Dreamtime II

"Colourless and Dangerous"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the series introduction for general background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

As I discussed last time, Dreamtime is one of the mixes (the first, actually) that I developed after the pre-modern mixes but before the “modern” mixes.  (I used to call these “mood” mixes, but it wasn’t a very distinguishing term, which is why I now use “transitional” instead.¹)  None of these were every designed with any thought to burning them on CD, which is why part of the challenge of updating them is finding natural volume groups.  Even after adding a few tracks to what is now Dreamtime I, what I had left over from the original Dreamtime playlist wasn’t really sufficient to make a volume II ... in some ways.  It had just about enough length, but it didn’t have any throughline, and it also had that really long track that I mentioned last time, which meant that pretty much as soon as I started adding tracks to make it a bit more coherent, it became too long.  So, I set aside a few tracks for a potential volume III—including the really long one²—and started filling out the rest.  And now here we are.

There’s a few returning artists.  Of course we need to hear from the inimitable A Produce again, and once again he’s our closer.  A Produce tracks are just really great for that, and “The Far Shore” is no exception.  It’s slow, mellow, and dreamlike in the way that reminds you of the sensation of moving in slow motion, which is something that you’ve only ever done in a dream.  And I wouldn’t want to leave out the darkwave twins, Black Tape for a Blue Girl and Falling You.  From the former, we get one of those Sam Rosenthal concoctions which starts out as one song—minimalist, but almost carnival-like (if somewhat creepy)—and then, halfway through, becomes an entirely different song: a folding and intertwining of sinuous background whispers, underpinned by a lonely synth melody.  From the latter, a more classic John Michael Zorko composition which is Jennifer McPeak’s only vocal track on the magnificent Touch,³ though this time Zorko eschews the trip-hop bassline and just does an extended, almost ambient synth noodling, while McPeak abandons words altogether and just provides an almost operatic, swooping vocal track.  At 7 minutes long, it was probably never going to land in any of the usual places I tend to slot Falling You,⁴ but it’s kind of perfect here.  And I wouldn’t want to skip This Mortal Coil, of course, who often provide dreamlike instrumentals thanks to Ivo Watts’ tendency towards synth minimalism.  “The Lacemaker” is a curious little tripartite track that starts out as just that, then becomes a lonely wind behind which you gradually start to pick out a voice on the breeze (speaking our volume title, as it happens), which is then superseded by some adjacent-to-creepy chamber music.  Songs like this (and the BTfaBG track) that sort of don’t know exactly what they want to be are often impossible to slot into typical mixes, but the advantage of having a mix based on feeling like you’re in a dream is that weird transitions actually fit the theme.

And we couldn’t forget Ensemble of the Dreamings, those weird snippets of music I found on the very early Internet that were supposed to go into a dreamlike videogame.  I’ll mine them all eventually; for this volume, here’s two more: “Processional” is about two minutes of vocals that you can’t quite make out with the standard synth backing, while “Angel Knife I” is (naturally) an angelic voice for which you can mostly make out the words, and a slightly more coherent melody, but it’s barely more than a minute before it melts into our other returning soundtrack, Mirrormask.  “Meeting the Sphinx and the Dark Queen” is an anticipatory track which climaxes but then keeps going into a very unsettling groove.  Iain Bellamy turns in another great track that wouldn’t really fit anywhere else.

The only new artist to achieve two tracks on this volume is Al Gromer Khan, a German-born sitarist who spent seven years learning the instrument in India, and only added the “Khan” to his name after being accepted into the Khan-I-Gharana tradition.  “The Anahat Syndrome” is something I first heard on a Hearts of Space program (specifically, “The Perfumed Garden”), and I was inspired to pick up the full album (1984’s now impossible-to-find Divan I Khas).  It’s a lovely, dreamy piece of sitar work that’s been on the Dreamtime playlist forever.  Adding “Oiram Qarz” was a much more recent inspiration; I felt that “I No Longer Remember the Feelings” just needed a better lead-in, and I was pleasantly surprised to find that the fading strains of “Oiram” butted up pretty nicely against “Remember.” “Oiram” is a bit more slow and meandering than “Anahat,” and it works pretty well right after our opener, Angels of Venice’s “Persentio,” especially if you overlap the fade-out and the fade-in just a skosh.  “Persentio” is a fairly typical outing from AoV (who we’ve heard from many times thus far in these mixes⁵), meaning it’s some lovely harp work from Carol Tatum with cello and flute backing from her collaborators du jour, but I always felt this particular piece had a bit more of a feel of the nighttime breeze through the trees.  I think making it the opener of volume II was part of my more recent rejiggering, but honestly it feels so natural at this point that I can’t really remember for sure.

Ambient tracks can be dreamlike too, so it shouldn’t be a surprise to see Deborah Martin and J. Arif Verner back (we’ve seen them twice so far, both on Shadowfall Equinox⁶) with “Inter Astrum”—this sprawling, synthy track makes you feel like you’re traveling between the stars indeed.  And that bleeds nicely into “Anahat,” which in turn bleeds nicely into some Twin Peaks music.  Unlike most of the music from that show that I’ve used, though, this is a more guitar-driven track by Lynch himself, off the Fire Walk with Me soundtrack.  “The Pink Room” is a bit menacing, a bit minimalist, and thoroughly Lynchian.

Dreamtime II
[ Colourless and Dangerous ]

“Persentio” by Angels of Venice, off Forever After
“Oiram Qarz” by Al Gromer Khan, off Divan I Khas ⁷
“I No Longer Remember The Feelings” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, off The First Pain To Linger
“Basketball Dream” by the Presidents of the United States of America, off II
“Processional” by Ensemble of the Dreamings, off Chthon [Videogame Soundtrack]
“... a cry for the broken-hearted” by Falling You, off Touch
“Inter Astrum” by Deborah Martin & J. Arif Verner, off Anno Domini
“The Anahat Syndrome” by Al Gromer Khan, off Divan I Khas ⁸
“The Pink Room” by David Lynch, off Twin Peaks: Fire Walk with Me [Soundtrack]
“Party of the First Part” by Bauhaus, off Swing the Heartache [Compilation]
“Dreamscape” by Nox Arcana, off Legion of Shadows
“Mesonoxian Visitors” by Midnight Syndicate, off Carnival Arcane
“Circus Waltz” by Sweetback, off Stage 2
“Angel Knife I” by Ensemble of the Dreamings, off Chthon [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Meeting the Sphinx and the Dark Queen” by Iain Ballamy, off Mirrormask [Soundtrack]
“The Lacemaker” by This Mortal Coil, off Blood
“Words of Tranquility” by Koop, off Sons of Koop
“The Far Shore” by A Produce, off Land of a Thousand Trances

Total:  18 tracks,  78:53

One of the tracks which has been on this playlist for the longest is Bauhaus’ trippy little song called “Party of the First Part,” which lets the non-Peter-Murphy contingency of the band⁹ do some classic goth noodling in the background of clips of (of all things) The Devil and Daniel Mouse.  This oddity is, so far as I know, only available on the CD reissue of The Sky’s Gone Out, but it’s well worth tracking down in my opinion.  And it was a great excuse to get the goth legends onto this mix.  (Plus, if I’m honest, I’ve always loved this song—possibly due to remembering watching the cartoon that provides the samples in my youth—and where the hell else was I going to put it?)

But what to put after it?  For a long time, it just fed directly into “Angel Knife I,” which was ... okay, I guess.  But I really felt like it needed more there, so I came up (again, fairly recently) with the weird little trilogy that now follows it: “Dreamscape” by Nox Arcana, “Mesonoxian Visitors” by Midnight Syndicate, and “Circus Waltz” by Sweetback.  Now, the first is a creepy synth vibe, perhaps inspired by some of the soundtracks to the John Carpenter classics of the 80s (particularly Halloween, but also The Fog and Prince of Darkness), but then the second (from Midnight Syndicate’s album Carnival Arcane) really starts to lead into the creepy carnival vibe.  Which is what you’d expect from these two purveyors of what I like to call “gaming music” (meaning it’s often used as mood music for TTRPGs), but then the Sweetback track is a bit of a surprise.  Sweetback is the backing band for Sade,¹⁰ and normally I would describe them as “smooth jazz” and just leave it at that.  And, “Circus Waltz” has a bit of smooth jazz in its DNA to be sure ... but there’s also something more here, an auditory glimpse into a carnival that’s just a little off, and I thought it worked perfectly after “Mesonoxian Visitors,” which sounds like the arrival of said creepy carnival on a Depression-era circus train.

Which only leaves us with two more tracks in the “unexpected” category.  I’ve put a lot of Koop on these mixes—on Salsatic Vibrato,¹¹ on Moonside by Riverlight,¹² and of course on Zephyrous Aquamarine—but “Words of Tranquility” is something different from their normal electrojazz.  It’s the first track I’ve used off their debut album Sons of Koop, which is way more electro than jazz, and it’s ... dark.  I don’t know how else to describe it.  The vocals are credited to “K (23),” which is certainly a bit mysterious; whoever she is, she provides the vocals for four of the ten tracks on that album, which is more than any other singer, and more than there are instrumentals as well.  The words are intelligible, which doesn’t mean they make sense: they include lines like “my desires are made of cold” and “I’m a pilot, I’m above, you’re a chauffeur, down below.” It’s definitely very dreamlike, and definitely couldn’t fit anywhere but here.

Finally, perhaps my favorite track here is the very strange “Basketball Dream,” by the Presidents of the United States of America, the closer of their very simply titled II.  This is some basic guitar noodling backing a spoken word description of a dream involving Magic Johnson, as recited by a young boy.  It’s very weird, in that way that makes you believe it was an actual dream, and you can hear one of the band members feeding the lines to the kid, and sometimes the kid just giggles in delight at the preposterousness of it all.  Just a delightful track that epitomizes the dream state.

Next time, more meditative, autumnal fare for getting work done.

⇐ Dreamtime I

Dreamtime III ⇒

__________

1 In this blog series, anyway.  In my tracklists/ directory, they still live in a subdirectory called moods/.

2 It’s just a second shy of 20 minutes long, if you must know.

3 Jennifer provided all the vocals on Falling You’s debut album Mercy, but became a more infrequent collaboration on later albums.

4 The “usual” places in this case being Smokelit Flashback, where we’ve seen them so far on volumes II – V, and Shadowfall Equinox, where they’ve appeared on I, II, V, and VII.  But Falling You is nothing if not versatile, and I’ve also used them on Tumbledown Flatland I, the previous volume of this mix, and slotted them for several other mixes that we will, presumably, come to in the fullness of time.

5 On every volume of Numeric Driftwood so far, on Shadowfall Equinox VI and Darktime I, and, somewhat atypically, on Fulminant Cadenza I and Penumbral Phosphorescence I.

6 Specifically on volumes VI and VII.

7 This album seems to be impossible to locate these days.  The link is to a YouTube video which contains the full album, which is annoying to parse individual songs out of, but it is what it is.

8 Same album as the previous Gromer Khan track.

9 Occasionally known, eventually, as Love and Rockets.

10 In fact, they were recommended to me by a coworker who was a Sade fan and was surprised to hear me play one of her tracks in one of my mixes one late night in the office.

11 Volumes III and V.

12 Twice on volume I and once on volume II.

80s My Way III

"On a Wavelength Far From Home (1982 Pt 2)"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the series introduction for general background; you may also want to check out the mix introduction for more detailed background.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Last time we had arrived in 1982, and, despite enjoying nearly 78 minutes of classic 80s goodness, there was still more to cover.  So let’s finish that up, shall we?

As I noted, 1982 is the beginning of the end of the transitional years.  While there were still some tracks that tried to have it both ways—both straight-ahead rock and this new, “alternative” sound—trends like post-punk, new wave, and, most cruicially synthpop, were here to stay and truly starting to take over the scene.  And, most significantly, a lot of the non-quite-alt from last volume was, unlike volume I, from artists who were truly reinventing themselves.  The members of Asia certainly qualify, but the major success story from last time was Hall & Oates, who were perhaps the most successful at this feat.¹  But there are two other artists who were one thing in the 70s and an entirely different thing in the 80s, with both sides of that changeover still being pretty decent.  I’ve picked one of those to be our closer here:² it’s Golden Earring.  Now, if you’re a typical American, there are exactly two songs by this Dutch band that you’ve ever heard.  The first is “Radar Love,” which is in that 70s proto-hard-rock style epitomized by the Who and Led Zeppelin.  (Weirdly, Golden Earring actually originated in the 60s, where they sounded more like the Beatles or the Zombies.)  But, by the 80s, they were ready to remake themselves again, and so the second of their songs you’ve likely heard is “Twilight Zone,” which sounds nothing like “Radar Love” ... but still amazing: strong rock guitars, but a very complex bassline, overlapping vocals in very different styles, solid, scifi-adjacent synth work.  In 1982, I had a paper route, and I usually rode with headphones on and my Walkman cranking, playing mix tapes I’d made myself.³  “Twilight Zone” was definitely was of the songs on those tapes, as was “She Blinded Me with Science” by Thomas Dolby.  Forget “injections” of synth: this song was almost nothing but synths, and samples, and weird, nonsensical vocals.  Everyone was rushing to put synths in their music, because it was new and hip and different.  Utterly unsurprsing from Dolby, whose stage name after all came from his “always messing around with keyboards and tapes.”⁴  But from reggae/dancehall virtuoso Eddy Grant?  “Electric Avenue” was something special, something most of us had never heard before ... primarily because it almost certainly never been done before.  The synths in this otherwise Caribbean-flavored track made it irresistable to butt up against Dolby’s classic.

There are a few other people here who started in the 70s and reinvented themselves for this exciting new time.  For instance, being (musically speaking, at any rate) a child of the 80s, Genesis was an entirely different band to me than it was for the afficianados of prog-rock.⁵  The transition in Genesis came when its lead singer, Peter Gabriel, left.  Now, Genesis is certainly an important part of my 80s, and “Abacab” and “No Reply at All” were likely on those Walkman paper-route mixes, but we’ll have to wait for 1984 to get a proper entry from them.  But Gabriel, on the other hand ... as part of Genesis, he was known for outrageous costumes set to meandering prog-rock:⁶ sort of like what you might get if you could have David Bowie fronting Emerson, Lake & Palmer.  But somehow, as a solo artist, his music morphed into a sort of alt-pop: strong hooks and interesting synth work made songs like “Sledgehammer” and “Games Without Frontiers” 80s staples, not to mention the all-time most iconic 80s ballad, “In Your Eyes.” But the first Gabriel song I ever heard was “Shock the Monkey,” and that’s the one I’ve included here.  A screed against animal testing, there’s something primal about the song, with its electronic perscussion and dreamy synth washes which play against the power chords.

But the real story of the time were the new bands, and few were bigger or more emblematic of the new style than Duran Duran.  Formed in 1978 and named after a character in Barbarella, Duran Duran scored a hit in their native UK in 1981 with “Girls on Film,” but it was barely heard in the US.  But they burst into 1982 with Rio and “Hungry Like the Wolf,” which played over and over and over on the radio stations of the time.  But somehow it wasn’t annoying: it just got better and better.  Spurred on by a great video on the then-nascent MTV and an appearance on SNL, “Hungry Like the Wolf” was #1 in Canada, #3 in the US, #4 in Finland and New Zealand, and #5 in the UK and Australia.  It sold over a million copies in the US alone; it’s been streamed in the UK over 40 million times; its video won the very first Grammy for best video.  VH1 says it was the third best song of the 80s, and Rolling Stone included it on their list of the 500 greatest songs of all time.  While “Rio” was a better song in many ways, and their material of Seven and the Ragged Tiger (such as “Union of the Snake”⁷) was more interesting, there can be no doubt that “Hungry” was fundamentally important: it shook up the scene, and showed that synthy, poppy alt rock could not only be sonically impressive, but cool and sexy and could make money.  I would love to believe that the explosion in alt rock was more about artistic integrity and exploring new musical fusions and all that, but let’s face it: the fact that Duran Duran became mega superstars (and presumably multimillionaires) certainly didn’t hurt.

And so the music starts to diverge more significantly.  Adam and the Ants had always been a bit out there,⁸ and for his first solo effort the former punk turned new wave actually moved just closer enough to mainstream that it would catch on.  Still, “Goody Two Shoes” was pretty distinct from most of the standard offerings.  And what were we to think of one-hit-wonders Men Without Hats and their “Safety Dance”?  My small town couldn’t get cable yet, so I had no MTV: I was reduced to watching Friday Night Videos on NBC.  And I distinctly remember the first time I saw the video for this song;⁹ the “what the fuck is this??” factor was pretty strong for this one.  This was new wave at its weirdest, and that’s saying something, considering new wave is the genre that gave us Devo.  And as for Wall of Voodoo, who were, according to lead singer Stan Ridgway, “on a wavelength far from home,”¹⁰ there was definitely nothing else like “Mexican Radio.”¹¹

This was also the time when I was regularly raiding my father’s reject box, which is primarily what I used to make those Walkman mix tapes.  That may have been where I found “She Blinded Me with Science” (certainly I can’t imagine why else my dad would have had the single); it was absolutely where I found “Reap the Wild Wind” by Ultravox, fronted by Midge Ure, who had formerly toured brifely with Thin Lizzy,¹² and would go on in future years to co-write the first of those charity supergroup songs, “Do They Know It’s Christmas?” “Reap” was #12 in the UK and #10 in Ireland, but peaked at a paltry #71 here in the US, so most of us yanks have never heard it; despite that, it’s a classic new wave tune that deserves wider recognition.

But the most fateful record I plucked out of the reject box was undoubtedly “The One Thing” by INXS.  It wasn’t their pinnacle—“Don’t Change” was more classic, and that album overall was just a prelude to the superb Listen Like Thieves, which would give us the nearly perfect “What You Need”—but “The One Thing” was the first time I heard the band that would go on to define a huge part of my 80s.  INXS is to me one of the four musical corners of the decade, in fact,¹³ and the first one to truly penetrate my consciousness.  From the plaintive wail of Hutchence’s voice to the even more plaintive wail of Pengilly’s sax, INXS is 80s perfection in some fundamental way that is difficult for me to describe.  It’s not really new age, and it’s certainly not synthpop, but it’s amazing, and different, and I’m not sure we ever heard its like again.

For proper Australian new wave, we need to look to Icehouse.  Their excellent Primitive Man was contemporaneous with INXS’ Shabooh Shoobah, but I don’t believe I was aware of them until a few years later, when I started getting serious about filling out my collection.  “Great Southern Land” most likely came to my attention in 1989 when the compilation album of the same name was realeased in the US.  With its individuated synth notes and echoey vocals, it’s a great example of the subgenre.  As is Missing Persons’ “Walking in L.A.”, with Dale Bozzio’s quirky vocals, like Martha Davis (of the Motels¹⁴) cranked up to 11 and twisted slightly out of true.  Of course, “Walking” is a much more jagged version of new wave than “Southern” or “Reap”; for an almost folksy contrast, we go to the Nails, known as one-hit wonders for their “88 Lines About 44 Women,” which, musically isn’t much more than a preprogrammed Casio rhythm track and some harmonized humming, but lyrically was quite adventurous: the “women” in question included Eloise, who “sang songs about whales and cocks,” and Tanya (Turkish), who “liked to fuck while wearing leather biker boots.” And, if you want the Britpop version of new wave, there’s “Love Plus One,” by Haircut One Hundred.  I never really loved this song the way some did, but it was definitely an important milestone for the subgenre, and I have some fond memories of it.

But of course the ultimate new wave classic (for this volume, at any rate¹⁵) is “I Melt with You,” a song so insanely good that it transcends having the stupidest breakdown in musical history (seriously? a humming solo?).  “Melt” is an anthem about making love while the bomb is dropping, and it’s utterly wonderful.  I can’t quite consider Modern English one-hit wonders, even though it’s true that “Melt” was their only top 40 hit in the US (they did much better in their native UK), mainly because I think of a one-hit wonder as having one great song, period.  The rest of the album that that song comes from has to be mediocre at best, at least in my head: a band with even one really great album just doesn’t seem to hit the one-hit mold for me, despite technically fitting the definition.  But After the Snow is brilliant: opener “Someone’s Calling” is a solid offering; “Life in the Gladhouse” is dark and brooding; “Face of Wood” is pretty and melodic; the title track is martial and just slightly off.  But there’s no doubt that “I Melt with You” deserves its spot on just about everyone’s 80s retrospective.  Including mine.

80's My Way III
[ On a Wavelength Far From Home (1982 Pt 2) ]

“The One Thing” by INXS, off Shabooh Shoobah
“Should I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash, off Combat Rock
“Goody Two Shoes” by Adam Ant, off Friend or Foe
“Hungry Like the Wolf” by Duran Duran, off Rio
“She Blinded Me with Science” by Thomas Dolby [Single]¹⁶
“Electric Avenue” by Eddy Grant [Single]¹⁷
“Shock the Monkey” by Peter Gabriel [Single]
“White Wedding, Part 1” by Billy Idol, off Billy Idol
“Mexican Radio” by Wall of Voodoo [Single]
“Steppin' Out” by Joe Jackson, off Night and Day
“88 Lines about 44 Women” by the Nails [Single]
“Save It for Later” by the English Beat [Single]
“Come On Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners [Single]
“The Safety Dance” by Men Without Hats, off Rhythm of Youth
“Reap the Wild Wind” by Ultravox [Single]
“Great Southern Land” by Icehouse, off Primitive Man
“Love Plus One” by Haircut One Hundred [Single]
“I Melt with You” by Modern English, off After the Snow
“Walking in L.A.” by Missing Persons, off Spring Session M
“Twilight Zone [single version]” by Golden Earring [Single]¹⁸

Total:  20 tracks,  82:09

There are two tracks which come close to straight-ahead rock (even more so than “Twilight Zone,” in my opinion): the first is “Shoud I Stay or Should I Go” by the Clash, and the second is the crowning achievement of one William Idol, “White Wedding.” The Clash were theoretically a post-punk band, but, honestly: they were still punk.  Especially for ‘82’s Combat Rock, which include both this classic and “Rock the Casbah.” Mick Jones’ surly lyrics and Joe Strummer’s simple but powerful guitar licks make this a song to rival anything the Sex Pistols or the Ramones came out with.  And what can you say about Billy Idol’s magnum opus?  In many ways, I was more enamored of “Dancing with Myself” at the time, but, man does “White Wedding” really stand up all these years alter.  Also coming out of the British punk scene, Idol and his guitarist Steve Stevens constructed a song that starts with a riff often described as “ominous,” breathy vocals, and background vocalizations, eventually building to that trademark Idol scream at just shy of the 2-minute mark.  Still capable of giving me the shivers decades later.

For further stretching the boundaries of what “alternative” can connote, the English Beat (of course known in Britain as simply “the Beat”) were one of the foremost purveyors of two-tone.  While Madness and the Specials were doing more or less straightforward ska, the Beat were doing songs like “Save It for Later” (which I’ve used here), and the earlier “Mirror in the Bathroom,” which infused some new wave sensibilities into the ska rhythms.  Turning instead to alternative jazz, Joe Jackson has had a tendency to reinvent himself on just about every album.  Whereas Look Sharp! was more poppy, and Jumpin’ Jive was swing and jump blues,¹⁹ his entry for 1982, Night and Day, was in many ways a modern inflection on old jazz standards (AllMusic’s Stephen Thomas Erlewine compares it several times to Cole Porter).  “Steppin’ Out” is cool, breezy, jazzy, and, as the name implies, nocturnal.  There is a bit of new wave flair in it, but it’s a light touch.  I thought it was a nifty song at the time; it was only some years later, when I heard the entire album, that I truly began to appreciate Jackson’s genius.

And that only leaves us with what must surely be the most improbable success of the year, “Come on Eileen” by Dexys Midnight Runners.  Dexys struggled with finding its image and tone for several years before settling on the coveralls that became their trademark style.  Their instrumentation was all over the place: a strong contingent of Celtic/country (banjo, mandolin, accordian, and two or more fiddles) but also a touch of brass (saxophone, flute, and trombone).  The album that spawned “Eileen” credits 11 musicians, not even counting backing vocals.  Speaking as someone who owns the dubiously named Very Best of Dexys Midnight Runners, I can tell you that it contains 19 tracks, and two of them are great—the second being their cover of Van Morrison’s “Jackie Wilson Said”—and 17 of them are absolute shit.  How this eclectic mess managed to stumble into a #1 hit in 8 countries, best selling single of the year in the UK, declared later by VH1 as the third greatest one-hit wonder of all time, and the sixth favorite 1980s #1 hit by ITV poll ... how this band did all that is anyone’s guess.  It’s a complex song, with key changes and tempo changes, rapid-fire lyrics, blazing fast fiddling, brass fills, and piano glissandoes.  It’s both unlike all the other music extant at the time and quintessentially 80s.  Almost everyone who was alive at the time will sing along when it comes on, despite the fact that very few of us know more than a few words.  It’s just that catchy.  That was just the state of music in 1982.

Next time, we’ll return to dreamland.

⇐ 80s My Way II

80s My Way IV ⇒

__________

1 One might argue that Heart did it better.  But, as Heart blossomed more into stadium rock than the synth-infused alt-rock that Hall & Oates was so successful at, we won’t feature them on this mix.

2 The other will have to wait for us to reach 1985.

3 Remember, my father was a record collector, so making mix tapes was a skill I learned at a fairly young age.  They weren’t very good mix tapes, of course, but everyone has to start somewhere.

4 According to Wikipedia.

5 As was Fleetwood Mac, I suppose.

6 Here’s a typical example.

7 But not “The Reflex”; that song is just annoying.

8 In fact, I almost threw in “Stand and Deliver” as my choice for Ant.  But in the end I decided to wait for this one.

9 Which was, apparently, some time after it came out, since FNV didn’t start till ‘83.

10 Title drop.

11 Fun fact: I used to have a friend who fantasized about an imaginary 80s song which was a duet between Stan Ridgway and Fred Schneider of the B-52’s.  Try imagining “Mexican Radio” with Schneider interjecting “Mexican radio, baby!” in between lines of the chorus.  It’s fun.

12 And sang for Rich Kids, the band Glen Matlock formed after he left the Sex Pistols.  Ghosts of Princes in Towers is damnably hard to find, but well worth it in my opinion.  Its title track was a little too early to land on this mix, but it was defnitely an early harbinger.

13 We’ll see the other three corners when we get to 1984 and 1986.

14 Who we heard from last volume.

15 I’m going to make a strong case for Icicle Works’ “Whisper to a Scream” being the ultimatest new wave song of all time when we get to 1984.

16 The single is probably sufficient, though The Golden Age of Wireless is not a bad pick-up either.

17 Unlike Toni Basil’s “Mickey,” even the single of this song is not easy to find.  However, Killer on the Rampage is pretty nifty, if you’re willing to put in the extra effort (second best track: “I Don’t Wanna Dance”).  Or, as always, just go to YouTube.

18 Make sure to get the “single version” of this track.  The album version is nearly twice as long, and that’s not to its credit.

19 You may recall hearing a lot of the latter album on Salsatic Vibrato.

Paradoxically Sized World VI

"I Can Dream the Rest Away"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

My opening line for the the last installment of this mix was this:

Can you believe it’s been just over 3 years since we last saw an installment in my LittleBigPlanet-inspired mix?

And that was, ironically ... almost three years ago.  So I guess we can believe it, eh?  Look for PSW VII sometime in early 2026, I suppose.

This is just one of those mixes that started strong and has slowly petered out.  My middle child, for whom this was always their favorite of my mixes, has moved on to other music, and, honestly, my tastes in mostly wordless electronica run way more towards downtempo: basically, this music, entirely designed to make you feel like you’re in a happy little videogame like its inspiration LittleBigPlanet, is often just way too upbeat for me.

Still, there’s a time and place (and mood) for nearly all types of music, and I still reach for this mix every now and again.  You might think I’d be running out of actual music from LBP to seed the volumes with by this point, but the truth is that there’s 3 main games, plus the two portable versions (PSP and PS Vita), and, the one that I lean most heaviy on this time around, LBP Kart.  Kart gives us a whopping 4 tracks this time out, so let’s start there.

LBP Kart is exactly what you think it is: the LBP version of Mario Kart.  It’s a driving/racing game, so it’s quite different from the cute little platformers that comprise all the other installments in the franchise.  And the music is different as well—could Fishbone’s “Skankin’ to the Beat,” for instance, ever have made it into a “normal” LBP game?  Doesn’t seem that likely.  Actually, even “Fresh” by Devo is (unusually for them) a bit frenetic and punky.  Driving games require a whole ’nother vibe when it comes to music: you want fast-paced music that inspires speed and those daring feats of roadwork that are best left to videogames because you’d die in a fiery crash if you tried them in real life.  Crashes in driving games are more funny than scary, so that frenzied beat that you find in the punky reggae of Fishbone or the punky synthpop of Devo is perfect.  You know what else has that crazy energy?  Dubstep.  In this case, “Odessa Dubstep,” by Liverpool house/D&B group Apollo 440.  All 3 of these tracks have a beat which is driving (pun only half intended) and intense; the game itself uses instrumental versions, but I’ve gone with the original vocal version in all cases (as I typically do in this mix).  All these factors combine to mean that this is perhaps the most head bangin’, almost danceable, volume of this mix so far.  Its character diverges sharply from previous installments, at the same time that it’s still noticeably upbeat videogame-inspired electronica.

One of the consequences of that is it’s given me a chance to include a few tracks that I had had slotted for this mix but just never seemed to work on any of the other volumes.  Probably the best example of that is Finland’s Nightwish, whose metal tune “Whoever Brings the Night” was used in LBP2.  As boss battle music, it was okay for it to be a bit more intense than the other tracks in that game, but it meant that it really stood out in my other volumes (which, you know, don’t really have boss battles embedded in them).  Now, Nightwish is often described as “symphonic metal”—and I think that pretty well describes “Whoever Brings the Night,” with its operatic-adjacent choral background vocals, barely noticeable woodwinds, and interesting orchestral percussion.  Add back in Anette Olzon’s excellent vocals and it becomes a heavy metal anthem which still fits right in with the rest of the mix, amazingly.

Another track which fit nicely here was “Toccata” by Canadian electronica artist OVERWERK (the stage name for Edmond Huszar).  OVERWERK was introduced to me by another coworker, who is more into the EDM and techno side of electronica.  A lot of OVERWERK’s stuff isn’t my bag, but this take on Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is pretty awesome.  As is “Best Fish Tacos in Ensenada,” another track from LBP Kart, this time by British DJ Freeland.  It’s a hard driving EDM tune that makes a nice lead-in to “Odessa Dubstep.” Finally, Chicago’s Tortoise is usually described as “post-rock,” but to me it mostly sounds like a 2000’s update of prog rock—“Prepare Your Coffin” (used in LBP PSV), for instance, sounds like it’d be right at home alongside early Yes, or perhaps Emerson Lake & Palmer.  Hard to fit that vibe into other volumes, but it seemed perfectly comfortable here.

There’s also a fair amount of music from other LBP bands that we’ve seen on this mix before.  You may remember Ochre from their track “Sosacharo,” which was the opener for volume V; well, I actually discovered them after hearing their song used in LBP2, “Infotain Me,” which I planted right in the opening third this time ‘round.  I followed that up with Ratatat, a band who I now can’t remember how I discovered, but it surely must have somehow been related to LBP, because their music is so perfect for this mix.  We heard “Flynn” last volume; this volume’s track is “Dura,” which starts out with a sort of synth harpsichord riff, then explodes into happy electronic tones.  Likewise, we’ve seen Plaid twice before on this mix,¹ but the first time I ever heard them was LBP2’s use of “New Family,” a mellow yet still upbeat piece of electronica that I felt worked nicely into our closing third.  Röyksopp I also discovered via LBP;² “In Space” is a very mellow, almost spacey, track which leads us nicely into our closer.  Ugress is appearing here for the fourth time; after discovering the Norweigian wonder via his track for the PSV,³ I’ve sort of fallen in love with him.  “Apocalypse Please Wait Buffering” is exactly the sort of non-bridge bridge track that he’s so good at: with a slow build for a nearly a minute, it then bursts into a percussion-heavy thrash-adjacent groove that’s the perfect lead-in to Nightwish.

As for other artists who don’t derive specifically from LBP but that we’ve seen on this mix before, probably the most obvious is Bonobo.  I honestly can’t believe this brilliant British DJ and purveryor of amazing downtempo has never been featured in an LBP game: so much of his music seems perfectly suited for it that I’ve already used him twice so far,⁴ and here he takes the honor of closer.  “Nothing Owed” is a sax-driven, meditative but not sad, mellow track, puncutated by an acoustic guitar riff which is just a perfect way to close out this volume.  And the only other band to appear on this mix 3 or more times (including this one) without ever appearing in an actual LBP game is Combustible Edison, the lounge-exotica-electronica band who we’ve heard multiple times on other mixes⁵ as well as twice before here.⁶  “Solid State” (like much of CE’s output) sounds like it’s from a 50s sci-fi show.  It makes a nice transition from the center stretch of more intense songs into the gentler closing third.

For artists just appearing for the second time, you may recall my speaking of Monster Rally before; I discovered them via my old cable company’s “Zen” music channel, and had had “Panther” down for this mix forever before I finally managed to work it in last volume.⁷  This volume’s pick is a short but happy little bridge called “Paradise”: it makes a nice lead-in to the Ochre/Ratatat pairing.  And finally Smokey Bandits have appeared all over these mixes⁸ before they finally showed up last volume.  I squeezed “Revolucion Valiente” in between Apollo 440 and Fishbone because its strong, brassy, spaghetti Western feel could take it.

Paradoxically Sized World VI
[ I Can Dream the Rest Away ]

“Carefree” by Kevin MacLeod, off Calming
“Egg Nog” by Luna [Single]⁹
“Neopolitan Dreams” by Lisa Mitchell, off Wonder

PSV

“Paradise” by Monster Rally, off Return to Paradise
“Infotain Me” by Ochre, off Lemodie

2

“Dura” by Ratatat, off LP3
“Fresh” by DEVO [Single]

Kart

“Toccata” by OVERWERK [Single]
“Apocalypse Please Wait Buffering” by Ugress, off Reminiscience
“Whoever Brings the Night” by Nightwish [Single]

2

“Main Title” by Xcyril, off StarGate Odyssea
“Best Fish Tacos in Ensenda” by Freeland [Single]

Kart

“Odessa Dubstep” by Apollo 440 [Single]

Kart

“Revolucion Valiente” by Smokey Bandits, off Debut
“Skankin' to the Beat” by Fishbone [Single]

Kart

“Solid State” by Combustible Edison, off Schizophonic!
“New Family” by Plaid, off Double Figure

2

“Prepare Your Coffin” by Tortoise [Single]

PSV

“In Space” by Röyksopp, off Melody A.M.
“Nothing Owed” by Bonobo, off Dial 'M' for Monkey

Total:  20 tracks,  77:23

I wouldn’t want to imply that there’s anything too surprising here, but I will note that hearing Australian Idol contestant Lisa Mitchell show up in an LBP game was surprising to me; I mean, generally speaking, her music is more suited to, say, Sirenexiv Cola.¹⁰  But “Neopolitan Dreams” is a jaunty 3 minutes that, once stripped of vocals, you could imagine popping up behind Sackboy’s adventures (which it did, in the PSP version).  The use of a celesta (or similar toy-piano-adjacent instrument) just gives it that extra layer that makes it fit in so well here.  (Plus it handily provides our volume title.)

And I decided that the Mitchell tune should be the culmination of a very happy opening triad, sort of the bridge to past volumes.  I absolutely had to start with “Carefree” by Kevn MacLeod; because of MacLeod’s habit of releasing his music royalty-free, it gets used in an amazingly large number of YouTube videos, and “Carefree” is so close in sound to Lullatone’s iconic “Race Against the Sunset” (which was used in LBP3 and was the opener for volume IV), “Carefree” is used in a metric shit-ton of fan videos about LBP, because creators know they won’t get demonetized for using LBP’s actual (copyrighted) music.  So it’s an obvious choice for opener here.  That flows nicely into “Egg Nog,” by Luna, also known as “what the founder of Galaxie 500 got up to in the 90s.” “Egg Nog” is theoretically a Christmas tune, but it’s not overtly seasonal (aside from starting with the shaking of some sleigh bells), and is probably not particularly typical of Luna’s output.  But it’s a happy little tune that slots beautifully between “Carefree” and “Neapolitan Dreams.”

And that just leaves us with Xcyril, a French composer who does the occasional soundtrack and otherwise releases neoclassical works that feel like they ought to be soundtracks to something.  So far we’ve only heard from him on Phantasma Chorale, but his “Main Title” for what appears to be a Stargate fan-film series is short, sweet, and very videogame-y.  I’m not entirely sure why I thought it would fit between the Finnish goth-metal and the British EDM, but I actually think it works.

Next time, let’s dip our toes back into that pool that is the 80s.

⇐ Paradoxically Sized World V

Paradoxically Sized World VII ⇒

__________

1 Once on volume II and once last volume.

2 “Vision One,” their track from last volume, was used in LBP2.

3 “Ghost Von Frost,” which we heard on volume IV.

4 Once on volume I and once on volume II.

5 So far: Salsatic Vibrato V, Phantasma Chorale I (twice), Phantasma Chorale II, and Snaptone Glimmerbeam I.

6 Specifically, volumes III and IV.

7 Besides “Panther,” Monster Rally has also showed up so far on Gramophonic Skullduggery I and Apparently World I.

8 Specifically, Salsatic Vibrato VI, Shadowfall Equinox II and IV, Gramophonic Skullduggery I, and Snaptone Glimmerbeam I.

9 As usual, I hate to link only to YouTube, but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else to get this track.

10 In point of fact, “Clean White Love” does appear there.

Shadowfall Equinox VII

"The Garden, by Moonlight, Turning Dark"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

In the race to the most volumes in a mix, Salsatic Vibrato has definitely been leading the pack.  However, Shadowfall Equinox is catching up.  Probably this is because, for the past few years, I’ve been involved in an intense project at my work that’s required more thinking than mindless doing.  And, as I talked about last volume, this is the perfect mix for music that lets me concentrate.  This time out, things seem to have taken a strong neoclassical bent, though we do have many returning artists: in fact, all of the top 5 most featured artists for the mix¹ are here, plus a couple more.  But the neoclassical thing probably shouldn’t be ignored.

Neoclassical music (not to be confused with neoclassicism) is definitely not classical, but only in the same way that retro-swing is not really swing.  It’s music composed in the classical style, but produced with modern sensibilities.  We’ve dabbled in neoclassical before, with dark neoclassical such as Dark Sanctuary² and Arcana,³ ambient chamber music such as Kevin Keller⁴ and Amber Asylum,⁵ or folks who like to combine electronic with classical leanings, such as Tim Story⁶ and Mira Calix.⁷  Of those folks, only Keller is back this time—technically, credited to the Kevin Keller Ensemble—with a bit of ambient chamber music called “Reflection.” It’s a piece with Keller’s characteristic spare piano, accompanied only by a string trio at first, then a light woodwind instrument (according to the Bandcamp page, it’s an English horn) comes in; true to its name, it’s a calm, reflective piece.  And speaking of spare piano pieces, Ruben Garcia isn’t too far from neoclassical himself.  “Eyes Wander” is a dark, not quite menacing (but verging) solo piano track that’s right at home here.  “Danse Morialta,” on the other hand, appears to be a piano duet, and is very light and fluffy.  It’s the first appearance in these mixes by prolific modern composer Kevin MacLeod, whose policy of creating royalty-free tunes “has led to his music being used in thousands of films, millions of videos on YouTube, and in video games such as Kerbal Space Program.”⁸  A lot of his music is more electronic, and more suited to an entirely different mix (we just haven’t gotten that far yet), but this one is very neoclassical in its formulation.  But perhaps the neoclassicalest neoclassical entry here is Eklipse, a proper string quartet of goth-appareled German women who like to take modern songs and neoclassical them up.  In this case, the original version of “Where the Wild Roses Grow” (by Nick Cave and Kylie Minogue) was already chamber-music-adjacent, so it didn’t take much.  Eklipse’s instrumental version somehow retains all the haunting beauty of the original, despite losing the lyrics about murdered lovers and all that.

Still, I think the biggest find here is A Winged Victory for the Sullen, who was suggested to me by a coworker, one of the few I’ve had who also likes ambient.  For the most part, his taste runs to bands like Sigur Rós, who I’m not the hugest fan of,⁹ but we still find common ground.  I turned him on to Greinke, and he turned me on to AWVftS.  Now, this duo (Adam Bryanbaum Wiltzie and Dustin O’Halloran) were (individually) mostly known for flim and television composing and sound engineering, until a chance meeting in Italy led to AWVftS; originally planned as a one-off project, it’s now produced 4 full-length albums, 2 soundtracks, and an EP.  Personally, I find their output a bit uneven: some tracks are nothing special, but a few, including the opener to their third album The Undivided Five, “Our Lord Debussy,” are simply sublime.  This track takes nearly 5 minutes to reach its peak, then settles into a 2-minute long crescendo, then takes another 3 minutes of denouement before it fades into silence.  It seemed like the perfect opener for this volume.

And just as any discussion of neoclassical must inevitably drift into the cinematic—A Winged Victory for the Sullen themselves produced a number of soundtracks—“Our Lord Debussy” doesn’t actually fade into silence, but rather into “Rain,” a piece from the Blade Runner 2049 soundtrack by Hans Zimmer (whose excellent soundtrack for Inception was featured on Classical Plasma) and Benjamin Wallfisch.  “Our Lord Debussy” plays with silence so much that it’s really hard to notice where one track ends and the next begins, despite the very gradual fade-in of “Rain.” But the two have a very similar vibe, with a lot of slow notes and building minor chords.  It’s one of my best transitions, I think, and therefore makes the perfect bridge to talk about my use of cinematic music as an offshoot of neoclassical (although probably it’s really the other way around).  There are a whopping five soundtracks represented here, which is a lot outside of mixes such as Classical Plasma or Phantasma Chorale.  Blade Runner 2049 is the only film; there’s a short piece from television’s Grimm called “Juliette Wakes Up.” Like pretty much all music from that show,¹⁰ composer Richard Marvin starts out slow and pretty, but quickly builds to something much more menacing.  The other three soundtracks are from videogames: “Vale of Shadows” by Jeremy Soule is a short, mildly spooky bridge from Icewind Dale; “Galean Bayle Sailing” by Michael Hoenig is a darker, exploratory bridge from Baldur’s Gate II; and “After the Storm” by Mikolai Stroinski is bridge-length, but more self-contained—it’s a light, reflective piece from Witcher 3.  All three are fantasy videogames, and I was mainly mining them for Eldritch Ætherium, but they also had a few pieces which fit in nicely here.  And cinematic music is by its very nature closely aligned with neoclassical.

For the volume title, I was suffering another dearth of lyrics to draw from, so I fell back on the naming scheme I’ve used for Classical Plasma and Eldritch Ætherium: I just cherry-picked a few phrases from 3 of the track titles and strung them together into an interesting title.

Shadowfall Equinox VII
[ The Garden, by Moonlight, Turning Dark ]

“Our Lord Debussy” by A Winged Victory for the Sullen, off The Undivided Five
“Rain” by Hans Zimmer & Benjamin Wallfisch, off Blade Runner 2049 [Soundtrack]
“Danse Morialta” by Kevin MacLeod, off Calming
“Reflection” by Kevin Keller, off In Absentia
“The Kiss: Juliette Wakes Up” by Richard Marvin, off Grimm: Seasons 1 & 2 [Soundtrack]
“Where the Wild Roses Grow” by Eklipse, off Electric Air [Covers]
“After the Storm” by Mikolai Stroinski, off The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Eyes Wander” by Ruben Garcia, off Lakeland
“Entr'acte (The Garden Awaits Us)” by Black Tape for a Blue Girl, off As One Aflame Laid Bare by Desire
“reading the leaves (by moonlight)” by Falling You, off Touch
“Gunga Din” by Dr. Didg, off Dust Devils
“Galean Bayle Sailing” by Michael Hoenig, off Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Turning Dark” by Jeff Greinke, off Ride
“Illuminata” by Deborah Martin & J. Arif Verner, off Anno Domini
“Vale of Shadows” by Jeremy Soule, off Icewind Dale [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Element of Hope” by Carmen Rizzo, off Looking Through Leaves
“The Big Sleep” by A Produce, off Smile on the Void

Total:  17 tracks,  78:12

Of course, we can’t have all neoclassical tunes, now, can we?  I wouldn’t let a volume of SfE go by without at least a touch of darkwave, which here is provided by the usual suspects: Black Tape for a Blue Girl¹¹ and Falling You.¹²  “Entr’acte” is a quiet, flute-driven bridge, but of course retaining that ominous, grumbling undertone that almost every BTfaBG tune has.  It leads nicely into “reading the leaves (by moonlight),” which is another excellent, ethereal outing from Falling You, only more or less instrumental—there are some gorgeous, swooping vocals from Aimee Page,¹³ but they’re completely wordless.  What really makes this track, though, is the heartbeat-like thump of the bassline, which will forever be the defining characteristic of Falling You for me.

When it comes to the “proper” ambient, we can’t of course skip over Jeff Greinke.  As I’ve noted previously, every album of his is a little different; Ride is strangely jazzy, occasionally even funky, so there are few tracks on it that will work here, of which the aptly named “Turning Dark” is easily the best.  It’s slow and meandering, with a lot of synth notes reminiscent of bells, and a subtle but almost groovy bassline.  I thought it was pretty perfect here.  And it flows nicely into the soaring, angelic but somehow also tribal “Illuminata.” This is from Deborah Martin’s collaboration with J. Arif Verner Anno Domini, which we first heard from last volume.  In this one, there’s some mumbled vocals in the background that provide yet another layer of mystery.  And of course you can’t get more ambient than A Produce, who describes himself as “exploring the vast realm of trance-oriented musical expression.” Which is why it’s a bit surprising that we haven’t seen him here before.¹⁴  “The Big Sleep” is fairly typical of his output, although perhaps a bit mellower than such outings as “Insect Justice” or “The Dreaming Room.” But I often find that A Produce provides the best closers, and the nearly 9 hypnotic minutes of “The Big Sleep” is the perfect end for this particular volume.

There’s nothing really unexpected here, but I did decide to take things a bit farther afield by adding a couple of touches of worldmusic.  This is our first time hearing Dr. Didg proper, although its founder and primary member is Graham Wiggins, who of course provided what must surely be the only other didgeridoo track we’ve heard on these mixes: “Aziz Aziz,” from Apparently World.  After Outback split up, Wiggins went on to form the band based on his old college nickame and gave us 3 albums across a 7-year stretch.  “Gunga Din” is from the most recent one, and pairs the drone of the didgeridoo with some interesting woodwinds which go back and forth between sounding like bird calls and snake charmers.  Overall it’s a very interesting pairing.  And I couldn’t forget about my all-time favorite worldmusic-meets-downtempo artist, Carmen Rizzo, who I’ve featured a number of times on a number of other mixes,¹⁵ and once previously on this one.¹⁶  “Element of Hope” dispenses with the breathy female vocals many of his songs feature and opts instead for really interesting mixes of synth washes, digitized beats, and the occasional brassy electronic break in this mostly upbeat tune.  It’s the closer for his second solo effort Looking Through Leaves, but I thought it made for a good penultimate track here, sliding into the long wind-down of “The Big Sleep.”

Next time, we’ll go a bit lighter as we return to that happy-making music that makes you feel like you’re in a videogame.

⇐ Shadowfall Equinox VI

Shadowfall Equinox VIII ⇒

__________

1 As of time of writing, naturally.

2 On volume II.

3 On volume VI.

4 Every volume except the first.

5 Volumes I and II.

6 Volumes II and IV.

7 Also on volume VI.

8 According to Wikipedia, of course.  They also add: “One of his compositions, ‘Monkeys Spinning Monkeys,’ is among the most-played on TikTok; from January through June 2021 it was played 31,612,975,915 times.” Whoa.

9 Don’t get me wrong: they’re perfectly fine.  I’m just not the fanboy that many ambient afficionados are.

10 Which we’ve heard before, on Eldritch Ætherium II.

11 Seen on every volume so far.

12 Seen on volumes I, II, and V.

13 Who’s done all the vocals on Falling You tracks for this mix so far, except for “Varenka” on volume V (that was Erica Mulkey).

14 We did see him on other mixes though: once on Smokelit Flashback V and twice on Dreamtime I.

15 Specifically: Smokelit Flashback IV, Moonside by Riverlight II, Rose-Coloured Brainpan II, and Dreamsea Lucidity I.

16 Volume IV.

Eldritch Ætherium III

"To Moon and Stars: Heart of the Lord of the Undermountain of Gilead & Ashkeeper"

[This is one post in a series about my music mixes.  The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use.  You may wish to read the introduction for more background.  You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.

Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguous—that is, I don’t guarantee that the next post in the series will be next week.  Just that I will eventually finish it, someday.  Unless I get hit by a bus.]

Oftentimes volume II of a mix is just a continuation of volume I, and so volume III tends to go off in new directions.  However, you may recall that, with this mix, last volume was the departure, and so in many ways volume III is closely following the model of volume II.  Last time, I noted that

... many things are the same: Midnight Syndicate and the Shards of Eberron album are back, as are zero-project and Nox Arcana, and there’s a Renn-Faire-sounding bridge from Dead Can Dance.  Still nothing with any real vocals to speak of, so we’ve got another volume title cobbled together out of song titles, and once again I’ve tried to arrange the tracks so as to suggest an adventurous journey.  But there are differences as well: we stray from Midnight Syndicate’s Dungeons & Dragons album for the firs time, for instance, and Shards and zero-project give us one fewer track each.  And no V Shane this time around: oh, I’m sure we’ll see him again eventually, but there were just many better options this time around.

Sooo ... we have the same number of Midnight Syndicate, Nox Arcana, and zero-project tracks, not to mention tracks from Shards of Eberron; V Shane is back, and there’s a return to the Dungeons & Dragons album for MS; and I’ve doubled down on the Dead Can Dance: not only a Renn-Faire-sounding bridge-esque track, but also a longer one that’s ... well, also a bit Renn-Faire-sounding, if I’m honest.  Not to mention all the things that weren’t on volume I but are repeated here: another slow Colm McGuinness track for the back third, another track that Ian Fisher Peter rebranded to tie into Critical Role, more tracks from Loreena McKennitt, Faith and the Muse, Epic Soul Factory, and the Game of Thrones soundtrack ... and, yet ... and yet I still feel there’s enough new stuff going on to make it worth your while.  So strap in and let’s see what we’ve got.

First, let’s talk about why it took me so long to get around to Jeremy Soule.  Soule is rapidly emerging as the pre-eminent composer for fantasy videogaming: he’s done the last 3 Elder Scrolls games (including the big one: Skyrim), Guild Wars, and many D&D games such as Icewind Dale, Neverwinter Nights, and one of the Baldur’s Gate games.  I’m not entirely sure why it took me so long to get there, although I still think that Skyrim, which he appears to be best known for, is not really the pinnacle of his work.  For his first appearance on this mix, we’ll be sticking to Neverwinter Nights, with just a touch of Icewind Dale, and we’ll get our Baldur’s Gate infusion from composer Michael Hoenig (late of Tangerine Dream) and his score for Baldur’s Gate II: Shadows of Amn.  Of course the other favorite gaming soundtrack of fantasy music YouTubers everywhere is the Witcher 3 soundtrack, composed by a variety of mostly Polish musicians; we’re going to just barely dip our toe into that with one my favorite of its mellower tracks.  The other videogame source I’m drawing from is the World of Warcraft soundtrack, with two tracks from composer Jason Hayes.  This soundtrack has a few stand-out songs on it, and I thought these two (especially our opener “Legends of Azeroth”) were among the best.

I also mentioned that composing music specifically for roleplaying games is getting to be much more popular: we’ve come a long way since David P. Davidson and V Shane, and I wanted to put some of the newer fare up against the old classics.  So, yes, there’s a track from Shards of Eberron, and a particularly meandering electronic piece from V Shane, but we also look at the soundtrack for 13th Age, a TTRPG by the designers of D&D’s 3rd and 4th editions.  Coming just 2 years after the release of the game itself, a soundtrack for a TTRPG was still considered somewhat unusual, and this was in 2015 (just seven years ago as I write this).  Nowadays, while I doubt anyone would consider it common, I’m sure no one would be particularly surprised by it either.  The soundtrack for 13th Age brings together 5 different composers, of which I feature 2 here: a short bridge from Tristan Noon, and a longer piece by Marie-Anne Fischer.

And, yes, once again there’s a long, silly title cobbled together from bits of the track names.  Who are Gilead & Ashkeeper, and why do they have an undermountain?  And why aren’t either of them the lord of it?  Yeah, I got nothin’.  Sounds cool though.

This time our journey bursts into a darker tone; the “Legends of Azeroth” are a bit creepier and tenser than last volume’s opener, so they plunge us into immediate danger.  From there, we journey “To Vaes Dothrak,” a quiet but exotic trip which brings us to the “Sun, Moon and Stars” of another Balkan/Bedouin/Gaelic campfire, though this one is bit mellower than last outing’s.  Which flows nicely into the “Radharc” (Irish for “vision”), itself containing some Middle Eastern strains, which of course leads naturally to “Waukeen’s Promenade,” which seems like it would be right at home in a Moroccan bazaar.

Then we slow it down to ponder our “Journey’s Thoughts,” meditate a bit on the “Harai” (a Shinto religious ceremony), and finally come to “The Heart of the Forest,” where it seems that fairies and other mystical creatures abound.  This wood is apparently “Elwynn Forest,” a contemplative place which is perhaps located on the island of “Spikeroog” (also a place for meditation and thought).  But that’s just a brief stopover, because the anticipation of the “Startup Screen” is leading us to an “Escalation,” which pays off in the lovely medieval-style ballad “As the Bell Rings the Maypole Spins.” But it’s a brief respite, as we’re soon off on a “Ride to Destiny” where we’ll “Clash with the Lord of Blades,” a dark and suspenseful chapter of our journey indeed.  After that, it’s more “Exploration,” where danger seems to be around every corner, and that’s where we meet the “Knights of the Darkness,” with their awesome military might.  Then, after a tense trek across “The Wastes of Xhorhas,” we arrive at the “Secret Chamber,” where magic seems imminent, but perhaps not the good kind.  We’re soon lost in the “Tunnels of the Undermountain,” which leaves us “Exploring Xen’drik” and hoping nothing too scary jumps out and tries to eat us.

Bad news though: at the “Black Spires,” something is definitely looking to consume us, which just leads to “Unrest in the East Wing” and a flight for our lives.  In “Upper Dorn’s Deep Interior,” all seems lost; indeed, “The Fall of Gilead” is inevitable, as dramatic as it may be.  Which is why there must be “Battle & Aftermath,” leaving only the “Ashkeeper” to take us back to our homeland, where perhaps a bit of wistful “Romance” can provide some closure.

Eldritch Ætherium III
[ To Moon and Stars: Heart of the Lord of the Undermountain of Gilead & Ashkeeper ]

“Legends of Azeroth” by Jason Hayes, off World of Warcraft Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“To Vaes Dothrak” by Ramin Djawadi, off Game of Thrones: Music from the HBO Series [Soundtrack]
“Sun, Moon and Stars” by Loreena McKennitt, off Lost Souls
“Radharc” by Dead Can Dance, off Aion
“Waukeen's Promenade” by Michael Hoenig, off Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Journey's Thoughts” by V Shane [Single]
“Harai” by Faith and the Muse, off :ankoku butoh:
“Heart of the Forest” by Jeremy Soule, off Neverwinter Nights [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Elwynn Forest” by Jason Hayes, off World of Warcraft Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Spikeroog” by Mikolai Stroinski, off The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt Soundtrack [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Startup Screen” by Jeremy Soule, off Neverwinter Nights [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Escalation 1” by Tristan Noon, off The 13th Age Suite [RPG Soundtrack]
“As the Bell Rings the Maypole Spins” by Dead Can Dance, off Aion
“Ride to Destiny” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“Clash with the Lord of Blades” by David P. Davidson, off Shards of Eberron [RPG Soundtrack]
“Exploration” by Marie-Anne Fischer, off The 13th Age Suite [RPG Soundtrack]
“Knights of the Darkness” by zero-project, off Fairytale
“The Wastes of Xhorhas” by Ian Peter Fisher [Single]
“Secret Chamber” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“Tunnels of the Undermountain” by Jeremy Soule, off Neverwinter Nights [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Exploring Xen'drik” by David P. Davidson, off Shards of Eberron [RPG Soundtrack]
“Black Spires” by Nox Arcana, off Grimm Tales
“Unrest in the East Wing” by Midnight Syndicate, off Gates of Delirium
“Upper Dorn's Deep Interior” by Jeremy Soule, off Icewind Dale [Videogame Soundtrack]
“The Fall of Gilead” by Epic Soul Factory, off Volume One [EP]
“Battle & Aftermath” by Jocelyn Montgomery with David Lynch, off Lux Vivens
“Ashkeeper” by Colm McGuinness [Single]
“Romance I” by Michael Hoenig, off Baldur's Gate II: Shadows of Amn [Videogame Soundtrack]

Total:  28 tracks,  80:17

(Just like last time, there a number of links to YouTube videos; still a number of tracks here where that’s the only place you can find them.)

In the unexpected category, I suppose we shouldn’t consider Loreena McKennitt too unexpected—I did after all say last time that we’d likely see a tune of hers on every volume from here on out—but I’m still pleased at how well an artist that Wikipedia describes as worldmusic, folk, and even new age(!) can slot so beautifully into a fantasy-gaming-inspired mix.  Faith and the Muse deliver us another great meditative bridge that is pretty far off their normal gothic fare, backed by birdsong and the subtle sounds of a stream flowing by.  And Dead Can Dance are still here, pulling two tracks this time, still both from Aion, which I’ve always felt had a particularly D&D-adjacent feel to it.

The really new kids on the block this time out are Jocelyn Montgomery (one of the founding members of Miranda Sex Garden) with David Lynch producing an album of songs by Hildegard of Bingen, a.k.a. Saint Hildegard, who Wikipedia describes as “a German Benedictine abbess and polymath active as a writer, composer, philosopher, mystic, visionary, and as a medical writer and practitioner during the High Middle Ages,” as well as “one of the best-known composers of sacred monophony, as well as the most recorded in modern history.” Lux Vivens is a very interesting album, and this track doesn’t necessarily showcase it very well, but it sure fits in with the theme of this mix.  “Battle & Aftermath” is just what it says on the tin.

Next time, we return to the ambient autumnal mix, possibly just in time for fall.

⇐ Eldritch Ætherium II

Eldritch Ætherium IV ⇒