed to know about her and what a great singer she is. Generally I don’t listen to my Xbox’s music recommendations, but worst case scenario, I’d be GISing a pretty girl. It was from that subsequent Google search that I learned she had a song called “Video Games” so okay. This is going well, might as well look into it. Also the word “sexpot” comes up a lot, but that is irrelevant.

I also learned from the Google search that she had recently “bombed” on SNL, and that the internet was making a really big deal of it. So while I’d never heard of her, she was known to people who hate comedy.

I continued to take my curiosity to YouTube, because it seemed like the quickest way to get the deal on this chick. The first song that came up was “Blue Jeans” and I listened about halfway through the song before I clicked back and loaded up the “Video Games” video. That one lasted until about the two-thirds mark before I closed the browser window.

Lana Del Rey’s music strategy is apparently to make it as unbearably boring as she possibly can. Adele, despite all the hype around her, is boring as fuck, but at least she sounds like she’s interested in the songs she’s singing. Lana, on the other hand, seems to be boring herself to death and sounds like she’d rather be stuffing her arm in a meat grinder than recording a song. I don’t know if she’s just purposely trying to act aloof, if that’s going to be her thing, but it certainly doesn’t make me care about her music. I suppose it beats being another Gaga. Don’t misunderstand me here, because I don’t think slower, more somber songs are bad. I like dark, artsy stuff, but it has to be done right. “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” is one of my favourite Beatles songs. Matthew Good’s Hospital Music is an amazingly deep album. Lana Del Rey just fails to interest me at all.

Normally I would just brush an artist like this aside and completely forget they exist, but the fact that that she called a song “Video Games” makes me semi-involved. Actually, it doesn’t involve me at all, but it’s something I want to ramble on about. So this song is dreary and boring and just not fun at all. Unless this is a song about Tom Clancy video games, that’s really the opposite of how it should be. Actually it’s not really about video games at all, it’s just a word she ends a few verses with. And an easy way to bait nerds like me into paying attention.

Regardless of whether the song is actually about video games though, I feel like a song called “Video Games” should be fun.  You know, like video games. It’s a legitimate reason to use chiptunes. Though it would be unfair to blame the actual music here. It’s not bad, and I probably wouldn’t mind listening to it if it weren’t overshadowed by the insufferable vocal track. Video games are fun, they are there to entertain, to help people forget their woes for a while and have a good time. This song is exactly the opposite of that. Yeah, I guess there are boring and depressing games, but they generally are not good games.

Speaking of YouTube, the video is pretty stupid too. Actually, so is the video for “Blue Jeans.” They’re both dumb viral/hipster mash-ups of other people’s home videos, with little bits of Lana making pouty faces spliced in. I mean, I’m not sure if they’re actually real people’s video bits that have been collaged together. They could absolutely be staged. But the fact of the matter is that the videos are completely unrelated to anything and only serve to bore me even harder.

Her Wikipedia page makes it sound like Del Rey put the videos together on her own. Given the amateurish quality (and blatant egotism), I could believe that. The only times collages aren’t stupid are when children make them (because it’s cute) and when somebody makes one that’s actually meaningful. These videos aren’t meaningful: they’re just random clips hastily slapped together. No relation, no progression, no reasonable deeper meaning. It’s just stupid hipster garbage.

So the music and videos are all absolute hipster fodder (except now that she’s getting popular, the hipsters won’t have anything to do with her), but Lana herself… not at all. She’s still a far cry from trash like Britney, but she’s got a fairly mainstream popstar look to her. And that’s just not acceptable. If you’re going to act like a hipster, look like a hipster. Get you some thick black glasses, a bad haircut, and a goofy hat at least. Probably a year-round scarf would be a good idea too. Or, better yet, just stop making lame-ass hipster songs.

So yeah, if this thing seems detached and poorly written, it’s because I was trying to stretch my thoughts too thin. I really just wanted to complain about a couple boring songs. And hipsters. I’ve been reading too many long, thoughtful blogs, and have forgottent that my sweet spot is more in concise, to-the-point writing. Also I haven’t blogged in like forever. Give me a damn break.