Bright End of Nowhere

Time for another round of "nos asks the hive mind". This time, music recommendations. The topic is "songs of vice and sin". Anything from "One Night in Bangkok" to "House of the Rising Sun" to "The Perfect Crime #2". I don't really care.

I, uh, basically might be doing something involving the seven deadly sins and need inspiration. And I'd like to see if I can actually make a playlist that doesn't involve Matthew Good in some way. :)

I've been watching the archives of Extra Credits on PATV (which are completely awesome and I need to link people to them at some point, because there are people I know in fandom who would eat these guys up because they get it). And, for the outro music, they often take tracks made from people on OCRemix, a group of various fan artist who remix video game music and share them. There was an epic rendition of the Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past theme, and, curious, I traced it back to the source.

Imagine my surprise when, upon visiting OCRemix's homepage, I saw the announcement that they'd just released their newest album: Wild Arms: ARMed and DANGerous.

Look, I can understand why some people are like "so what?" The first Wild ARMs game was released 15 years ago for the PS1, with little fanfare. The 3/4 overhead was reminiscent of FF6, and the 3D battles looked like bobbleheads fighting. It got completely overshadowed by the release of Final Fantasy VII in terms of very early PlayStation JRPGs.

Wild ARMs was the very first RPG I played through start to finish. I'd played around with my cousin's copy of one of the Legend of Zelda games, when I visited and he'd let me, but Wild ARMs? Wild ARMs was mine. I'd rented it on a whim in the summer of 1997 and was absolutely hooked. I'd played through Rudy's intro twice because I didn't understand at the time that I had to save, because there was no way I'd finish in one sitting. 10 hours of gameplay later, we had to return the disc, and the next day, I'd begged my mom for a trip to the game store and minutes later, I had my very own copy in my hands.

I never looked back.

Fourteen and a half years ago, I was introduced to a genre that changed my life. If not for Wild ARMs, I would never have been introduced to Square-Enix, Nippon Ichi, Bioware, or Atlus. I would never have dove headfirst into DnD, WoD, Shadowrun, FATE, or homebrew tabletops. I would never have jumped at the chance to join my university's live-action role-playing group, simply because they had the phrase "role-playing game" in the title.

I would not have the friends I have today, nor had the experiences that made me who I am. I would not be me.

Whenever an icon meme rolls around, people generally ask me "who's that in your default icon?" That would be Cecilia Adelhyde, the one female character in the party of three main characters of the first Wild ARMs, from the animated intro to the game. She's awesome. And she reminds me every day of who I was and who I came to be.

I'm listening to the OCRemix album as I write this, and I can't really put into words what I feel to hear Michiko Naruke's work remixed by fans who love her work as much as I do. It takes me back to a time when I was 12 years old, playing the game on the floor of my brother's bedroom, and not yet realizing at the time that'd I'd fallen absolutely, irrevocably in love with a medium and a genre like none other before.

Last night was the VGO concert at Symphony Hall, which was incredible. The program was divided into two sections: the first part, they performed arrangements from film and television, such as The Lord of the Rings, Steel Magnolias, and Back to the Future (the last of which had the actual composer, Alan Silvestri, conducting). The second half was from video games, and is what is "standard" for the VGO. However, this time it was a full orchestra plus rock band in Symphony Hall. It started with the Super Mario Bros. suite, and then got more awesome from there. Myst, which is new for them since they usually don't play Western video game music. "Baba Yetu" from Civ IV with full choir. The Afrika suite with Wataru Hokoyama conducting. The Metal Gear Solid suite, with "Snake Eater" performed by a young woman with a seriously impressive set of pipes. The Final Fantasy VII suite, which, yes, meant "One-Winged Angel" with full orchestra and choir. And ending with a rendition of "Scar of Time" from Chrono Cross, which never gets old, because it has the most crazy-awesome flute and violin solos in existence. (I swear to god, the music was the best part of that game.)

I like it when I get "culture"!

Speaking of music, I rediscovered my absolute adoration of Matthew Good's music, after not paying attention for roughly 5 years. Which is somewhat ironic since one of two posters hanging in my room is a poster from the 2003 Avalanche tour. This meant I discovered two studio albums, a live album, and that a new one is coming out next month. My wallet kind of hates me right now. But my ears don't! And I discovered that Matthew Good still pretty much writes the soundtrack to my life. I really wish I had had Hospital Music back in 2007 when it came out. :/

(I'm back to playing around with mixes and playlists, so don't be surprised if post a thing. I might try something new and have it appear as a Grooveshark playlist instead of a downloadable .zip for streaming listening. And legality. Unsure though. Thoughts?)

surreallis asked me for a music mix of instrumental music: "it needs to evoke feeling. I'd love it to be lush or sad or angsty or painful, but without vocals.". I added "heroic" and "determined" to that list too. The mix is actually purely video game music, and from mostly two composers: Nobuo Uematsu (Final Fantasy series) and Shoji Meguro (Shin Megami Tensei and Persona series). There are a few tracks by composer Yasunori Mitsuda (Chrono Trigger, Chrono Cross, and Xenogears), but it ended up as a near-perfect split between Uematsu and Meguro.

Masks We Wear (21 tracks, 97.7MB .zip, 1:15 play time)

( Track List )

So as I mentioned on Thursday (Thursday?), I went to PAX East this weekend. It was a highly-fun weekend where a couple thousand gamers descended on the city of Boston for three days of gaming and gaming-related panels and music. Video games, boardgames, card games, tabletops, you name it, it was probably there. Plus, companies came to show off their new wares. Let me tell you, NVidia's new 3D graphics card (that actually does 3D) is really, really sweet.

( Yeah, I'm going to babble about the con )

Today, I decided to forgo the last day of PAX in favor of going to something else. The Tamagawa University's Taiko and Dance performers put on a show at the campus auditorium. I wasn't entirely familiar with taiko prior to today, beyond the basics, but all I can say is, if you get a chance to see them, do it. They're amazing. They're doing a bit of an east coast tour right now (I think they're going to be in DC for the National Cherry Blossom festival on 4/10, I think).

So, I've got a bit of a "problem". See, I got this new iPod, Moros. Moros has roughly 6x more space than I currently have music. (Moros is also bigger than my sole computer at the moment, but lets ignore that.) And despite my recent addiction to Bang Camaro, they only have one album. And, really, I can only listen to so much Shostakovich and Haydn before I want something with less...woodwinds and strings.

Which brings me to this: what kind of music do you like/would recommend?As far as my tastes go, it's pretty eclectic (witness as I jump from Matthew Good Band to Orbital to Queens of the Stone Age to Bach to Freezepop). I'm asking because I'm starting to wonder if I'm not just confusing the hell out of the Last.fm and Pandora algorithms.

I'll admit to an aversion to rap, hip-hop, and R&B, but that's mostly colored by only being exposed to the genres via my brother who listened to albums with incomprehensible lyrics and lackluster beat and tone that sounded indistinguishable from each other (and not in the amusing way like how All Linkin Park songs look the same). I'm also not fond of the "really twangy kind" of country, probably because really twanging on an acoustic guitar makes me cringe.

So, sureallis did this, and I got a mix from her a week or so ago. So this? Is sharing the wealth.

Comment with a theme, and I'll make you a music mix. Like, music to listen to while eating nachos. Or something less lame.

My music tastes are all over the board, with rock, classical, techno, electronica, and at least 7GB alone of Final Fantasy music, so expect to see a whole bunch of stuff in the same mix. If you'd rather not hear something in a mix, let me know.

I have this habit of, when I'm bored and in the mood, of making mixes/playlists to provide background music for whatever it is I'm doing. (For example, there is still the playlist "Anger Management", for when I'm pissed off at the world. Thankfully, that playlist has not been seeing much action these days.) Others are "soundtracks" to various things I'm writing.

I'm considering sharing some of these things, but am unsure of the best way of preserving playlist orders while throwing the entire thing into a .zip or .rar. iTunes apparently exports it as a .txt file. (Um, why?) Since iTunes has apparently failed me, I am left with a choice of:

-Windows Media Player (slightly less-than-thrilled with this option)
-Winamp
-Media Monkey (less-than-ideal solution, because I never use it for this)

(And yes, I do have four different audio programs. No, I don't have a problem.)

I guess I'm just curious as to what other people have used.

Dear brain-

Why have you latched on to "Comfort Eagle" by Cake as part of the Ori music for the "Bringing Down the House" playlist? This feels so wrong.

Plz to be making sense again.

Love and razor blades,

-the Management