A Love letter to soundtracks

I got the itch to do another mixtape type dealie once again. I was looking over my past ones and saw that more often than not there were more than a few soundtrack pieces bleeding onto them, I'd conciously been trying to avoid it in the past but this time I went all in and embraced it. This time we focus on soundtrack work coming out of Japan - inspired by a coworker linking me to another mixtape of a simialar theme by Mac DeMarco over on NTS - though his is firmly rooted in the videogame sphere. I have considered it before, there are some legitimate amazing tunes out there - the electro/dubstep vibes of Sumire Uesaka's Pop Team Epic to the seedy spiritual successor to Electroclash in the blog house stylings of TeddyLoid's Fly Away there's plenty to go at. And that's just the super upbeat stuff!

There is no J-Pop this time but there's a remarkable amount of varitey on show in this small selection. From jazzy conventional soundtracks like the opening trio that takes a breakbeat turn with the soundtrack of Racing Lagoon to thumping techno courtesy of the soundtrack to the PS1 Ghost In The Shell Game, before coming back into land with some ambient, trip hop and straight up hip hop in the final quarter. And I didn't even end up using some of the stuff I had planned, originally I wanted to chuck some D&B in there from Soichi Terada and Shinji Oritio, and even some of the legitimate 1980's stuff from the Bubblegum Crisis soundtracks. It didn't come to be this time, but that's all well and good because that just means I have more fuel for if I decide to do another one of these! Tracklist follows after the player:



Tracklist:
Ryuichi Katsumata - Sileighty Toujou (Initial D Extra Stage Original Sound Tracks, 2001)
Taku Iwasaki - Police Woman (Angel Heart Original Soundtrack, 2006)
Yoko Shimomura - Arise Within You (Parasite Eve Original Soundtrack, 1998)
Noriko Matsueda - Loop Demo (Racing Lagoon Original Soundtrack, 1999)
Shinji Orito - Empty Space (Clannad Original Soundtrack, 2004)
Rei Harakami - Pone (Boogiepop Phantom Original Soundtrack, 2000)
Kensuke Ushio - Boogiepop And Others (Boogiepop And Others Original Soundtrack, 2019)
Kensuke Ushio - Fire Witch II (Boogiepop And Others Original Soundtrack, 2019)
Takkyu Ishino - Ghost In The Shell (Megatech Body.CD.,LTD. - 1997)
Kenji Kawai - Nightstalker (Ghost In The Shell (Original Soundtrack), 1995)
Akira Yamaoka - The Day Of Night (Silent Hill 2 Original Soundtracks, 2001)
Akira Yamaoka - The Reverse Will (Silent Hill 2 Original Soundtracks, 2001)
Masafumi Takada - So That The Forms Of Heavenly Maidens Linger Before Me Yet More (Samurai Champloo Original Soundtrack [Hip Hop Samurai Action], 2006)
Force Of Nature - Just Forget (Samurai Champloo Music Record - Impression, 2004)
The Seatbelts - Space Lion (Cowboy Bebop, 1998)


It might not be the best mixing I've ever done, but overall I'm OK with it, I got the variety in that I wanted and even some deeper dives like Racing Lagoon to boot. If the MIDI sax of the opening tracks is turning you away, I understand, but try and stick it out to the Boogiepop section of soundtracks, they're some really beautiful pieces and the Rei Harakami one is potentially my favourite of all the things he ever did. I've got somethin else lined up to post fairly soon, but hopeully there are some tunes in here that will tide you over for a day or two. And as always - Stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Techy Turn

Another return this time - back to basics with a slightly thematic rundown of 'things that came up on shuffle' like I used to do. Focusing on one of my favourite niches in the electronic music world, that brief period in the early 2000's where everything got a bit techy, with stuff like the minimal glitch of microhouse becoming fairly popular. It's not isolated to that one genre though, a lot of stuff around the time was moving in a heavily synthetic direction - by far the biggest target there is Electroclash, which long time readers will know is one of my I wouldn't say any of these tunes are of the genre directly but they almost certainly flirt with it heavily. Let's take a look.

Arne Quinze - My Secret Garden, Valencia (2018)

What is there to say about Rippin Kittin that I haven't already? I'll probably bring it up every so often for as long as I remain in the electronic music space. The original was a bit of a hit on the dance charts, but it doesn't exactly sound like what you'd expect of the time, in an era where feel good 4/4 house and friends were still king. Rippin Kittin is still in that House fashion, though with this sweetly done distinct melancholy atmosphere running throughout, one helped out by Kittin's delivery of those deceptively dark lyrics. The original is a gorgeous slice of electronic music from the time, one that I adore the sound of to this day even after almost 20 years(!) of listening.

There's a boatload of remixes, covers and all sorts of the original and I love them all in their own ways - but there are a few that consistently fight for the top spot are: Glove's Radio Mix thanks to the reintroduction of the chorus that puzzlingly isn't present on the original, Alexander Polzin's mix that strips the original down to a skeletal fragile version of itself.

But what's holding pole position for me at the minute is the Golden Boy with Turner's Strings mix, Golden Boy's own revisit to the tune and what could be considered the 'Director's Cut' of mixes. It combines all the elements of my favourite mixes and versions pretty much (though the chorus is yet again missing here), truth be told it's not all that different from the original - but the little tweaks here and there, all topped off with a little bit of vocoding on the existing vocal make the mix fell as if it was almost catered directly to me.



Swayzak now, they've made a couple of appearances before on here, normally for their earlier techy deep house outings like Speedboat. I've only gone a few albums deeper than the debut that one was from (Snowboarding In Argentina) but starting from the follow up Himawari things start moving in all kinds of directions and are no longer clearly defined as their debut. And that's not a critique - the later albums massivley benefit from this blend of sounds and the introduction of vocals on some tracks too, State Of Grace with Kirsty Hawkshaw being a real highlight.

But we're not talking about Himawari here - I've chosen a track from Dirty Dancing from 2002, an album that goes in a much more poppy direction. It was very much in fashion at the time (as is the theme of this post), and Swayzak's attempt at it is fairly decent, albeit with some questionable vocals at times. But by far and away the best result of this experiment is I Dance Alone - the album has more than a hint of Adult.'s sound to it which comes to a head here as we have Nicola Kuperus from Adult. actually featuring on the vocal front too. Her contributions to Adult. tracks really complete that electro punky feel that they have and that's on full show here. I can see why if you were super into the tech house output of the two you'd be disappointed (and some of the album is super dated for sure) but I can't help but love this one, the combo of electro and Kuperus' shout-out loud vocals are just great, but as I've admitted before I have a real soft spot for this era of sound.



And finally, one I've held off on putting up hoping it would come on some other decent streaming services but that's looking increasingly rare. So rather than a Spotify player I went with YT instead - doesn't look as nice but hey ho. Another find from the surprisingly solid 'This is Tech-Pop' compilation from Ministry Of Sound, Naked, Drunk & Horny wouldn't sound too out of place in the slightly seedy world of electroclash from it's title, but the actual tune errs much more on the pop side than your usual suspects that were labelled elctroclash at the time.

Allegedly a remake of a tune called 'Starecase' from Pukka that I cannot find any information about on the internet - it's very much of that early 2000's era with it's nonsensical lyrics and sultry female vocal, but like so many songs like it I can't help but like it. It toes the line between tongue in cheek parody and out and out cheese to the point where I can't make up my mind if it's earnest or not - a feeling not helped by tracks like She Gets Me High coming out sounding like a proto-vaporwave track, one that's trying to create some kind of faux-exotic European sound.



A slightly eclectic mix this time - these are all tunes that kinda came to mind one after another though, and sort of share that early aughts electronic theme so I suppose they are at least slightly themed! Got a little long in the tooth  Here's hoping you found some interesting stuff off the heels of this post, if you like slightly obscure (and let's be honest generally 'average') electronic of this era like I do, then the rest of the Yellow Note album is a good port of call - as an interesting curio if nothing else.

And as always - stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Gone Swimming

I'm back on my usual again, this time with a post about some compilations I haven't talked about before which is surprising as you will soon see they are supremely up my alley. Adult Swim has a long history of supporting musicians both indie and otherwise as you've seen me post about many times before - they were ahead of the game when it came to campaigns like that, before the yearly 'Singles Program' that they run now there was a couple of collaborations with the Ghostly International label that resulted in a couple of compilations that at the time you could get for free. This was around 2008 as a free download on the Adult Swim site which is where I got my copy. The official links are dead now but there are mirrors - but Ghostly also has them archived on their Bandcamp too, albeit not for $0 like it was in '08. Still, it's a great little compilation, let's quote the Bandcamp page for a bit of background:

(...) a 20-track mix (curated by label founder Sam Valenti IV) of tracks from Ghostly's avant-pop mainstays like Matthew Dear, Michna, and School of Seven Bells, alongside kindred spirits like Milosh, FLYamSAM, and Mux Mool. Ghostly Swim's best tracks embody the label's trademark mix of playful darkness and irreverence - Deastro's lurching robot-rock anthem "Light Powered," The Chap's bizarro-world pop hit "Carlos Walter Wendy Stanley," Michna's slinky-smooth "Triple Chrome Dipped" - making them an ideal accompaniment to, say, pissing in your pants over Harvey Birdman: Attorney at Law.

And really they couldn't have summed it up better. The whole compilation is suitably eclectic given the work of Adult Swim, where electro-industrial tracks like Kill Memory Crash's Hit + Run rub shoulders with out and out smooth as hell and drenched in talkbox funk-inspired tracks like Osborne's Wait A Minute. Much like the Singles Program that Adult Swim used to run, this is a great compilation if you're looking to get some variety injected into your collection - a real standout highlight is the pulsing house come techno number from The Reflecting Skin in Traffickers I could do an entire post on this comp but I'll curtail it for now.

By far and away the most standout tune on here though is one of the few official appearances of FLYamSAM, which as the name would imply is a collaboration between Flying Lotus and Samiyam. This is from around the Los Angeles era of FlyLo which is home to some of my favourites of his, and it really shows - The Offbeat could have easily come off one of the companion EPs for LA, while it has that slightly rough feel of FlyLo's sound of that era, the whole thing feels a lot more slick than some of the cuts from the album. That wobbly melody is sweet as hell to this day, I wasn't into FlyLo so much when I first grabbed this compilation but with hindsight it's not hard to see that the man had a real talent for production and was definitely one to watch. Not to discount the work that Samiyam also put in mind you, his influence is clear to hear as well - having produced one of my favourites from Los Angeles in RobertaFlack, the two have a shared sound philosophy that I love a whole lot.



But of course, part of the beauty of these comps is introducing artists you might have not seen otherwise, and I'd say that rings true for pretty much the rest of the tracklist here for me. Enter Mux Mool - their contribution to the compilation is also aesthetically on point when it comes to matching the general Adult Swim vibe, the cut up beat butchery of the opening on Night Court would be right at home on one of the network's commercial 'bumps' (which, coincidentally is also what FlyLo was doing with his early demos). It kinda fits into a niche subcategory within my library, this kind of jammed out hip hop stuff reminds me a lot of the likes of Gold Panda and Bibio, though the closest I think in terms of sound is what Pretty Lights was making around this time - Filling Up The City Skies carries a lot of the same style cues, though with more of a sample focused approach than here.



The downside to this is finding an artist and digging deeper only to find they didn't really do anything more - two examples of this on this compilation: Reflecting Skin as mentioned in the first paragraph and the subject of my next pick - Dark Party. Active stood out to me early on, as is so often the case with many artists I end up following, I like the style on show here and was interested to see what else they had on offer. As mentioned though, they haven't done anything under the Dark Party name since around 2010 so you can most likely consider the project defunct. But not every artist has to turn into a massive deep discography dive I suppose, given how many things I have on my wishlist I shouldn't complain! Still, if you like what you hear here, they do have one album under the name called Light Years that's in the same vein.



And that'll do it for now, this post was originally going to be one track from each of the three Ghostly Swim comps but that got a bit lost by the wayside! Always fuel for another post I suppose, the other compilations are a little different in terms of sound too, the second edition of Ghostly Swim didn't come out until 2014 so a lot of evolution and change both for the label and the electronic sphere happened in-between. Check out the rest of the comp if you've liked my selections here, it's a little more varied than my choices here would lead you to think.

And as always - Stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF

Red Skies

Abbott Handerson Thayer - The Sky Simulated by Red Flamingoes (1909)

Back again with what I hope will be another one of those shorter posts I talked about last time. Kicking off with my latest escapist experience, Umurangi Generation, and its decidedly on-point soundtrack. The setting is a slightly cyberpunk New Zealand, and you're there to take pictures and have a chill time mainly. The soundtrack is on paper at odds with the chill aesthetic, it runs the full gamut from near dubstep and future bass to more conventional House and a whole heap of UK Garage influence too, but it works ever so well in practice. Speaking of variety, it helps that the OST is massive, the DLC soundtrack that this is from is 51 tracks, and the main game has an extra 81 on top of that - granted a lot of them are super short but still. I've yet to hear a dud from ThorHighHeels, and even if I did there's so much to get at on this album that I don't think it'd be a big deal even if.



Speaking of aesthetics, we're revisiting Mitch Murder again now. Out of all the 'Retrowave' (and it's million other umbrella terms) artists, Mitch's works always felt the most... honest, for lack of a better term. Mitch's work certainly takes a whole heap of inspiration from actual 80's music, but unlike some other artists of the synthwave persuasion, I think a lot of his work is more of a love letter to the style of old rather than just aping the overall sound and vibe. Take Frost from his latest release Then Again - it has massive echoes of Vangelis' score for Blade Runner, which I know is an incredibly cliché comparison to make but those brassy synths are almost absolutely intended to be taken that way. It's been a while since I heard Mitch tackle something so downbeat as this and I'm really digging it, it's at the top of my list to check out and scoop up come next BC Friday.



Another one from my list to round out - L'usine (or just Lusine as they go by now). I very briefly dipped my toe into their work when I was on my ambient streak a little while ago, but as is so often the case I ended up finding out they have a ton of releases under their belt, the early stuff falling under the IDM label to boot. I did a little bit of exploring, and is so often the case with me I checked a couple out based on the cover art alone, which is how I found The Waiting Room. Made the mistake of reading the reviews on discogs but they weren't useful, just full of folks lamenting that it was a house record and not like their older works, I was undeterred though and thought I should at least sample the first track.

I haven't really had time to sit down with the album properly yet, but Panoramic is nice enough, a real driving song that worked real well during my WFH periods - it actually reminds me a lot of Röyksopp in a way, I think it has some of the same structure that was on The Understanding's bonus tracks that are like the refined results of a bunch of jam sessions. It's on the ever-growing list either way, so you may be hearing more of this in the future, if not this album then certainly L'usine's other works.



Right, I think that went pretty well. A *little* bit shorter than usual but not by much I will admit. Still, my thoughts remain the same, I plan to do more of these quick-fire posts in the coming future, too many times recently I've ended up writing across multiple days which I think sometimes makes my writing a bit scatterbrained (more so than usual at least!), not to mention the extra time taken too. Anyway, that's neither here nor there, hope you enjoy these selections - I'll be back as usual with more soon enough.

And as always - Stay safe and enjoy the music.

-CVF