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Music Television & Movies

Kasatochi gets Wibbly Wobbly

KasatochiAfter the collections of Star Trek and Star Wars music, this was pretty much inevitable, wasn’t it? This collection includes musical tributes to the world’s longest-running sci-fi series, taking in themes from both the classic and new series. In fact, it’s not unusual to hear themes from both ends of the spectrum within the same track. And as always, it’s lovingly turned into NES-style chipmusic – a real trip back in time. What if there had been an awesome 8-bit Doctor Who game, and this was the music from it? … Read more

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Music Television & Movies

Kasatochi: The Original Trilogy

Kasatochi Wars!To be fair, this is not a franchise that’s short on awesome video game music, but with this release, Kasatochi rolls the tape back a bit and beeps up the music of the three movies of the original trilogy, with an emphasis on the first one. Yes, there will be a prequel trilogy album; no, I’m not sure exactly when just yet.

Go grab it from the dedicated Kasatochi page; you can see the track listing after the jump. … Read more

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Funny Stuff Television & Movies

To WHO it may concern, GREETINGS!!1!

Who goes thereThe past week or so has been interesting in the world of Doctor Who fandom. Honestly, I’ve almost forgotten that we’re supposed to be taking bets on who replaces Matt Smith at this point. On the off-chance that you’re not really a Doctor Who fan yourself… well, first off, what on Earth are you doing at this web site, which is fairly dripping with Doctor Who?

But, beyond that, all you really need to know is this: during the 1960s, Doctor Who was produced in black & white on video, and the series was made almost year-round to the tune of one 25-minute episode per week. The videotapes were transferred to a more universal medium – film – and sold abroad, often dubbed into the local language. From various points in Europe to the Middle East and beyond, these films were “bicycled” from broadcaster to broadcaster, a practice that was still in force as recently as my early years in the TV biz (I distinctly remember that, at the station where I worked in the early ’90s, episodes of Mama’s Family were bicycled from station to station; no, I don’t know why either).

And then, in the late ’60s, staring down the barrel of an impending change of video format with little reasonable expectation that programs recorded in the older, lower-resolution format could ever be exploited commercially, and knowing that yet a further new format would be introduced in due course (namely, color television), the British Broadcasting Corporation issued internal instructions to its videotape archive: get rid of these old shows. Get rid of everything that isn’t of obvious historic value (such as footage of the Queen’s coronation). In the BBC’s view, there was no point in wasting all of that valuable space to preserve programming which had no commercial future.

If only they’d known. … Read more

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Music Television & Movies

The best of both blaster beam worlds

Assimilated

So I’ve been listening to the recently remastered, reissued and expanded version of the soundtrack of the Star Trek: The Next Generation two-parter The Best Of Both Worlds lately. Wonderful stuff. The original 1991 release of that soundtrack was one of the first compact discs I ever bought, even though I didn’t have a CD player at the time. What I did have was two worn-out cassettes I’d bought (because I was listening to it that much), and a job at a radio station that afforded me access to a CD player and a cassette deck that would allow me to make as many tape copies as I needed (so I could wear them out too).

In listening to the reissue, with its crisper sound, I was struck by how, if ever there was a point in ST:TNG’s normally staid musical landscape (though not by the composers’ choice) where they needed to break out of the producer-imposed box and use some blaster beam, this was it. So I tried a few subtle amendments to a few key points in the soundtrack from part one. (During the infamous cliffhanger music, however, I was a bit less than subtle. There’s nothing about that cue that’s subtle.)

Listen and enjoy!
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/earl/podcast/beamofbothworlds.mp3]

If you’ve been following my other music project at all, you’re in for a treat next week. Not only will the next Kasatochi release land with a resounding digitized thud on Monday, but it will be joined by a similar effort from Rhindle The Red, so you’ll be getting twice the hits-to-bits treatment that you would get on a typical Monday. (Let’s face it – Mondays suck so hard, it’s not a bad idea to call for backup.)

KasatochiIn both cases, both Kasatochi and Rhindle will be embarking on an interesting experiment: each release will turn an entire classic album into chiptunes, from the first track to the last, in Rhindle The Redthe original running order. Suffice to say, if you like either of the groups in question, you’ll probably get at least a chuckle out of this. Further full-album chiptune conversions are also in the works, though how many more depends on how well these go down. Be here Monday – chances are, you already know the track listings! … Read more

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Television & Movies

Sounds from the Pod

Escape PodSome time back, I wrote and recorded and only partially edited a longer intro for the daily Escape Pod podcast that gave a better explanation as to what the heck the thing is about; my thinking when I wrote it was that, what with the usual progression from space missions and science milestones to celebrity birthdays and obits with a geeky bias to moments in TV, movie and video game history… it might seem unfocused to somebody. (It doesn’t seem that way to me, but I still have to pitch it to an audience that isn’t me. Damned inconvenient sometimes.)

I had the crazy, sleep-deprived thought recently that maybe I should finish that out. I started from scratch on the sound effects mix, and came up with nearly 40 seconds of mechanical futuristic beauty, only to realize why I’d given up on it the first time:

  • It’s 40 seconds long.
  • It would get really old hearing the same 40-second-long intro on a daily basis, no matter how elaborate the sound mix is.
  • It would’ve made sense the first week of the Escape Pod. We’re going into month four.

But just for giggles, I’ve posted the intro on its own – if nothing else, it’s on the RSS feed if anyone needs an “explainer” of what the Escape Pod covers and why it’s there. You can hear it here:
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/podcast/escape/pod/escapepod0000.mp3]

The background sound mix is a multitrack monster 22 tracks deep, with about eight of those tracks being layers of the ascending power-up/engine-start sound, which I thought should be deep and whooshy if you’re hearing them from inside the pod. There’s a lot going on here, including lots of little audio Easter eggs as homages to some old favorites. See if you can spot them all in the complete Escape Pod intro sound mix:
[audio:https://www.thelogbook.com/podcast/escape/pod/escapepod-fx.mp3]
The mental picture I had during all of this is that you’d want a real escape pod on a real spaceship to have the cold-start-to-ready-to-go time of a horny dog. Therefore, you go from opening the hatch to hitting space in under a minute.

The Pod is still looking for a sponsor or two to justify the not-inconsiderable time that I sink into it every month, if anyone’s interested. … Read more

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Music Television & Movies

Kasatochi: Beamed

Kasatochi: BeamedJust in time for the release of Star Trek: Into Darkness, I thought it’d be fun to reach into an alternate universe and whip out a soundtrack from that mirror universe’s vastly superior library of Star Trek video games. (I make little secret of my opinion that a lot of licensed Trek games are big piles of steaming salt monster excrement.) In this other universe, virtually every movie and series has had a knockout video game based on it, with outstanding music from some of the big screen’s finest composers. Here, then, is an entire full-album-length chiptune tribute to the Star Trek universe from Kasatochi, free for download. … Read more