The Universal, by Elah
(Having download trouble? Click here.)
Dig us! Elah and the Badniks homepage is online!
Hello, anyone!
Elah and the Badniks, the new band formed between myself, Sharps Chicken, and Mach Rabbit (two dudes tossed aside by SEGA once they’d finished work on the Sonic 1 soundtrack), is finally online! Check out “Ode to Special Stage”, the first song we created together, and join us in agonizing over how long it will take the next track to come out. See you over at http://elahandthebadniks.wordpress.com! Peace out!
Click Click Singy Singy Post
Hello, anyone.
It’s been asked of me how I make what I make. Since my work is by nature basic and the process is generally accessible, I’m going to take a post and explain just that.
The first part, of course, is coming up with a song. If it’s a cover, I have a snap-my-fingers-and-shriek-eureka moment and select the given song out of the ever swirling pool of ideas for songs I would like to do. If it’s an original song, a lyrical phrase or a melody line will usually appear to me by every artist’s favorite songwriting method, which is no method at all. After I have the idea, I make sure to come up with a few concepts and sound directions beforehand so that I can make a track sound distinctive from the original.
When I finally work up the gumption to get started on whatever it is, I open up Audiotool. Audiotool is an absolutely brilliant free music creation platform available at, surprisingly, http://audiotool.com. From there the song just sort of assembles itself, with the different parts all building up as I work. Since blipcore consists mainly of riffs, it’s easy to come up with the building blocks of a track and then put them in a decent and appeasing order. Then, of course, there’s the million listen-throughs, the tiny tweaks, occasionally the complete overhaul of a synth voice or two. Then, it’s time to move on to the dreaded vocal sessions.
I love to sing. The only thing is that recording one’s voice for a song means doing about as many takes as there are toxins in the canals of Venice. Per single line of melody. I don’t have the best voice in the universe, but I like to think that my skills are decent enough. Once I sit down with a mug of honey-laced tea and a microphone, though, I realize that I kind of don’t. Sometimes you can spend ten minutes singing the same thirty-second line and realize that your inflection on every single take sounds strange.
Additional mixing after the vocal sessions is fun, because you get to hear your own finished work playing out in your ears. At the same time, it’s a pain, because not only do I have two computers on which a draft sounds completely different, but I never feel like I can trust the quality of either.
Then, there’s creating the artwork and uploading and publicizing. But that’s all pretty small potatoes at this point in comparison to the actual creation process.
So, yeah, that’s how it happens. It’s pretty basic and haphazard, really.
Look out for my next release, a cover of “Light Up the World”, the rousing original number from season 2 of Glee!
Love Christ, and peace out!
New side project!
Hello, anyone,
If you’re a fan of the Spindash podcast, you’ll know that I recently won a contest over there with my cover of a Sonic the Hedgehog-related ditty written by one of the hosts.
Anyways, while working on this song, I was tooling around on this here the internet, and I mentioned it to a person I met on a forum, specifically about how I sampled the opening drums from “Metropolis Zone” in Sonic the Hedgehog 2 for the percussion. Suddenly, he tells me that he made them.
As it turned out, I’d bumped into Mach Rabbit, who’d played the drums for the original Sonic the Hedgehog soundtrack. In order to cut costs, SEGA fired him and the rest of the band after they recorded the soundtrack and just cut-and-pasted samples for the next four games. He and Sharps Chicken, the guitarist, are currently sharing a flat somewhere in Austin, Texas. They’ve done some odd work here and there, but they’re always scraping for money and they’re always mad at their former employer for cheating them.
In order to help them find a good release, I offered the chance for them to make music again.
We are Elah and the Badniks. We make extremely minimalistic electric rock, in tribute to Sonic music, video game music, and the Spindash podcast, which we are all ardent fans of.
We’re currently tossing around several ideas for what we want to perform. We’ve already solidified a few things, including a couple of mainstream pop covers (Coldplay and Britney Spears, anyone?). Watch for us to surface on some website, somewhere, sometime soon.
In the meantime, enjoy our rendition of the Spindash’s theme song, which is itself a variation on “Sonic – You Can Do Anything” (aka “Toot Toot Sonic Warrior) from Sonic CD.
Progressivity
Hello, anyone.
I hope you enjoyed my cover of “Digital Delight.” It’s really been a labor of love – I started it back in the beginning of summer.
I was considering the music I make and the music that my friend and inspiration Ray Hargreaves makes, and I realized that we don’t fit into any particular sub-genre of electro. It is thus that I hereby, by no powers whatsoever, coin the term “blipcore”.
Blipcore is a sub-genre of electronic music characterized by an extremely simplistic analog synthesizer sound. It is not necessarily dance music like “game-pop” artists such as Ke$ha and it is not hacked-console chiptune style of acts like Anamanaguchi.
I am working on an original song called “Drowned World” (no relation to the Madonna song of the same name). It incorporates a sample from Massive Attack’s “Teardrop”. Watch for it amidst my next couple of releases.
New track: Digital Delight by Raybob Industries Inc!
Presenting “Digital Delight”, a pillowy ode to video games. Originally by Raybob Industries, inc., the musical project by Ray Hargreaves from 2P START!.
Having trouble downloading? Just click here.
New track: “Galaxies” by Owl City!
If you’re having difficulty downloading, just click here.
Scanning my CD Collection
These days, CDs are becoming a bit obsolete unless you’re a CDJ. I personally will buy physical copies of albums if I think that the entire album is good enough to merit purchase, rather than just one or two tracks. So here’s what I own on CD:
Gorillaz – Plastic Beach
Over ten years after its creation, Gorillaz just keeps on delivering with this masterful third album. Jamie Hewlett’s cartoon band has relocated to the south Pacific, and Damon Albarn’s complex, genre-smashing music takes the transition to heart with a sunnier, airier tone. The guest stars just keep lining up, too, be it Mos Def, De La Soul, Little Dragon, Bobby Womack, and even Lou Reed. (I specifically avoided mentioning Snoop Dogg because his performance was the only low point on the whole record.) The 16 tracks on this album – whether it’s the theatrical technicolor of “Sweepstakes” or “Superfast Jellyfish,” the breezy grooves like “White Flag” or “Broken,” the dark, funky electro worlds of “Stylo” and “Empire Ants,” or the soulful chill of “On Melancholy Hill” and “To Binge” – shine with the rest of the Gorillaz catalog as outstanding achievements in music.
Owl City – All Things Bright and Beautiful
Adam Young’s lush, vaguely psychedelic soundscapes have entranced me since “Ocean Eyes,” but this his latest record is without a doubt his greatest triumph. Clocking in at roughly 45 minutes, Young leaves absolutely no room for filler. The result is 12 stunning tracks that combine layered dream-pop with a sizeable dance kick. Young also adds in some more external influences – a stronger acoustic flavor makes the record as a whole feel a bit wilder and more organic, and a few dashes of hip-hop (including a guest rapper on “Alligator Sky”) just serve to provide a bit more variety. Every track is golden, but the one that shines most of all is “Plant Life,” co-written and sung with Matthew Thiessen of Relient K. This breathtaking track is one of my favorite songs of all time. Owl City has done it again and I can’t wait to see what Young comes up with next.
Pendulum – Immersion
Drum’n'Bass pioneers Pendulum, led by talented producer/songwriter/singer/awesome person Rob Swire, released this third album in 2010. I love Pendulum for the blazing energy of their songs, and that shines through on this intense record. Standouts include the tense “Watercolour”, the album’s lead single; the mournful, almost emo “Crush,” and the 2-part club-ready “The Island,” which I remixed using free stems the band released soon after the track was used as a single. You can find the remix on the “Music” page. You can’t resist pumping your fist when you listen to this album, and you also can’t resist listening again. It’s a triumph for the entire drum’n'bass genre and an overall wonderful record.
Lady Gaga – Born This Way
I have to say, I was blown away by Mama Monster’s sophomore album. Moving away from the poised, retro-metro feel of her first release, Gaga explores the deliciously expressive lower register of her voice and throws herself wholeheartedly in the direction of an almost tribal-like, too-loud-for-the-limiter house sound that compliments her wild image beautifully. Standouts include the five singles – the title track, “Judas”, “Hair,” “The Edge of Glory,” and “You and I” – but also several others. “Marry the Night”, the opener, is a bit straightforward, but it introduces the record perfectly as a catchy, foot-stomping affair in which Gaga professes her love for New York and night life. “Government Hooker” opens with a bizarre, operatic vocal and then bursts into a creeping, dark club track that sounds like government espionage meets “The Matrix.” Finally, “Bloody Mary” also shows strange strains of classical music, and sets up a Shakespeare’s-histories scene of cruelty, corruption, and high tension.
The White Stripes – Get Behind Me Satan
The White Stripes have championed the garage-band revival and roots punk/blues since their breakthrough album, “White Blood Cells.” Though Jack White drops much of the skillful guitar work that has earned him a well-deserved reputation, “Get Behind Me Satan” is, in my opinion, the best of the Stripes’ six albums. Jack dials back his tendency to ramble on without direction (“As Ugly As I Seem” and “Red Rain,” the only exceptions, are also the weakest songs on the record) and replaces his electric guitar with piano, mandolin, acoustic guitar – even a marimba at one point. Thus, with stronger songwriting and some catchier, more accessible tracks, “Get Behind Me Satan” is a winner. “Blue Orchid,” the album’s only true rock track, is as tight and intense as the other best song, “My Doorbell,” is loose and laidback. It just shows White’s ability as a songwriter to take simplistic structure and make it something really magical. He and his divorcee Meg create a record that almost seems like a throwback in its down-to-earth, classic style but in reality is a culmination – something ultimately better than what it draws so heavily from.
Raybob Industries, Inc. – Hey Girl Hey
Ray Hargreaves, artist of the gaming webcomic 2P START!, has been making music for a while, and it shows in his latest Garageband-made techno release, “Hey Girl Hey.” This excellent album shows off Ray’s inspiration from video games and his musical talents alike. Adopting a much lighter tone than his previous release, “Jessica and the Silver Eclipse,” “Hey Girl Hey” makes something personal and warm out of retro bleeps and bloops. Standouts include “Rainbows and Curves,” a groovy, swaggering track; “Digital Delight,” a pillowy ode to classic games; “Neon Spring Blossoms,” a turbo-charged ditty about Nintendo’s hit game “Animal Crossing”; and a highly theatrical cover of “Pure Imagination” from “Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”. It’s a delicious indie release and I can’t wait to see what gems Ray comes up with next.
Blur – Blur
This record came off the back of a massive flame war between Blur and Oasis, the two kings of 90′s britpop. After a heated chart battle with the singles “Country House” and “Roll with It”, Blur found themselves antagonized by the general public. Thus, they abandoned their well-done but well-known pop sound and dived into an experimental, lo-fi world inspired by American grunge. The world-famous “Song 2″ is here, but the whole first half of the record shines as an intense and varied experience. “Beetlebum”‘s heroin-inspired psychedelia mingles with the raw openness of “You’re So Great,” written and performed solely by guitarist Graham Coxon. There’s the Massive Attack-like heaviness of “Death of a Party,” the anthemic, vintage 808-grounded “On Your Own,” and the quirky tenor-falsetto tradeoff of “Country Sad Ballad Man.” The whole thing radiates a manic sort of artistry. The only downside is the second half, which doesn’t really stand out for anything and is just kind of blah after all the amazing things that happen in the first.
Gorillaz – Demon Days
Gorillaz’ darkest album is also its most prolific, considered by a fair few to be a cultural touchstone. Ethically charged, this stellar record is a deliciously bittersweet mix of gritty realism and matured optimism. Damon Albarn’s cast of guests includes 6 rappers (De La Soul being 3 of them), one children’s choir, one gospel choir, two female singers, a pianist, and actor Dennis Hopper. Its lyrical scope includes raps, song-speak, and even storytelling, but its musical scope is more astounding. Deep and beautiful, “Demon Days” really speaks for itself, so I’m not going to expound so much on its tight, grimy joys. You should hear it for yourself.
Gorillaz – Gorillaz
Gorillaz’ debut is less structured and a bit less consistent than “Plastic Beach” and “Demon Days,” but it’s really great all the same. Even here, no genre is safe, from hip-hop to druggy dub to techno to latin. Opening with the breakbeat groove of “Re-Hash,” “Gorillaz” showcases all the places Albarn could ever want to explore in a tour-de-force of fascinating soundscape. Standouts include the spiky acid-rock of “5/4″, the striding, confident “Clint Eastwood,” the maniacal energy of “M1A1″, and the heavily psychedelic “Left Hand Suzuki Method.”
Peace out!
Sound through Silence
Hello, anyone. If you’ve tried to follow this blog, I’m sorry to have left it so barren over the past few months. Rest assured that I am hard at work on this project and I can’t wait to get something new out. However, thanks to my lack of experience and abundance of perfectionism, as well as relying on a dying computer for good sound quality, I am moving quite slowly.
A few major updates:
- Starting from now, I will be releasing singles rather than working on a full album. When I have released enough tracks I will compile them into A Melody in My Head, but that may not happen for a while.
- Expect something new soon. It will either be a remix or a cover. I’m not sure when it will happen, but it will happen soon.
- The school year is starting next week, which will definitely impede my progress. As I’ve said before, music is my pet project, but I have my academic career and future as an actor to work out. I’m making as much time as I can, but I will definitely be moving even slower.
- I have contacted a friend of mine and we are making plans to start a simplistic duo group. Nothing is solid yet and the whole thing might just fall by the wayside, but hopefully it will get off the ground soon. If it does, expect a shameless plug sometime in the near future.
Peace out!
The Island – Elah’s Mau5′n’Bass Remix
Elah’s new remix of Pendulum’s track “The Island” is available now for free at http://elah.bandcamp.com!
