Gareth – Page 150 – The Designer Monologues

June 4, 2010

Friday Music

Not a lot this week, due to the usual busybusy.

The World Cup starts next week, and I haven’t really heard any Cup anthems yet. I have, however, found a track that already has come to represent the cup in my head. I discovered this past week that one of my favorite artists, Johnny Clegg, released an album in 2007 that I had completely missed. So, I picked it up, and discovered this track — which he had written for the South African rugby team. It applies just as well to the Cup, and I’ve been playing it incessantly. “Jongosi” literally means “strong young ox”, and is an idiom for “young warriors” — and now most often applied to athletes. The refrain: Hayi Wemajongosi (Hey, young warriors) Azovimba phambili (They will overcome all challenges ahead). Johnny Clegg – “Jongosi.”

One of my favorite 80s tracks, reimagined by the songwriter. I actually like this acoustic version better than the original — this is taken from Men At Work frontman Colin Hay’s solo album, Man @ Work — Colin Hay – “Overkill (acoustic version).”

After being introduced to Kula Shaker, the English neo-psychedelia band by their single “Tattva”, I went out and grabbed their debut album, “K” in 1996. This track from the album quickly became one of my favorites: Kula Shaker- “Govinda.”

Lastly, a kick-ass mash-up, combining three seminal sounds — the drum loop from Run DMC’s “Walk This Way”, the guitar riff from Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love”, and vocals by James Brown: Fissunix – “Whole Sex Lotta Machine – The Drumloop, The Guitar Riff, The SuperBad.”

Sorry for the short one this week. More later.

June 1, 2010

Interesting Times

I realize that I haven’t been posting nearly as often as I’d like to — things have been quite busy on this end.

The big event was getting ICONS prepped for release, but as of today the PDF is available, and the book is at the printers for a mid-June delivery to game stores worldwide.

In addition to ICONS, I’ve been working on a backlog of releases for our MARS, THRILLING TALES and PATHFINDER lines. Lots of RPG work, especially for a guy who’s decided to transition to a wider focus on transmedia, but hey — the RPG stuff pays the bills, ya know?

In the realm of transmedia, I am doing work, but it’s all behind-the-scenes right now. I’ve decided to limit Adamant initially to development on two properties (which may be one project too many, realistically, but hey — I like to juggle a lot of stuff. Keeps me engaged), and development work on both is underway.

The first is one that should be familiar to long-time readers: my Western/Wuxia/Steampunk mash-up FAR WEST — by virtue of the fact that it began as an RPG project a couple of years ago, it’s further along than the other project, and I expect that I’ll be launching the official site this summer.

The other project, which I haven’t mentioned much outside of a brief comment in our artist solicitations about looking for an artist who can handle a mix of “Good Girl” and “Metal Hurlant/Incal” style artwork, is a far-flung space opera property which is called Vesper Nova. But that’s all I’m going to say about that for now. :)

The hard part about working in this new digital entertainment frontier is that every is changing so quickly — I mean, literally on a week to week basis. For example: Today, Adobe announced their Digital Publishing Platform, a new tool set for producing iPad-ready content which they’ll apparently be rolling out to CS5 users via Adobe Lab later this summer. They cite the new Wired magazine iPad app as something which was created with these tools. Incredible stuff, and absolutely in the venue of what I’m looking to do with both Far West and Vesper Nova. However, the tools aren’t quite there yet. They’re coming in a beta format, via Adobe Lab — and even then not until some nebulously-defined time “this summer.”

The problem here is that things like this are happening on a weekly basis — somebody announces a new tool, a new platform, a new program or outlet that can dramatically effect any plans you might have. You have to be able to roll with changes that are happening in dizzying succession. It’s very tempting to slow down, to put things on hold while waiting for things to settle out more — but that’s the thing: they aren’t settling — not for a long while. So you’ve got to fight off this sense of paralysis to avoid falling into a never-ending holding pattern.

It’s actually pretty exciting — the feeling of being there at the beginning, when the rules haven’t been codified, when anything goes….

May 28, 2010

Friday Music

Jeez, I have been slack in blogging recently. I blame the launch hullaballo surrounding ICONS.

Regardless, here is this week’s Friday Music — and it’s a big ‘un.

Trent Reznor has a new side project, How to Destroy Angels, which features his wife Mariqueen Maandig on vocals. Their EP launches next week — and you can have it sent to you in 320kbs mp3 format for FREE (or lossless for $2.00) by signing up here, which also will give you an instant download of the single “The Believers.” Here is another single that’s been making the rounds: How To Destroy Angels – “A Drowning.”

In other free-album downloads, the DJ team of Diplo and Switch, known together as Major Lazer, have teamed with La Roux and released a head-to-toe remix of La Roux’s debut album, available here as a FREE download. As a sample, here’s the remix of the hit La Roux single: Major Lazer & La Roux – “Bulletproof (Nacey Remix ft. Matt Hemerlein).”

And, if your free album download tastes lean towards unofficial remixes, like the Grey Album or The Beastles, check out Mos Dub— a brilliant free album of tracks mixing Mos Def vocals with classic roots reggae. As a sample, here’s one using Desmond Dekker’s seminal “OO7 (Shanty Town)”: Mos Dub – “History Town.”

I read an article on io9 this week about Christina Hendricks appearing in a forthcoming video for the Broken Bells (click to check out the pics — hommina hommina hommina!). The Broken Bells are a project featuring Danger Mouse and James Mercer of The Shins. This is the track for which the divine Ms. H played a sci-fi android: The Broken Bells – “The Ghost Inside.”

Laura and I have been watching the Martin Scorsese-produced film series “The Blues” from a few years back (it relates to something she’s working on), and in the sixth installment, “Godfathers and Sons”, it featured this piece — a 2003 collaboration orchestrated by Marshall Chess (the son of Chess Records founder Leonard Chess) which took Muddy Waters’ “Mannish Boy”, and updated it with members of the 60s-era Electric Mud band, Chuck D, Common, Rahzel and Kyle Jason. I tracked down an mp3 of the song: The ElectriK Mud Kats – “Mannish Boy.”

Sticking with blues — here’s a brilliant version of an old blues-spiritual, which was used in the penultimate episode of Season 5 of Supernatural, playing over the introduction of Death as he entered Chicago riding a pale horse (well, a bone-white 1960 Cadillac). Absolute chills. Jen Titus – “O Death.”

Taking a step back into the 80s. Everybody plays “Sister Christian”, but this is my favorite Night Ranger song — because my adolescent self thought that it RAWKED. Night Ranger – “Don’t Tell Me You Love Me.”

Sticking with the 80s for a moment — the biggest splash made by a Kansas City band during the era: The Rainmakers – “Let My People Go-Go.”

Lastly, a new single from M.I.A.’s forthcoming album, Maya. This one is a bit more pop-friendly than her “Born Free” (especially with that song’s brilliant-yet-disturbing video — I like it: M.I.A. – “XXXO.”

There you go kids. Enjoy!

….and I’ll stop the blog-slacking next week. I promise.