Finally making good on an idea I've had for some years but always just missed or plain forgotten about. Every year I think 'I should make another Halloween tape thing' - made a good compromise that one year with a Spotify playlist but as with a lot of things in my collection - some of the stuff just plain isn't available to stream legally and will probably never be. Not this time though, I've gone ahead and compiled a suitably spooky selection of tunes for this year. I'd hesitate to call it a mixtape like I have my other ones but I have tried a little bit to do some creative transitions where possible - kind of needed to with the abrupt end of the TeddyLoid tune after all. I'll be posting a full tracklist and mini-breakdown after the player!
TRACKLIST:
TeddyLoid - Zombie (TV Version)
Mr. Oizo - Pourriture X
Alec Lambert - Silly Game
Sidewalks and Skeletons - VALLEY OF WOLVES
Kensuke Ushio - Empty Eyes
Akira Yamaoka - Heaven's Night
Akira Yamaoka - Alone In The Town
We kick off with my No. 1 provider of Electro House nostalgia in TeddyLoid. His soundtrack contributions for Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt go hard (no pun intended!), Zombie is a bonus track included on a pack-in CD with a volume of the show so it probably won't be available on streaming like the other albums from the show are, if you're after some delish electro house circa like 2010 I highly recommend them all. Given it's sudden end I had to come up with something, and I settled on the spookiest version of Oizo's Pourriture series - 'X'. It's not my favourite of the lot, I think that would have to be Pourriture 7, but I can't deny the change up in sound on this one makes it feel like it's from a horror flick.
A new addition next with a bit from the soundtrack to Heaven Will Be Mine - not a spooky game but a lot of it's soundtrack is haunting. And Silly Game strikes a nice balance between the two especially in the latter half. Next we get some classic witch house style vibes from Sidewalks and Skeletons. Originally one of the few artists on my list with no specific track in mind - as the name might suggest a great deal of Skeleton's output is of that particular spooky vibe. I ended up picking something a little less well known from them - as much as I love tracks like Drifter I felt it better to shine a light on other tracks this time. If you enjoy that, you'll not put a foot wrong by picking up the whole album.
And a soundtrack roundup to play things out, a beautifully atmospheric piece (among many others) from Kensuke Ushio's soundtrack to the 2019 Boogiepop And Others. Ushio's work has fast become some of my favourites in recent times, both under his own name and his Agraph alias as well - gorgeous glitchy IDM offerings aplenty from him. Of course, what would a spooky selection be without some bits from Akira Yamaoka? The man behind some of Silent Hill's most famous soundtracks and sound designer for the original 4, his works are sometimes unsettling but sprinkled throughout are lovely bits of ambience and sometimes even full-on Trip Hop stuff. I've chosen a couple of those Trip Hop pieces from Silent Hill 2's soundtrack to play things out - the two in question play back-to-back on the official released soundtrack and flow together near seamlessly. Yamaoka cites Portishead as an influence and I think that's plain to see on these two. And that wraps the selections for this year, it was fun to finally get them down for once - hopefully I remember to do the same next year!
I'll be back sometime the middle of next week with another regular post, but I hope yo enjoy this little tape in the meantime. And of course, as always, stay safe and enjoy the music!
-CVF
Showing posts with label TeddyLoid. Show all posts
Showing posts with label TeddyLoid. Show all posts
Saturday, 30 October 2021
Sunday, 28 February 2021
Missed Connections
You ever find a track or an album and find yourself thinking 'Man, had I found this X years / months / etc. ago I would have been really into this?" It's something I'd not really considered myself until recently but it has happened to me a few times now. When it does happen it makes me feel a little sad in a sense - if only I'd have found these tracks earlier, y''know? Still there's no time like the present is there, So I'm going to scroll through my archives and see what I can come up with that I remember this happening with.
Nina Tokhtaman Valetova - Entropy (2015)
Above & Beyond are one of those acts that gets recommended to me a lot but I've never really taken a deep dive on, I like bits and pieces of what I've heard and their remixes from time to time though. One thing I did see come up again and again on my semi-regular trips into the world of Trance was the one and so far only OceanLab album. Sirens Of The Sea has that distinct Anjunabeats style on the cover, with liberal use of Helvetica as so many other techy trancy covers did at the time - I've been aware of it but never really listened, put off a bit by the 'Vocal Trance' label which in my experience hasn't been great (though hypocritically I do have that love for the 90's stuff that probably falls under that label). Still, I really liked 'Satellite' around the time it came out, I figured I could at least see what the album had in store.
While tracks like 'Satellite' are in the spirit of Trance as I know it - there's quite a bit of variety in sound on here, though as mentioned above, I do only really swim around in the shallow end when it comes to the genre (no pun intended!). Tracks like On A Good Day take me right back to when I was really getting into Progressive House around Dadmau5's Random Album Title era. I still carry a bit of a torch for this sound, admittedly a bit tinged by nostalgia, but I can't help but smile a little bit when the drop approaches. It totally could have been one of those tracks that bled onto the radio in that time, it was in fact released as a single but in 2009, so it was well within that window. And this is really the track that spurred this post - I still like it for sure, though IMO the piano has dated a bit - but man, back then the younger Van Foxbat would be so into this.
TeddyLoid next - an artist that's been a bit of a mixed bag for me. See, the reason I went to check out TeddyLoid in the first place is because of the beautifully bombastic Fly Away, a track that in the spirit of this post takes me right back to the glory days of Blog House and that I would be lying if I didn't say I loved. So on the strength of that I looked up 'Loid's other stuff, and it's true that you find quite a few tracks in the same vein - but you also get some dubstep digressions in there as well, the kind you might expect of the mid 2010s era, the kind that's perhaps a tad obnoxious. I don't mean that as a knock to the tracks themselves - they are absolutely well made and (as is the point of this post!) would have been supremely up my alley around the time. That's also not to say there isn't the occasional track that I still kinda like despite all of that.
All You Ever Need combines my love of euphoric trance with these supremely powerful electro stabs that I can't deny still stir something in me. Lion Rebels too, while being one of the biggest offenders for the out and out robo-wub dubstep sound has it's moments to shine - that vocal break with TeddyLoid's now trademark autotune treatment (which again I am biased towards) sounds brilliant. The full track is this interesting clash of then contemporary dubstep, the dancehall stuff that Dubstep was incorporating around the time and topped with with Japanese vocals instead (at least until that break). The whole concoction is an an interesting mix even if it's not for you.
Apologies for the 40 second previews, the version of this album on streaming is the 'Reloaded' version which has a different mix on it. To make up for it I'm including the two I mentioned above.
Bringing it full circle with more dubstep, this time in the classic style. As the title of this compilation suggests, this is all hand-picked Skream tracks circa 2004-2006 which is a little before I got into dubstep proper but is still my favourite era of it's sound. I found these completely by happenstance when looking over discogs to see who had official bandcamps (because BC's search function sometimes bugs out a bit). There's not as much on there as I was expecting, not just from his main discography there was a time when Skream used to give out free EPs of bits and pieces every so often and Bandcamp is a pretty perfect platform for that. Though having said that, there were plenty of bootleg re/mixes on those free EPs so it might be a bit of a rights minefield.
But I digress, onto this compilation: These tracks are definitely not as refined as the ones actually released around the time (something that's only highlighted more if you go back and listen to Skream's deubt from '06 as I did after hearing this) but I think that's to be expected with the 'Unreleased' label and all - from an archival front it's nice to see tracks like this see the light of day as well. Over the three volumes it's really interesting to see Skream's sound develop and change with both experience and access to technology - while the later ones may be a little more slick in their production, I do still love me a dubplate that sounds like it was knocked out in someone's bedroom one weekend like this one.
And that'll wrap it up for this time. This was meant to be a little quickie, but since I had to jumble up the post with the Daft Punk announcement so I came back and added a bit to this one. It's been a fairly productive week, I've tried to focus a bit more on writing new stuff rather than restoring - which apart from me biting off a bit more than is comfortable with the Moby Retro Review has been surprisingly smooth sailing, I'll try and keep it up!
And as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.
-CVF
Above & Beyond are one of those acts that gets recommended to me a lot but I've never really taken a deep dive on, I like bits and pieces of what I've heard and their remixes from time to time though. One thing I did see come up again and again on my semi-regular trips into the world of Trance was the one and so far only OceanLab album. Sirens Of The Sea has that distinct Anjunabeats style on the cover, with liberal use of Helvetica as so many other techy trancy covers did at the time - I've been aware of it but never really listened, put off a bit by the 'Vocal Trance' label which in my experience hasn't been great (though hypocritically I do have that love for the 90's stuff that probably falls under that label). Still, I really liked 'Satellite' around the time it came out, I figured I could at least see what the album had in store.
While tracks like 'Satellite' are in the spirit of Trance as I know it - there's quite a bit of variety in sound on here, though as mentioned above, I do only really swim around in the shallow end when it comes to the genre (no pun intended!). Tracks like On A Good Day take me right back to when I was really getting into Progressive House around Dadmau5's Random Album Title era. I still carry a bit of a torch for this sound, admittedly a bit tinged by nostalgia, but I can't help but smile a little bit when the drop approaches. It totally could have been one of those tracks that bled onto the radio in that time, it was in fact released as a single but in 2009, so it was well within that window. And this is really the track that spurred this post - I still like it for sure, though IMO the piano has dated a bit - but man, back then the younger Van Foxbat would be so into this.
TeddyLoid next - an artist that's been a bit of a mixed bag for me. See, the reason I went to check out TeddyLoid in the first place is because of the beautifully bombastic Fly Away, a track that in the spirit of this post takes me right back to the glory days of Blog House and that I would be lying if I didn't say I loved. So on the strength of that I looked up 'Loid's other stuff, and it's true that you find quite a few tracks in the same vein - but you also get some dubstep digressions in there as well, the kind you might expect of the mid 2010s era, the kind that's perhaps a tad obnoxious. I don't mean that as a knock to the tracks themselves - they are absolutely well made and (as is the point of this post!) would have been supremely up my alley around the time. That's also not to say there isn't the occasional track that I still kinda like despite all of that.
All You Ever Need combines my love of euphoric trance with these supremely powerful electro stabs that I can't deny still stir something in me. Lion Rebels too, while being one of the biggest offenders for the out and out robo-wub dubstep sound has it's moments to shine - that vocal break with TeddyLoid's now trademark autotune treatment (which again I am biased towards) sounds brilliant. The full track is this interesting clash of then contemporary dubstep, the dancehall stuff that Dubstep was incorporating around the time and topped with with Japanese vocals instead (at least until that break). The whole concoction is an an interesting mix even if it's not for you.
Apologies for the 40 second previews, the version of this album on streaming is the 'Reloaded' version which has a different mix on it. To make up for it I'm including the two I mentioned above.
Bringing it full circle with more dubstep, this time in the classic style. As the title of this compilation suggests, this is all hand-picked Skream tracks circa 2004-2006 which is a little before I got into dubstep proper but is still my favourite era of it's sound. I found these completely by happenstance when looking over discogs to see who had official bandcamps (because BC's search function sometimes bugs out a bit). There's not as much on there as I was expecting, not just from his main discography there was a time when Skream used to give out free EPs of bits and pieces every so often and Bandcamp is a pretty perfect platform for that. Though having said that, there were plenty of bootleg re/mixes on those free EPs so it might be a bit of a rights minefield.
But I digress, onto this compilation: These tracks are definitely not as refined as the ones actually released around the time (something that's only highlighted more if you go back and listen to Skream's deubt from '06 as I did after hearing this) but I think that's to be expected with the 'Unreleased' label and all - from an archival front it's nice to see tracks like this see the light of day as well. Over the three volumes it's really interesting to see Skream's sound develop and change with both experience and access to technology - while the later ones may be a little more slick in their production, I do still love me a dubplate that sounds like it was knocked out in someone's bedroom one weekend like this one.
And that'll wrap it up for this time. This was meant to be a little quickie, but since I had to jumble up the post with the Daft Punk announcement so I came back and added a bit to this one. It's been a fairly productive week, I've tried to focus a bit more on writing new stuff rather than restoring - which apart from me biting off a bit more than is comfortable with the Moby Retro Review has been surprisingly smooth sailing, I'll try and keep it up!
And as always, stay safe and enjoy the music.
-CVF
Wednesday, 29 April 2020
Aural Fixation
NSFW Warning: Just a heads up, some of the album artwork featured in this post will be Not Safe For Work (NSFW). Might not be too much of an issue with the current situation, but thought I'd best mention anyway. Also future proofs this post too.
Regardless, enjoy!
-CVF
I've been waiting to write about this one for some time now, I mentioned it a couple of times on the podcast way back when, and had planned to do something written around then. Part of the delay has also been the potential NSFW as mentioned at the top of the post but I figured that now is as good a time as any to pull the trigger.
Yes today we're talking another soundtrack, this time for the quite obviously risqué Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt. A coming on 10-year old anime that was born of a simple idea; what if a show in the style of the Powerpuff Girls was just outright filth? And so you have a show about a couple of angels kicked out of heaven who are only interested in sugary sweets and sex.
For a show with such a lowbrow premise it's actually really funny, and if you watch it in English you could pretty much mistake it for an [adult swim] show. Anyway, the show itself hits the same buttons for me as sleazy electroclash does, but I will sing the praises of the soundtrack all day every day to boot, it's incredibly fitting and (if you pardon the 2010's blog vernacular and innuendo) actually banging. Let's dive in.
Kicking off with the track that sparked this idea in my head, PSG wastes no time dropping quality tunes as this one shows up in episode 1. I said this on the podcast too, but part of what I love so much about this OST is that it is absolutely a throwback to that era of electro and 'bloghouse', which was kinda dying out by tail end of the 2000s. And it fits the slightly seedy overtones so well.
It's TeddyLoid that consistently steals the show, this soundtrack was my introduction to his works, and that super loud throwback electro sound is his staple. Corset Theme is a prime example of that, and also showcases something else I've grown to love about TeddyLoid's works; that distortion on the vocals throughout is great, but when it's kicked into high gear on the more shouty parts it's incredible and really gives the production a feeling of power. Also of note, I'm skipping over some of the extra sleazy tracks on the OST with names that wouldn't be out of place on an electroclash release like "Beverly Hills Cock", "Dancefloor Orgy" and "Technodildo"
Moving out of electro and TeddyLoid territory for the time being, I was hoping to drop this one on Adam back when we were podcasting because it would be supremely up his alley with that MIDI Piano stab intro. And that's not the only piece of inspiration this one takes from vintage house, rave and garage; the vocals are a natural one too, hitting that same groove from the get go. But that's not all, I wish you all could have seen my face the first time I hit the bit after the breakdown around 1:43 or so, something about those Robin S style synths in the background really made it hit home in the best way possible.
There is a follow up OST album too, ironically called "The Worst Album". This one features even more genre variety, including some of TeddyLoid and the like's foray's into Dubstep (that do sound a bit dated, but I am still burnt out on that style of Dubstep so take that with a hint of bias). That being said the excellent tunes don't stop, this one was made for a throwaway montage scene and only appears in 1(!) episode. And like Champion, when I hear those 8-bits of the intro crop up in shuffle, I can't help but smile a little and get ready for the lovely wobbly Drum & Bass to come.
The D&B continues into the latter half of the LP, with this fantastic flip of the ending theme Fallen Angel. Continuing the theme of throwbacks, this takes me right back to when I fell into a Liquid Funk obsession back in Univeristy courtesy of Hospital Records. Every now and then they come out with a tune that takes me back, but I've yet to hear one that does it as strongly as this remix. I really can't praise it enough; from creative chops of vocals to being a mostly original composition it's all in all a fantastic remix. I could live in those euphoric breakdowns forever.
Spotify is sadly missing the 'third' OST album, which contains full versions of some tracks with the voice actors over them on the above two albums, but frankly I'm just happy to have these two back so I can share them in all their smutty glory. I was intending to put a couple more tunes too but I think this is long enough as is. I urge you to check out the albums if you at all like what you've heard, and if you end up watching the show too all the better! As always folks, stay safe out there and enjoy the music.
-CVF
Regardless, enjoy!
-CVF
I've been waiting to write about this one for some time now, I mentioned it a couple of times on the podcast way back when, and had planned to do something written around then. Part of the delay has also been the potential NSFW as mentioned at the top of the post but I figured that now is as good a time as any to pull the trigger.
Yes today we're talking another soundtrack, this time for the quite obviously risqué Panty & Stocking With Garterbelt. A coming on 10-year old anime that was born of a simple idea; what if a show in the style of the Powerpuff Girls was just outright filth? And so you have a show about a couple of angels kicked out of heaven who are only interested in sugary sweets and sex.
For a show with such a lowbrow premise it's actually really funny, and if you watch it in English you could pretty much mistake it for an [adult swim] show. Anyway, the show itself hits the same buttons for me as sleazy electroclash does, but I will sing the praises of the soundtrack all day every day to boot, it's incredibly fitting and (if you pardon the 2010's blog vernacular and innuendo) actually banging. Let's dive in.
Kicking off with the track that sparked this idea in my head, PSG wastes no time dropping quality tunes as this one shows up in episode 1. I said this on the podcast too, but part of what I love so much about this OST is that it is absolutely a throwback to that era of electro and 'bloghouse', which was kinda dying out by tail end of the 2000s. And it fits the slightly seedy overtones so well.
It's TeddyLoid that consistently steals the show, this soundtrack was my introduction to his works, and that super loud throwback electro sound is his staple. Corset Theme is a prime example of that, and also showcases something else I've grown to love about TeddyLoid's works; that distortion on the vocals throughout is great, but when it's kicked into high gear on the more shouty parts it's incredible and really gives the production a feeling of power. Also of note, I'm skipping over some of the extra sleazy tracks on the OST with names that wouldn't be out of place on an electroclash release like "Beverly Hills Cock", "Dancefloor Orgy" and "Technodildo"
Moving out of electro and TeddyLoid territory for the time being, I was hoping to drop this one on Adam back when we were podcasting because it would be supremely up his alley with that MIDI Piano stab intro. And that's not the only piece of inspiration this one takes from vintage house, rave and garage; the vocals are a natural one too, hitting that same groove from the get go. But that's not all, I wish you all could have seen my face the first time I hit the bit after the breakdown around 1:43 or so, something about those Robin S style synths in the background really made it hit home in the best way possible.
There is a follow up OST album too, ironically called "The Worst Album". This one features even more genre variety, including some of TeddyLoid and the like's foray's into Dubstep (that do sound a bit dated, but I am still burnt out on that style of Dubstep so take that with a hint of bias). That being said the excellent tunes don't stop, this one was made for a throwaway montage scene and only appears in 1(!) episode. And like Champion, when I hear those 8-bits of the intro crop up in shuffle, I can't help but smile a little and get ready for the lovely wobbly Drum & Bass to come.
The D&B continues into the latter half of the LP, with this fantastic flip of the ending theme Fallen Angel. Continuing the theme of throwbacks, this takes me right back to when I fell into a Liquid Funk obsession back in Univeristy courtesy of Hospital Records. Every now and then they come out with a tune that takes me back, but I've yet to hear one that does it as strongly as this remix. I really can't praise it enough; from creative chops of vocals to being a mostly original composition it's all in all a fantastic remix. I could live in those euphoric breakdowns forever.
Spotify is sadly missing the 'third' OST album, which contains full versions of some tracks with the voice actors over them on the above two albums, but frankly I'm just happy to have these two back so I can share them in all their smutty glory. I was intending to put a couple more tunes too but I think this is long enough as is. I urge you to check out the albums if you at all like what you've heard, and if you end up watching the show too all the better! As always folks, stay safe out there and enjoy the music.
-CVF
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