Aylos - single released
Well, Guffy gave us the go ahead, so it is with great pride that we present the first of what we intend to be many “CD singles” sold through Amie Street. The album art is the work of my frighteningly talented brother Christopher.
The term “CD single” is of course redundant in this day and age - it’s a digital download of 3 different mixes of Aylos’s track “I’m Beautiful,” all completely DRM free. If you want to burn it to CD, be my guest.
I posted a version of this track a few weeks ago, so for variation find below a much harder, much clubbier, much more radio friendly version.
Dig it:
If you like it, play it again 
If you feel like owning it, pop over to Amie Street, where it is available free for a limited period.
Mr Ray: Run
So, yesterday I nailed a mix for a produced-up version of Mr Ray’s track, Run. The original is here.
This has been a tricky project because of what Ray does. Part of what makes him so unique is his style of delivery - not just the mind bending weirdness of seeing him pull off the simultaneous beatbox + singing + playing guitar thing, but the intimacy with which he does it.
So any production I do on it needs to respect that, and I have to approach it carefully in case in my zest to elevate it with cool synth noises I lose the very thing that made it appealing to begin with. Also, I don’t want to add too much that can’t be reproduced in a live setting, which is where Ray truly shines.
So I’ve done my best to keep it as organic as possible while going nuts on it. I think I’m happy with how it came out.
edit: find Mr Ray on the Intarwebz here. Buy his stuff here.
Armalion: Worm Battle
This is a piece from the upcoming film Armalion. With Nico Mendrek’s permission it featured in an insert on Afro Cafe on SABC2 last week (I’ll try and upload that video soon), so I’m sure he doesn’t mind if I post it here.
In this scene, our heroes are set upon by a giant dragon summoned from the abyss. Obviously they have to fight it. It eats most of the nameless support cast before being vanquished by a spellcasting witch who turns it on the evil villain. All in all, a fun scene.
I like it because I got to make use of big choirs singing faux-latin (lyrics concocted by my friend Jacques van Heerden) when the beast appears. This is, of course, all done in software, using a library called Voices of the Apocalypse, and its associated VOTA utility that lets you type in syllable by syllable the words you’d like the choir to sing.
East West have since replaced and updated this with a product called Symphonic Choirs which, while being marvellously versatile, does not, in my opinion, sound anything like as good despite drawing on a 35GB library of 24-bit samples.
Also I got to do some nifty sound design during the spellcasting bit, which is made up of choir dischord clusters, reversed recordings of people talking, and the sound a plastic pipe makes when you drown it in reverb. I love my job.
Remix: Aylos - I’m Beautiful
This is a mix that Terry and I did, under the our 3Headz moniker. The vocals and lyrics are by a singer from Durban called Aylos - I think she’s going places. This mix will appear on the new album from DJ Guffy (for the umlungu, this is inexplicably pronounced “Goofy”, just like the Disney character).
Aylos has a solo album coming out soon which will feature the original version of this song.
Enjoy the mix:
Remix: Zos
This is a club remix I did for up-and-coming Johannesburg artist Zos, whose album is into the final stretch of being mixed here in Studio 1 at SSI. The album version is more hip hop, a bit slower and has more words. And more pianos.
Obviously it’s unashamedly a party track. The original features some guest vocals by MXO that seem to have got lost somewhere, I guess I’ll check under the couch cushions and see if I can find them.
The rest of the album is nothing like this one, and there are some smoking hot beats on it, which I hope to post as we get closer to completion.
This is my full length DJ remix, hence the long build.
Update: Goggi took a copy of this remix down to YFM, and DJ Chilli M is now rocking it on the drive time show.
Listen:
Mr Ray
This week I had the great pleasure of recording an old friend, Ray Connell. His act is mind blowing: he plays acoustic guitar, he sings, and he beatboxes. All at the same time.
Ray laid down six tracks as casually as you or I make a cup of coffee, which you can listen to here.
This guy is seriously talented. His demo was recorded live, but I pulled him back in to lay down separates. In the coming weeks I’m going to be working on some produced-up versions of some of his songs, but it presents a real dilemma.
You see, Ray is smoking hot live - that’s where he lives. So I find myself reluctant to add anything that can’t be reproduced in a live situation. But on the other hand, Ray’s songs have integrity outside of his method of delivery.
Watch this space.
The No 1 Ladies Epic Fail
So, through the magic of the Intarwebs, I’ve had the opportunity to watch the pilot for the new BBC/HBO screen adaptation of Alexander McCall Smith’s The No 1 Ladies Detective Agency, which, I shudder to tell you, is a 13 part series.
It’s difficult to know where it starts going wrong, because I think the problem begins with the books themselves. I’ve read all of them, and enjoyed them - I particularly loved the first three.
But as the series went on, it became long on quaint, folksy charm and short on plot - in fact, the most recent (I want to say final but I know it won’t be) novel in the series doesn’t bother with a plot at all.
And here’s the rub - by this stage McCall Smith has worked out that you’re coming back not for the detective stories, but for his deeply condescending and completely spurious vision of an Africa that does not exist. McCall Smith has done for Botswana what Borat did for Kazakstan - not as successfully, but based in as much fact.
Once I realised this, it ceased to gall me that Jill Scott, an American singer/actress is cast as Mma Ramotswe. If she is to represent a land that is not Africa, how appropriate that she is a black woman who is not African?
She’s not the only American on the cast; Mma Makutsi is played by Anika Noni Rose. Both women are far, far too young for the roles they’re playing, and far too glamorous. Both brutally murder the local accents, and both focus so entirely on this brutality that they fail to offer much in the way of acting. Scott’s Mma Ramotswe is bouncy, cute and soft. Rose’s Mma Makutsi is an annoying motor-mouthed bitch.
The result is almost unwatchable. The principal cast is redeemed only by the presence of Lucian Msamati, who turns in a decent performance as Mr JLB Matekoni. Hes comes off smarter and more intense than in the books, but I find myself unable to blame Msamati for this - he’s a shining light in an ocean of suckage. The contradictions between his performance and the books are clearly laid at the feet of whichever committee of butchers wrote the script.
To me, McCall Smith’s writing has always been highly entertaining yet notoriously bad. He refuses to be edited. As a result, his books contain experiments in grammar that border on the scientific, and characters that change name mid-sentence. It is therefore something of an achievement that the writing team on this project actually made it worse.
The dialogue is now largely Anglicised. Characters speak of “opening up” and “sensitivity to needs”. Mma Ramotswe and Mr JLB Matekoni flirt openly. Mma Makutsi moans about not having a computer, but given her constantly restyled hair, makeup and jewellery, I’m surprised she doesn’t have a MacBook in her handbag along with her Visa card.
So what are we left with here? It’s difficult to be upset with this crappy adaptation because honestly, most of the things I like about the original books are apocryphal anyway. McCall Smith paints a fictional Botswana populated with cute, non-threatening black people who are full of amusing and palatable wisdom-nuggets. It reads well despite linguistic travesty, but it is a vision of how a certain type of white person wishes black people were. It just isn’t true.
Given that, it’s hardly surprising that this show sucks as much as it does. It remains to be seen whether European and American audiences will even notice, however.
Overture
While I can’t currently post my commercial work, here’s a personal project. This piece of music began life as a statement of ideas for Intrepid. Strangely, none of the themes it contains made it into the final soundtrack, though perhaps some elements did.
It is also something of a stress test for my new composing rig: I now have a dedicated server to compliment my main composing machine. This piece uses 5 instances of Kontakt across 2 machines. It works better than I hoped, but I still want at least another two servers. Dammit, Hans Zimmer uses 9.
Ah well.
This piece is now in my showreel, but speaking of things classical, my work on Armalion is drawing to a close, my self-imposed deadline being this weekend. As soon as it’s delivered I’ll be posting chunks of it here.
Theme: Orphans of War
I completed the score for the scifi fanfilm Orphans of War this week. With Rob’s permission, I’m posting the end credits theme here, cos I’m pleased with how it turned out. I love writing epic space music.
This theme pops its head up in various places throughout the film, mostly when large spaceships are moving majestically across the screen. This is its most triumphant form, and rightly so - our heroes have just prevailed against impossible odds and the threat of fiery death.
Wait, does that count as a spoiler? But heroes are supposed to prevail, it’s not like it’s a surprise. Ok, fine, should they prevail, this will be their theme tune. If they fail it will be the theme from Dying Young.
Edit: Orphans is out now, and you can download it from the Hidden Frontier pages here. Mom, it’s too big for your dialup, I’ll post you a copy.
Remix: In My Head
This is my second remix for Canterbury-based indie pop band Artist.
I actually really like the original track, and it became apparent to me early on that this was never going to work as a thumpitty dance track.
But I still wanted to make it faster. This involved a fair amount of sample chopping, particularly to make the guitar parts work at the new tempo. However, even though they’re mostly playing different things, nearly 90% of the guitars in the remix are the original parts - just a bit scrambled.
In the end, I took the song from Indie Pop to Emo Pop. I beg forgiveness.
Clip of the original track here:
Shiney new remix here:
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