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Archive for the 'Video Game Music' Category

New Vids from Superpowerless

Posted on January 11th, 2010 in Interviews, Video Game Music.
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What happens when you combine three musically gifted nerds, some shopping money and a full play day? If the nerds are Oliver Hindle, Steve Brunton, and Jaylyn Coffin of Superpowerless, you get an 8-bit cover of Poker Face.

Oliver emailed me Sunday afternoon with a link to this video. I had no idea what to expect but was immediately thrilled that he’d finally provided me with a nerd-approved way to justify enjoying a Lady Gaga song.

I first heard about Superpowerless back in March when Oliver won the MTV Fast Track contest and was flown to London to work with Luc Janin, who previously directed promos for Stereophonics, The Fratellis, Boy Kill Boy and Lethal Bizzle, on the video for “Wasted My Time.”

Based in Leeds, England, the live band now includes Oliver Hindle (the curly haired dude/lead), Steve Brunton (the dude in the beard), Tom Hunter, Jaylyn Coffin (who directed the Poker Face video) and Stevey Gilkes.

The first time I played the Superpowerless Lady Gaga cover, I laughed my ass off, but I wanted to make sure I wasn’t missing some deeper meaning to the video. Did the bearded man represent the dark side of Oliver’s personality? Did the lightsaber battle represent a daily struggle? I asked Oliver. Turns out, the only big message they wanted to convey was how much fun it can be when you’re part of Superpowerless, “The beard was a spur of the moment thing,” he said. “We decided to shoot a video… went in to town… had no plans at all and just went shopping to see what we could find that would make an entertaining video… Found the lightsabers and the beard and the rest is history! [laughs]”

The entire video was shot in one day in Leeds. Some scenes didn’t make it to the final cut, like the one where Oliver and Steve managed to lightsaber their way into the cinema and in front of the screen where they battled for an epic 10 seconds before getting kicked out. Sadly, the footage was too dark to make it to the video, so you’ll just have to use your imagination to picture the audience’s reaction to that one.

It seems that, above all, Superpowerless just wants to have fun. Last time I chatted with Oliver, he was in the process of setting it up a PlayStation dance mat to trigger samples from a laptop and he’s getting closer to the finished product, “Tom Hunter took apart a Guitar Hero controller and a really expensive Japanese guitar and then put all of the guitar hero controls in to the real guitar,” Oliver said, “One of his friends has it at the moment to cover it in LED’s which will interact with which buttons are pressed and the music that it makes! Tom’s also got a mohawk which the LED guy has created a headband for which lets Tom fill his mohawk with LEDs which change color along with the guitar…. pretty mental stuff!” Sweeet. I’ve always got mad respect for creatives who come up with fun ideas and actually have enough focus and dedication to make them happen.

You can expect to see more videos from Superpowerless over the next few months. In fact, here’s one that just went live yesterday for one of Oliver’s original songs “Press Start and Jump Around.” Shot by band member Tom Hunter, this is the result of a drunken promise and a £0 budget. “It was filmed entirely in a tiny shed, with us wearing suits in the space of 3 hours. We decided it’d be funny to shoot a video in a shed the night before while drunk and then he couldn’t back out of it so we made him do it the day after. [laughs]“The “Press Start and Jump Around” video features Oliver Hindle, Steve Brunton, Jaylyn Coffin and Tom Hunter (who also directed.)

If you’d like to get your hands on some Superpowerless tracks, you can download them for free from his page on TheSixtyOne.com. If you’re ready make your own Game Boy-fueled adventure-core music, Oliver uses a program called Little Sound DJ for the Game Boy and digital synths to create those retro, video-gamey sounds.

Download Superpowerless songs for FREE»

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MTV Fast Track Winner Superpowerless»

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New Pixelh8 Album: And The Revolution

Posted on December 23rd, 2009 in Interviews, Video Game Music.
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PIXELH8ATRLASTFM

Matthew C. Applegate, known as Pixelh8 when he’s rocking the chip tunes, just released his third studio album, “And The Revolution.”

Somehow between performing, teaching people how to use his new “SUPER CHIP TUNE SAMBA BAND” app, winning art contests and giving various lectures, Matthew still found enough energy to create a brand new 11-track album.

“And the Revolution” still contains the head-nodding, leg-bouncing sounds we’re used to from “Videogames Ruined My Life” and “The Boy With A Digital Heart,” but there’s also a calm composure in this track list. Whether it’s the haunting orchestral echoes in “You Were Born To Save The World” or a fast-paced dance-worthy track like “IED”, sounds are less about competing with one another and more about coexisting and evolving. This makes sense considering “And The Revolution” was initially intended as a collaborative piece.

“Some of the songs weren’t written from my perspective,” Matthew explains, “The album was meant to feature several special guests, but schedules kinda got in the way, which was fair enough. It just meant I had to revolutionise it.”

In “Out On The Floor”, for instance, Pixelh8 knew he needed vocals, but didn’t have anyone to do it. “I can’t sing a note to save my life,” he laughed, “and I wasn’t about to go all T-Pain, so I vocoded it.” The result? A funkified robot dance party that wins my vote for favorite album track. And even though “Out On The Floor” dabbles in the pop/dance arena, you can rest assured that Pixelh8 will always bend the circuits just enough to add his signature spin. “I purposely did it at 119bpm. Most dance tracks are at 120bpm and I wanted it to be slightly off.”

Those who enjoy the slightly off can purchase “And The Revolution” via iTunes and keep up with the latest Pixelh8 news on his site: www.pixelh8.co.uk

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Pepsi Rock Band Video Contest – Vote Now

Posted on August 14th, 2009 in Techie Tidbits, Video Game Music.
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So the videos for the Pepsi Rock Band contest are posted and the polls are open to pick the final winner. They’ve narrowed it down to the top 5 (the one I included here isn’t one of them, but I thought it deserved some love.) The winner will get their very own MTV Video Music Award Moonman. You can vote for your favorite video now. Make sure to check out the other submissions though, there’s some gold in them thar uploads.

Check out the video gallery»

Pick your fave from the top 5»

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Memorial Day Dance Party

Posted on May 25th, 2009 in Video Game Music, Videos.
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I was killing time on the interwebs and bring to you some of my findings:

A new one from Brentalfloss: Punch Out with Lyrics. Is the Rihanna joke too soon? Maybe, but I laughed. Does that make me a horrible person? Probably.

I have gamer friends. I have rennie* friends. I have girl friends. But I don’t think I have any gamer-rennie-girl friends which probably explains why I’ve never seen this at a party before. This is a promo for The Gothsicles new/old remixed album: NESFERATWO. Genius title. Fun tracks. And they’re free here.

And finally – another Konami Code shout-out song from DubNasty. This one’s also free for download on his site and I’m digging it. But I’ve got a question – he ends the code with “start select” instead of “select start.” Which is right? I thought it was select start. Actually, I don’t think the select part even mattered. According to my extensive research (a search on Urban Dictionary) “Many people mentally add in a ’select’ in there for one reason only–on the menu screen, pressing select changed the cursor to ‘2 players’ instead of ‘1 player’. Contra was always more fun to play with a friend.”

*Side note: I’ve always used the word “rennie” but I’ve never actually spelled it out before, so I googled it. For those of you who don’t know what a “rennie” is – it’s someone who is obsessed with Renaissance Faires and typically dresses up in some kind of ridiculously expensive outfit with lots of leather and patches for Halloween and – if they’re good – knows the difference between an Australian and British accent. And yes, I worked at a ren faire for about 4 years. So if you’ve ever questioned my nerdiness, now you know I’m for real. Anyway, when I was searching for the correct spelling, I found this group and I thought the description was hilarious:

Renaissance Faire Info for Non-Rennies
A tribe created (by popular demand) to answer questions about renaissance faire from people who feel intimidated by other renaissance faire tribes. Everything you ever wanted to know about faire but were afraid to ask.

I find it hilarious that there was a high demand of people who were actually intimidated by ren faire nerds and inspired this group.

[SOURCE 4 BELLY DANCERS & DUB NASTY VIDEOS: Geekologie]

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Brentalfloss’ ScrewAttack Debut

Posted on March 19th, 2009 in Video Game Music.
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Brentalfloss is back in action – this time he brings us Mario 2 with lyrics. Pure genius. I love that he worked a clip of that poor kid who got an Xbox box filled with clothes in there.

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MTV Fast Track Winner: Superpowerless

Posted on March 16th, 2009 in Interviews, Video Game Music.
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Oliver Hindle is Superpowerless – Winner of the MTV Fast Track Competition [Photo by Alistair Darley]

Back in January, MTV and Vodafone launched Fast Track, a contest designed to find and break a new musical act. Solo artists and bands from all over the world submitted their entries and the polls were opened up to the public. Once the voting stopped, the top 20 entrants were put in front of a panel of 5 judges – industry professionals who spent the next week picking the one act they felt captured the originality, individuality and something special that would really grab people’s attention. The winning track was Wasted My Time by Oliver Hindle – the 20-year-old electro-artist behind Superpowerless.

As part of the Fast Track prize, Oliver and Steve Brunton — Oliver’s live gig partner — re-recorded Wasted My Time with renowned producer and DJ, Andy Chatterley. Andy has been Grammy nominated as part of The Buick Project, and played keyboard and synths on Kanye West’s Graduation album, most notably on the hit single Stronger.

Superpowerless were also sent to London to shoot a music video for the winning track with director Luc Janin, who has previously directed promos for Stereophonics, The Fratellis, Boy Kill Boy and Lethal Bizzle. Oliver found out about his big win through a phone call while riding the bus, “I don’t think the rest of the passengers shared my excitement … I rang nearly everyone in my phone book and had the same conversation over and over until I ran out of credit.”

The video will debut on MTV on the 23rd of March in 29 countries, but you get to see it here early because I love you and MTV was nice enough to let me post it in all of its radtastic glory:

Oliver started off as a drummer in a punk-pop band, learned guitar and played some acoustic sets at college. He was then introduced to electronic music which would influence his musical direction. “After hearing the Postal Service, I started listening to electronic bands like Depeche Mode, Adult, and Motion City Soundtrack. I decided it was something I wanted to have a go at, so I bought a synth off eBay and started putting some songs together.”

Oliver dubs Superpowerless “Game Boy-fueled adventure-core” music, and his winning song Wasted My Time is a perfect example of this catchy electro-pop. As intense as it is, the entire video was shot in one day. “There were weeks of preparation behind it,” said Oliver, “I was amazed at how many people were working on it on the shooting day. It was crazy to think that they were all there to work on something for a song I’d written at home for something fun to do. The most memorable part of the shoot was the guy in the monster costume having a serious conversation with me (while wearing full costume) about what his acting influences were and me trying to keep a straight face [laughs]. I’m really grateful to Vodafone and MTV for everything, it’s been an amazing experience!”

Superpowerless can be seen at live events near Leeds, their hometown, literally tearing it up on stage. At a recent show at Gasworks in Bradford – a metal venue – Oliver and Steve played in true rock star style, “I managed to pull the mixer off of the table we’d put it on during a gig but it was still working so we carried on playing regardless,” Oliver said. “In the same gig I threw my Game Boy at the drum kit and the cartridge and batteries and everything all went off in different directions which was a bit of hassle to sort out ready for the next song, but there’s a picture out there of a Game Boy that survived a bomb, so damaging them is a pretty hard task!”

Superpowerless is not a one-hit wonder. As soon as they got back from shooting Wasted My Time in London, they came back and shot a video for Robots Need Love Too sans fancy director. Oliver gave me the scoop. “Some of my friends are really in to filming silly videos so we thought we’d have a go at doing one ourselves so we could get something online fast. Talked to a few friends and we decided it’d be a good idea to run around the city wearing cardboard boxes. We discuss things like this all the time but then everyone pulls out or forgets and nothing comes of it, but everything went ahead and we managed to get some really good footage! We got an equal amount of abuse from people that don’t like to see other people having fun and also people that were really in to it and thought it was genius. I think this comes across in the video from peoples expressions, I’m really happy with it!

“There’s some scenes that we didn’t manage to fit in, like lots of fight scenes between us robots and the scientist. We ran in to places like Sainburys and just started rugby tackling each other and rolling around wrestling. It was really fun but the footage didn’t work as there were too many people stood in the way of the camera. We got kicked out of Gamestation and a shopping center too. We had no permission to film anywhere but we managed to blag to some council people to let us carry on. Also the bit where we’re dancing, we payed a busker to let us play the track using an iPod through his amp so we could actually dance to the proper track which was fun!”

Superpowerless is currently working on a new album. “I have all the tracks written and rough versions recorded, I’m just in the process of getting them all to the same standard,” Oliver says. “We’re filming another music video to a song I wrote a long time ago called ‘Zombie Survival Plan.’ The idea for the video at the moment is that we’re going to get as many people as possible dressed as zombies in Leeds’ train station. I’m not sure what we’ll do once we’re there … but I imagine it’ll be a decent video!”

Most of Oliver’s free time is spent working on his music. “I don’t really have time to play games anymore, which is pretty depressing!” he says. “To be fair though, I like it this way as you end up having something you created at the end of it and it’s not like dead time. Don’t get me wrong, I love video games!”

So what does Oliver think of music-based video games like the Guitar Hero/Rock Band series? “I think they’re a pretty cool idea and if I had more time and money I’d probably get in to them. To be fair, I’m really bad at them and it’s quite gutting!” But that won’t stop Oliver from tweaking it to work for his shows, “I’m in the process of setting it up so we can use a PlayStation dance mat to trigger samples from a laptop. The same is possible with a Guitar Hero controller, so I might end up finding myself on stage with one [laughs].”

For any of you budding chip tune artists out there, Oliver wanted to share some words of wisdom with you: “Stay away from forums!!! [laughs] Seriously!”

Wasted My Time is available to download from Vodafone Live! on 23rd of March. Superpowerless play The Old Blue Last in Shoreditch, London on the 24th of March.

Add Superpowerless on MySpace»

The Official Superpowerless Site»

Free Superpowerless music & remix kit downloads»

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DuckTales Moon Level with Lyrics

Posted on January 30th, 2009 in Video Game Music.
8 Comments so far

Brentalfloss uploaded a new video last week putting lyrics to the moon level in the DuckTales video game from NES.

I spent so many hours playing that game with my little brother back in the day. Looking at the gameplay in the video today is so weird. I mean… rats? ON THE MOON?!?!? Wish I could’ve heard them pitch that level.

[youtube fHEgzRtKC5o]

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Harmonix Should Start a Record Label

Posted on December 17th, 2008 in Video Game Music.
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So Pearl Jam is joining the DLC train by bringing Ten – their first album from 1991 – to Rock Band on March 24, 2009. I think it’s great that we’re starting to see more and more bands bring their songs to Rock Band, but above the popular artists, I really want to start seeing more local bands featured… bands that haven’t necessarily made it big, but could through Rock Band. In issue 188 of Game Informer, editor Andy McNamara wrote an editor’s letter that I totally agree with. Here’s a little blurb:

Use the influence of these games have on the music industry to help local music around the world, and maybe – just maybe – you might make a pretty penny while doing it. I would gladly purchase a San Francisco Scene Pack, or a selection of local country from Nashville. I know Minneapolis has bands I would absolutely love to see immortalized in one of these amazing games. But more importantly, lots of great music never makes it outside of its local city. If it had an opportunity to leak out into the world, it just might make music (and music games) better for everyone.

So how bout it, Harmonix? Why not start a Rock Band record label? You’ve got the audience. You’ve got the influence. You’ve got the money. And you’ve got a group of gamers who LOVE to give their opinions on everything game-related. Hold a contest on your site and invite musicians to audition for a chance to be featured in Rock Band 3. Let the people vote for their top five choices. The band with the highest votes gets on your label. You can have your artists perform at Rock Band concerts. Put them on the main stage. Put Nerdcore artists on the other stages. Hold a Rock Band tournament. Partner with Nerdapalooza so they can help you out AND you can call the event Nerdapalooza because that’s the best name ever. Now all you need to do is hire me and pay me lots of money to organize the campaign. Deal? Deal.

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Tetris With Lyrics

Posted on December 15th, 2008 in Video Game Music.
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I love BrentalFloss. He’s got some mad skillz. This is his latest creation: Tetris with lyrics. And if you’re a girl and like Tetris (like me) don’t get all pissy that he’s making fun of the fact that you like Tetris. Just enjoy it for what it is – awesome and pretty damn true.

AND… if you really dig Brent’s stuff and you’re trying to get the perfect nerdtastic Christmas gift for that friend that has it all, he is offering to write you a tune and post it on YouTube. Get the scoop here.

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Mario Kart Love Song

Posted on December 4th, 2008 in Video Game Music.
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I have a special place in my heart for Mario Kart. I remember drinking beers and kicking ass in unofficial tournaments in tiny college apartments. I have wonderful memories of sitting around with one of my best friends in the world playing while listening to Tom Waits. (Why? Why not.) And with Mario Kart for the Wii, there are all sorts of new memories being made… like getting my ass kicked by a four year old over Thanksgiving. That was fucking embarrassing.

Anyway, Mario Kart has been a big part of my life, and apparently, YouTube user blinktwice4y feels the same way. He wrote this love song for the game and it’s freaking genius.

Check out the YouTube post for the lyrics»

[Big ups to Ted for sending me the link. I'll take the blue shell for you any day.]

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Archive for the 'Video Game Music' Category

New Vids from Superpowerless

New Pixelh8 Album: And The Revolution

Pepsi Rock Band Video Contest – Vote Now

Memorial Day Dance Party

Brentalfloss’ ScrewAttack Debut

MTV Fast Track Winner: Superpowerless

DuckTales Moon Level with Lyrics

Harmonix Should Start a Record Label

Tetris With Lyrics

Mario Kart Love Song

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