Paradoxically Sized World II

"Burning Holes Right Through the 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.]

By now you probably realize that, by the time I start really organizing the first volume of a mix, I usually have enough music for two volumes.  Thus, a volume II is often just “volume I continued.” This second collection of songs from, as well as inspired by, LittleBigPlanet is mostly that, although you’ll notice a few extensions to that overall concept.  First of all, I managed to expand beyond just the original game (and the first handheld version) by including one song each from LBP 2 and the PSV game.¹  Secondly, while last time I mostly observed a strict alternation between songs from the game(s) and tracks that just felt to me like they ought to be in the game, this time I feel free to go on longer sprees, with a stretch of 4 songs from the games, and two stretches of 3 and 4 tracks (respectively) from outside sources.

You may also recall from last time that I noted that there were only two tracks on this mix² that were originally compoosed for the game (as opposed to music that first appeared on an artist’s album and was only then used in the game).  As it happens, they’re both on this volume: opening track “Orb of Dreamers” is the London Philharmonic Orchestra’s take on the main theme of the game,³ from their second volume of video game music.⁴  The theme was composed by Daniel Pemberton, who also does movie scores as well.  He composes a lot of the incidental music in LBP, including the second in-game original track I use here, “The Appliance of Science,” from his album Little BIG Music.

Finding a volume title was once again difficult: of the five tracks containing any vocals, two are not in English, one is nominally in English but you only know that if you look up the lyrics on the Internet (that would be “Atlas,” by the quite odd Battles),⁵ and one contains a single line repeated over and over (“My Patch” by Jim Noir, the simplistic but quintissentially catchy tune found in the Meerkat Kingdom level of LBP 1).  Which only really leaves one choice: “Sleepyhead” by Passion Pit, which is the lone representative of LBP 2.  Happily, it’s a great choice: unlike the mostly instrumental version used in the game itself, the original version has some great lines, including the one we use for our title here.  This is easily my favorite Passion Pit song ever.⁶

Other than hearing the words to “Sleepyhead” for the first time, there probably aren’t a lot of surprises here for you if you actually play the LBP games.  If you haven’t played the PSV version, you might be pleasantly surprised by the lazy downtempo strains of “Eyen” by Plaid.  Or perhaps you’ll be surprised (as I was) as just how catchy “Volver a Comenzar” by Café Tacvba⁷ is, once you’re no longer trying to figure out how to gauge the momentum on those stupid springs in the Wedding Reception level and you can just listen to the song.  I’m not the most fluent speaker of Spanish, but I get by; my rough translation of the chorus:

Si volver a comenzar,
no tendría tiempo de reparar

is something along the lines of:

If you go back to the beginning,
there’s no time to fix what’s broken.

But really you don’t even need to understand what they’re talking about.  It’s an infectious little pop gem in any language.

Among the tunes from outside the games, many will still be familiar: the DJ Krush track near the beginning of this volume is off the same album as the in-game track of his towards the end.  There’s another from Ananda Shankar,⁸ which sounds so LBP-ish you’d swear it was direct from the game (but it’s not).  KOAN Sound is an LBP band as well; although “Lost in Thought” is not from the game, they do have a song in LBP 3.⁹  We also see another track from Bonobo, who isn’t featured in the game (though he really ought to be), but we did see him on our last volume.

The real find here though is Ugress.  A purveyor of electronica from Norway, Ugress fits my definition of “moderately obscure”—AllMusic has a discography but no biography, and Wikipedia has a skeleton article, full of “citation needed” notations.  But this guy is brilliant.  Like many modern indie artists, his music is easy to find online, much of it for free, but you won’t mind paying for it.  It’s that good.  I primarily recommend Resound (which contains the track we see here), but other good choices are Reminiscience, Cinematronics, and Unicorn.  One of his songs¹⁰ was chosen for LBP PSV, which is how I found him,¹¹ and now I fancy we’ll see him on every volume of this mix from here on out.  But Ugress has range as well: so far I’ve put songs of his on four different mixes, which says something about his versatility.  Obscure he may be, but it’s far less than what he deserves.  I’m glad LittleBigPlanet introduced me to him.

Much like last time, there’s a strong influence from my satellite provider’s “Zen” music channel.  The biggest one in this case is Reef Project, whose “Ocean Trigger” is actually the mix starter.  Reef Project is even more obscure than Ugress, with a sparse discography on AllMusic and nothing at all on Wikipedia.  Judging from the voiceovers on some of their tracks, many of these tunes were used as incidental music for a marine biology documentary or somesuch.  But the tracks without the extra educational content are pretty nifty, and “Ocean Trigger” is easily the best of these.  I heard it on the music channel one day and went, wow, that really sounds like a LittleBigPlanet song.  Paired here with “Song 2,” the DJ Krush track from the Islands levels in LBP 1, they form a vaguely creepy block which dovetails nicely into the laid back wanderings of KOAN Sound and thence to our quirky closer, “The Appliance of Science.”

As I did last time, I’ve added a note for each track used in a LittleBigPlanet game: either 1, 2, 3, PSP, PSV, or Kart.  If a track doesn’t have a note, it isn’t from an LBP game (that I know of).

Paradoxically Sized World II
[ Burning Holes Right Through the Dark ]

“Orb Of Dreamers (The Cosmic Imagisphere)” by London Philharmonic Orchestra, off The Greatest Video Game Music, Vol. 2

1

“The Beginning” by DJ Krush, off Jaku
“Eyen” by Plaid, off Double Figure

PSV

“My Patch” by Jim Noir, off Tower of Love

1

“Atlas” by Battles, off Mirrored

1

“Sleepyhead” by Passion Pit, off Chunk of Change [EP]

2

“E-Pipe” by Ugress, off Resound
“Kota” by Bonobo, off Animal Magic
“Sarasa” by Susheela Raman, off Love Trap
“Volver a Comenzar” by Café Tacvba, off Sino

1

“Jungle Symphony” by Ananda Shankar, off A Life in Music: Best of the EMI Years [Compilation]
“Yay Balma” by Taffetas, off Putumayo: Music from the Chocolate Lands [Compilation]
“Main Title” by Jon Brion, off Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind [Soundtrack]
“Ocean Trigger” by Reef Project, off Hydro Dynamic
“Song 2” by DJ Krush, off Jaku

1

“Lost in Thought” by KOAN Sound, off Dynasty [EP]
“The Appliance of Science [Little Big Planet Dub]” by the Daniel Pemberton TV Orchestra, off Little BIG Music [Soundtrack]

1

Total:  17 tracks,  77:57

And that just leaves us with the block of world music that kicks off the second half of this volume.  We start with Susheela Raman, British-born of Indian parentage, singing in Telugu.¹²  Exotic, but still poppy.  Then into the tune from Café Tacvba, who hail from Mexico.  Then back to the Indian subcontinent for Ananda Shankar, then a song from Taffetas, who combine a kora player from Guinea-Bissau with a guitarist and bassist from Switzerland.¹³  There are vocals here, but I don’t think there’s any actual words—just a formless, ethereal voice.  Bridging this block and the next is the main theme from Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind by Jon Brion, which is strangely reminiscent of Danny Elfman’s score for Beetlejuice.  So it’s a perfect way to introduce the echoey, underwatery “Ocean Trigger.”

Next time, I think we’ll explore the intersection of creepy and romantic.

⇐ Paradoxically Sized World I

Paradoxically Sized World III ⇒

__________

1 “PSV” means the PS Vita, i.e. the second handheld version.

2 At least so far.

3 I.e. the music that plays over the opening credits and spoken word intro by quite excellent voice talent Stephen Fry.

4 We’ll hear another track off this album on a different mix, in the fullness of time.

5 True story: for the longest time, everyone in our house was convinced that the chorus of this song was: “Fecal worker, fecal worker, going down.” Apparently the Internet thinks it should be: “People won’t be people when they hear this sound.” We like our version better.

6 Unfortunately, that’s not saying much.  I’ve really tried to like them, primarily for the sake of this song.  But so far I’ve found nothing to compare to the big bag of awesome that is “Sleepyhead.”

7 Or Café Tacuba, as it’s sometimes written.  I gather either is correct.

8 I told you we’d see him again.

9 Which we’ll see in volume IV.

10 Which we’ll also see on volume IV.

11 Recall that even though I’ve never personally played LBP PSP, PSV, or Kart, I know what songs they use.  Yay Internet.

12 I’m pretty sure it’s Telugu.  Either that or Sanskrit.

13 If you speak French, you could find out more about them from this page.  There’s an English bit at the bottom, but it’s not nearly so detailed.

Perl blog post #44

Time for another Perl post in my ongoing series about my planned new date module.  Feel free to pop over to my Other Blog for full details.  Or, you know ... not.  Don’t let me pressure you.

It’s just that all the cool kids are doing it.  But, you know: whatever you want, man.  I’m just sayin’.

National Heroscape Day 2015

Well, it’s that time of year again: National Heroscape Day was yesterday, and we played our annual tournament for the SoCal league.  This year we managed 8 participants, but I brought 6 of them, so it’s not as impressive as it sounds.  (And, honestly, it doesn’t even sound that impressive.)  In case you don’t know what I’m on about:

• what is Heroscape
• what is C3V (part of the larger group called “VC”)
• NHSD 2012 (including a bit about what is NHSD)
• NHSD 2013
• NHSD 2014

And a reference that may only make sense if you actually play the game:

• forum thread for our tourney, the SoCal Slaughter (I’m Xotli on that forum)

This year the Smaller Animal reluctantly agreed to play solo, since otherwise we would have had only 7.  He really wanted to play with me as a team though.  I hope next year he feels comfortable enough to go solo as well.  My eldest brought his 3 inseperable pals (now officially referred to as the Skype Squad, for the thing that they stay up all night doing), so that made 6 out of the 8 total participants, which is my personal record for highest percentage of tournament entrants provided.  So my feeling last year that I was “almost single-handedly keeping the game alive in our area” has only intensified this year.  But I’m going to keep drumming up more people, not fewer.  So if it one day ends up being just me and my friends and relations, I’m okay with that.  Plus we can just have it at my house and I won’t have to drive anywhere.

For the second year in a row, the younger brother beat the older, and consequently finished ahead of him in the tourney.  We brought one complete newbie, and she managed to come in 3rd, due to an unusual set of circumstances.  As per my usual showing, I came in right around dead center (in this case, 5th of 8).  But we don’t go for the tourney placement.  We go to have a good time, and I think we achieved that.

After the tourney, there was an aftergame of ‘Scape very similar to the one last year: my eldest once again took the elf wizard pod, and his friend once again played her backup army, which she hadn’t gotten a chance to try out.  Then we sat around bullshitting for a while, ate some pizza, then launched directly into a marathon game of Zombie Munchkin.  We only played to 6 levels (a normal game is to 10, but we learned a long time ago to scale back from that).  Still, we went back and forth for quite a while, with nearly everyone hovering at 5th level for at least a brief period, until finally the demonspawn’s other friend pulled out a victory which no one could stop.

As always, we must thank our gracious host, and his apartment complex’s community rec room, which is the perfect space for us to spread out, play games, eat two meals, and just have cool chats.  I hope we can achieve a better turn out next year, because our number can’t go down much more than this before there just isn’t much point in carrying on.  But we also talked quite seriously about getting together again before next year’s NHSD.  Of course, we did that last year as well, and see how far that got us.  But somehow I feel like this year will be different.  Hope springs eternal and all that.  But the kids at least are excited enough to make it happen.  So hopefully it does.

Bleeding Salvador I

"The Night the Creature Came Ashore"

[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.

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.]

I explained way back in the introduction that my mixes generally have one of 3 types of themes: emotional, musical, or lyrical.  Oh, sure, there’s a bit of crossover sometimes—Salsatic Vibrato, for instance, is primarily a musical theme, since it demands a certain type of instrumentation, but it also has a bit of an emotional component, in that all the tunes must be upbeat.  But for the most part mixes are one of those three.  Up until now, nearly every mix I’ve introduced you to has been either emotional or musical ... pretty much the only one that we can call lyrical is my Christmas mix.  Well, it’s time to change that right now.

When I first picked up Welcome to the Beautiful South, I was surprised at how much I liked it.  Oh, sure, I’d liked the Housemartins, Paul Heaton’s previous band, and London 0 Hull 4 is a nifty little album.  But Welcome to the Beautiful South is a marvel, a gem of unexpected beauty.  After listening to it once, I put it on repeat and listened to it over and over for hours.  Many of the songs on that album stick with me even now, a decade and a half later, but the one that wormed its way under my skin more than any other was “Woman in the Wall.” With its poppy air and casual demeanor belying its gruesome lyrics, it was an odd combination of creepy, poignant, and disturbing.  And above all unforgettable.  When I started pondering the modern mixes, I knew that one mix surely had to be centered around bizarrerie: songs with surreal lyrics and strange imagery, and that “Woman in the Wall” would be one of its centerpieces.

And here we have Bleeding Salvador.  By “Salvador” I mean Salvador Dali.  Picture any of his famous paintings—say, The Persistence of Memory, or Soft Watch at the Moment of Explosion—but picture all those melting clocks dripping blood instead.  We’re talking Dali at his most disturbing;¹ more like Burning Giraffes and Telephones or The Bleeding Roses.  Not all the songs here are that disturbing.  But they’re all at least a little ... odd.  Lyrically.

Once the mood had been established, a lot of songs immediately started suggesting themselves.  “Reptile” by the Church and “Killing Moon” by Echo and the Bunnymen have been the first two songs on this mix practically forever.  Likewise, “Mad World” by Tears for Fears, with its line “the dreams in which I’m dying are the best I’ve ever had,” seemed an obvious choice.²  And the ultra-classic “Goo Goo Muck,” which is probably my all-time favorite Cramps song, was never in question.

And of course there are artists who are a no-brainer for this mix.  When it comes to Globe of Frogs by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, you’d be hard-pressed to find a track that doesn’t belong here.  But eventually I settled on “Tropical Flesh Mandala,” which handily also provides our volume title.  In the same vein, Hooverphonic, whose tunes normally find their way to Smokelit Flashback, and the Dukes of Stratosphear (XTC’s alter ego), specialize in the strange and surreal.  Here we have “Have You Seen Jackie?” and “Frosted Flake Wood,” which butt up against each other so perfectly it’s difficult to tell where one ends and the next begins.

When it came time to work on finalizing this volume, I thought to look around for any other artists who would be perfect for it but that somehow I’d overlooked.  And two blazingly obvious candidates lept out at me: King Missile and They Might Be Giants.  Both of these groups can be so lyrically bizarre that it almost starts to sound normal while you’re listening to entire albums from them.  Once I started really looking for candidates from these two bands, I rapidly ended up with so many I didn’t know what to do with them all.  I finally settled on one from King Missile (“The Boy Who Ate Lasagna and Could Jump Over a Church”) and two from TMBG: “Cage & Aquarium” as a bridge from the first half to the second, and “Everything Right Is Wrong Again” to help us wind down.  I especially love how “Cage & Aquarium” is much funnier if you’ve ever heard “Aquarius.”

Then there are the bands who aren’t necessarily a shoe-in, but shouldn’t be that surprising either.  Although you may remember Naomi from Smokelit Flashback, a lot of their tunes I used for that mix were instrumental.  The ones that weren’t perhaps didn’t strike you as particularly surrealistic.  On the other hand, their track that I used for Rose-Coloured Brainpan³ gave a hint of their proclivities in that direction.  Here we have “King Kong Is Not Dead,” which is perhaps the pinnacle of “hunh?” for them.⁴  Suzanne Vega is another one, as equally well-known for her sweet ballads as her strange trips.  But “Fat Man and Dancing Girl” has always been one of my favorites of hers, and it fits beautifully here.

And of course we need a few representatives from the completely unexpected.  Pearl Jam, for instance, is generally a pretty straight-ahead grunge band, but, when they diverge from that, they diverge pretty hard.  “Bugs,” from their somewhat difficult album Vitalogy, is an excellent example.  It’s not just lyrically strange, but also musically odd, with an accordian providing nearly its complete accompaniment.  I was also surprised to run across “Heaven, Hell or Houston” fairly recently when I finally decided to explore ZZ Top’s back catalog.  It’s wonderfully bizarre and I knew immediately it had to wind up on this mix.

Now, just as Salsatic Vibrato has an emotional component as well as a musical one, so Bleeding Salvador is not just any old song with weird lyrics.  These tracks are pretty much all solidly mid-tempo, not music that makes you want to get up and dance, but not melodies that fade into the background either.  So there are genres, such as gothic or darkwave, that give us lots of great, surreal lyrics, but emotionally they’re going to end up more in Smokelit Flashback or other mixes.⁵  But “Gun,” Siouxsie and the Banshees’ cover of a John Cale tune from 1974, actually works wonderfully here.  Not as sonically difficult as Cale’s original, Siouxsie stays on-tempo, and her rich vocals are clearer than the muddy, echoey work from the Velvet Underground co-founder.  But the words retain all the disturbing imagery that Cale imbued them with, and the song has always fascinated me.  It’s one of my favorites off Siouxsie’s Through the Looking Glass.⁶  A sample view into Cale’s mindscape:

Blood on the windows and blood on the walls
Blood on the ceiling and down in the halls
And the papers keep downing on everything I burned
And the people getting restless but they’ll never learn

Although I’m not afraid to pick up the tempo as well.  Another cover, PJ Harvey doing Bob Dylan’s “Highway 61 Revisited” from way back in 1965, demonstrates that very well.  Like pretty much all of Rid of Me, it’s got a seething, not-quite-thrashy edge to it.  I decided to preface that with the Presidents of the United States of America, certainly no strangers to surrealism, and definitely not afraid to kick it up a notch.  “Lump” is my number one choice for best PotUSA song ever, and the lyrics certainly qualify it for this mix.

In the category of wacky recreation of bizarre childhood memories, there are two cinematic musical sequences from my own childhood which I clearly remember as being creepy and crazy and bizarre.  I didn’t understand the feeling at the time, but I would later recognize it as the mental disconnection that makes one feel as if they were on drugs even when they’re not.⁷  The first is “Wondrous Boat Ride” from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.  The second is “Pink Elephants on Parade” from Dumbo.  If anyone’s done a modern take on the former, I haven’t heard about it.⁸  But imagine how weirded out (and yet pleased) I was to find a version of “Pink Elephants” on El Bando en Fuego! by Lee Press-On and the Nails.  You may recall LPN from Salsatic Vibrato, and it’s true that this tune is brassy and upbeat.  But it’s just as weird as I remember, even without the trippy visuals. 

Bleeding Salvador I
[ The Night the Creature Came Ashore ]

“Reptile” by the Church, off Starfish
“The Killing Moon” by Echo & the Bunnymen, off Ocean Rain
“Tropical Flesh Mandala” by Robyn Hitchcock and the Egyptians, off Globe of Frogs
“Woman in the Wall” by the Beautiful South, off Welcome to the Beautiful South
“King Kong Is Not Dead” by Naomi, off Pappelallee
“Have You Seen Jackie?” by the Dukes of Stratosphear, off Chips from the Chocolate Fireball [Compilation]
“Frosted Flake Wood” by Hooverphonic, off The Magnificent Tree
“Pink Elephants on Parade” by Lee Press-On and the Nails, off El Bando en Fuego!
“Heaven, Hell or Houston” by ZZ Top, off El Loco
“The Boy Who Ate Lasagna and Could Jump Over a Church” by King Missile, off The Way to Salvation
“Gun” by Siouxsie and the Banshees, off Through the Looking Glass [Covers]
“Bugs” by Pearl Jam, off Vitalogy
“Cage & Aquarium” by They Might Be Giants, off Lincoln
“Mad World” by Tears for Fears, off The Hurting
“Lump” by the Presidents of the United States of America, off The Presidents of the United States of America
“Highway '61 Revisited” by PJ Harvey, off Rid of Me
“Fat Man & Dancing Girl” by Suzanne Vega, off 99.9 F°
“Goo Goo Muck” by the Cramps, off Bad Music for Bad People [Compilation]
“Blood and Roses” by the Smithereens, off Especially for You
“Mad Hatter” by the Stranglers, off Aural Sculpture
“Everything Right Is Wrong Again” by They Might Be Giants, off They Might Be Giants
“Beautiful Freak” by EELS, off Beautiful Freak
“Earth to Doris” by Was (Not Was), off What Up, Dog?

Total:  23 tracks,  76:47

For the remainder, there’s nothing too surprising or too predictable.  The Smithereens’ “Blood and Roses” just barely qualifies for this mix, but it has some nice imagery and it’s just a great song.  “Mad Hatter” is uncharacteristcally a bit wacky for the Stranglers, while “Beautiful Freak” is fairly typical for the Eels.  Finally, to close out this volume, we have a very strange bit of sonic poetry: “Earth to Doris” by Was (Not Was).  You may recall that when last we encountered WNW⁹ I noted that they were “hard to pin down.” This track is one which exemplifies that perfectly.  The music is strange, the spoken-word vocals are even stranger, and overall it paints a picture that you can’t help but try to visualize even while your brain is telling you that you really don’t want to.  A fitting way to tie this up.

Next time, we’ll circle back around to another round of gaming inspiration.

Bleeding Salvador II ⇒

__________

1 And possibly NSFW.

2 Lately the version by Michael Andrews and Gary Jules from Donnie Darko gets more attention.  But I still prefer the original.

3 Which was “October.”

4 Although there’s also much to be said for “Butter Worker.” But we chall come to a mix for that in the fullness of time.

5 Which we shall also come to in the fullness of time.

6 Which is itself probably my favorite Siouxsie album, for all that it’s a cover album.

7 Simplest way to experience this for yourself: go watch David Cronenberg’s Naked Lunch.

8 Actually, while researching this post, I discovered that Marilyn Manson did a version called “The Family Trip” for his first album.

9 Back on Moonside by Riverlight.