Results tagged “music”

Last week, I took a vacation and spent a lot of time on different trains roaming the region and then walking around a bit. For me, there is no better traveling companion than my iPod. I’m an audio-oriented kind of guy, I love music of (almost) all stripes and, if presented with a choice, will frequently pick audiobooks over their print counterparts for my consumption. But this addiction interplays with my inability to browse shops, be they online or offline, with any sense of discipline.

And so it was that, prior to my trip, while looking for more audiobooks to load on my iPod, I wound up looking through albums of remastered and re-imagined video game musical scores. It’s a convoluted path that isn’t quite out of the blue. Here’s the story: a few weeks prior I had heard an interlude on NPR of Super Mario Theme music being performed via acoustic guitar by a band called 4” Stud. While shopping for the audiobooks, I took a detour to purchase that song and was soon swept away in a sea of “suggested titles” based on that purchase.

This isn’t exactly a bustling niche of music at the moment, though the exceptions to this rule demonstrate that things might be changing. Final Fantasy scores, for example, are alive and well. So as I weeded my way though the catalogs, purchased and listened, these are the items that stuck out:

1. Video Games Live, Vol. 1 (more info)

Video Games Live is a concert series, much like the Lord of the Rings concert series, we featured earlier this year, wherein a live orchestra and chorus perform musical numbers from a series of games. Or, as they describe it on their site:

“(Video Games Live is) an immersive event created by the game industry featuring the best game music performed by top orchestras and choirs combined with synchronized lighting, video, live action, and audience interactivity. The first and most successful video game concert tour in the world.”

I’ve never attended one in person (they sell out quickly), but listening to the music, I’ll be it’s on helluva show. The arrangements are quite varied: from a piano rendition of the Tetris theme, to the operatic stylings of God of War, to the rock opera-esque Castlevania theme. It’s a blast to listen though. Below is their Civilization IV Medley arrangement for you to sample; it’s got a slight World Beat feel to it that makes for great train ride listening.

Civilization IV Medley

Amazing. Awesome. Epic. Legendary. These are just a few of the words that can describe Friday’s Lord of The Rings concert at Radio City Musical Hall in NYC. We were there, and you’ll be getting a full report from us early in the week, but briefly, if you weren’t at Radio City on Friday, go there today. Seriously, head to http://www.theradiocitylotrconcert.com and then head to Radio City for tonight’s concert. I cannot urge you enough.

A friend of mine passed this along to me - there is apparently an orchestral tour of Final Fantasy music! It’s called the Distant Worlds Tour and they’re still playing now. See if they’re coming to a city near you!

Here’s a sneak peek of the battle theme from FFVIII (you can find plenty of videos of other songs on YouTube as well):

One thing I love about living in YouTubeworld is that it gives aspiring filmmakers a sweet outlet for putting out short projects and getting feedback on them. While you undoubtedly have to regularly wade through some pretty awful stuff to get to the fun ones, it’s worth it.

So I thought I’d take you through 3 ways to kill five minutes on YouTube while satisfying your undeniable craving for horror.

First up — a music video by French electronica band Zombie Zombie that remakes John Carpenter’s “The Thing” using G.I. Joe figures. Sah-weeeeeet!

Two more to check out….

Matt Schwartz’s recent post, Music to My Twisted Ears, got me thinking about my music collection and the horrors it might contain. Genuine horrors — not bad music, of which there is, of course, none on my iPod (okay maybe a track or two from the ’80s but, hey…).

It took just one pass through the iPod to realize that to my twisted ears, Slint makes the most truly frightening music I know of. Hands down and for many reasons, not the least of which is the seeming normality of the band’s members, photographed here in a quarry in their homeland of Kentucky by Will Oldham (aka Bonnie “Prince” Billy), another dark Kentucky musician. More after the jump…

Nothing new here (in fact, quite a few years old). But ended up discussing today with a friend how many musicians I listen to have explored telling horror stories in their music (no big shock, given my love for the genre). Among them include Concrete Blonde, Kirsty Maccoll, Kate Bush (arguably the master of it). and They Might be Giants, among many others. But not many have gone as far as Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds, whose Murder Ballads album devoted 9 of its 10 songs to fleshed-out stories. Many of you will know his brilliant duet with Kylie Minogue, “Where the Wild Roses Grow” but for those of you that haven’t seen the equally wild video — well, enjoy.

I’ve always been both a metalhead and a total fantasy geek—possibly the two most powerful formative influences on my teen years were Metallica and J.R.R. Tolkien. There exists a deep and occult connection between heavy metal and fantasy fiction, one that surfaces both obliquely—Spiked wristbands! Album covers that could double as Wheel of Time book jackets! Fire!—and overtly, as in the legacy of metal songs explicitly inspired by fantastical literary sources.

After the jump, check out a few of my favorite heavy metal songs inspired by fantasy novels. And I know I’ve forgotten a few, so add them in the comments!

While the fanboy in me is hitting max capacity this summer with The Dark Knight and Hellboy II, I had to make a little extra room when I stumbled across a video on YouTube from the 80s for one of my favorite albums of all time.

Yup — this is “Behind the Barrier” from Planet P Project’s mindscrewing SF/horror concept double album “Pink World” from 1984. In a nutshell — little kid is born with incredible powers, humanity worships him, kid destroys 99% of Earth, and the ones he keeps alive end up in worse shape than those that died. Picture “Firestarter” meets John Wyndham’s “The Midwich Cuckoos” tossed into a blender with Pink Floyd’s “The Wall” with a “1984’ chaser. Got that?