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What have you been listening to this week?
What have you been listening to this week? You don't need to do a 6000 word review if you don't want to, but please write something! If you've just picked up some music, please update on that as well, we'd love to see your hauls :)
Feel free to give recs or discuss anything about each others' listening habits.
You can make a chart if you use last.fm:
http://www.tapmusic.net/lastfm/
Remember that linking directly to your image will update with your future listening, make sure to reupload to somewhere like imgur if you'd like it to remain what you have at the time of posting.
A friend of mine inspired me to try a fun game:
You can find practically any semi-popular song with the vocals cut out in an "instrumental" version.
So I've been going through songs both to see how well I remember the melodies to play along in my head, but the really fun thing has been going through songs where I don't like the way the lead's sung or the lyrics.
There are some amazing songs if you get rid of bad lyrics.
This way a lot of foreign songs are also a lot more approachable in my view at least. There are some real pop bangers with incredible production, depth, counterpoint and so on if you just get rid of the (popular) ghoul growling nonsense on top of it.
I feel that most people put too much stock into lyrics, and in some ways it has turned vocals into a kind of crutch for people. I mean, most people don't know even the most basic music theory and can't talk about music in any objective way, so to communicate the things they like about them they end up just singing snippets of the vocals or beatboxing the rhythm.
As someone who really loves music it really bugs me because statistically most music in the world is not going to be in your native language, and by limiting yourself to English language songs you're denying yourself some of the most beautiful music you'll ever hear.
I was looking for remixes and covers of Castlevania music, especially retro-electric and synth heavy remixes, for inspiration for an RPG one-shot I've been mulling over and fell down a Master Boot Record rabbit hole because of their two Castlevania covers. Fantastic covers, although not exactly what I was looking for.
This turned out to be pretty much exactly what I was searching for, and this compilation had several other covers that were in the right vein as well.
Have you listened to MBR's other project Keygen Church? I assume this was likely part of the rabbit hole. But figured worth mentioning if others are curious.
It's very chiptune/synth/heavy + piano sounding stuff in the vein of Castlevania music
I have! It's really good stuff. I was actually aware of MBR/Keygen Church before this week and had them on my rotation to listen to while working for a while.
And you're right, some of the Keygen Church stuff sounds like it could be a Boss track from one of the SOTN inspired games, it's good stuff.
Xenon
This soundtrack is really simple, but it has the tendency to just grow out of my subconscious from time to time. You know how you can sometimes find yourself humming a nothing song and then realize that it's familiar? That happens to this one a lot because it's one where the composer takes advantage of theme and motif.
It's Ryu Umemoto. It can't help but be amazing.