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.

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.

At last! after many cups of tea and much mucking about, the Intrepid OST album is available for download. I want to thank Jeff Hayes for designing such sumptuous cover art – you’ll find his inserts and CD labels inside the archive.

Also big thanks to Dylan Feeney for writing the original and beautiful Intrepid theme, and for giving me permission to include it on this disc.

And lastly a very big thanks to the crew of the USS Intrepid for inviting me aboard – it’s been a crazy ride and I look forward to many more adventures.

Now then. The album is available in 2 versions. First, as a CD image – you should grab this one if you intend to burn it because all the tracks have been mastered and aligned with clever dramatic index points and CD-Text and all those bobs and whistles. Although rar’ed, it’s a chunky download weighing in at around 180mb.
http://rapidshare.com/files/43168572/HLtC_OST.part1.rar
http://rapidshare.com/files/43273747/HLtC_OST.part2.rar

If you plan to play it back on your iPod or similar portable device, it’s also available in mp3 format. Where possible, I used 320kVBR, but even so this pack weighs in at a far more svelte 48mb.
http://rapidshare.com/files/45302561/HLtC_OST_mp3.zip

Finally, if you’d just like to check out particular tracks, the entire album is available via streaming MP3 from this website, right here.

One last thing. Some of you have expressed interest in offering money for this album. I am extremely flattered that you would do so, but here’s the thing: in my opinion, artists don’t make money through the sale of albums (well, most of us don’t).

However, we do earn money via paid commissions that arise from the distribution of our albums. Therefore, if you want to support me and Dylan, then burn a copy of the CD, print a cover for it, and give it away to someone. We’d really appreciate it.

NOTE on using Rapidshare: you’ll want to scroll down the page the links above take you to, and click the button labelled Free. This takes you through to the actual download page where you have to enter some Capcha text to prove you’re not a robot, and your download will commence.

So, we’re still on track to release the OST next week, which I’m looking forward to as a personal milestone. I’ve spent so much time working on other people’s projects; it’s really exciting to be releasing something of my own for a change.

Until the official release, here’s another clip. This is scene 22, the second appearance of the mysterious nemesis, and the crew of the Intrepid go to Red Alert.

Annnnnnnnnnnnd then, because it’s Friday …

Eat Liver
These guys collect the latest stoopid pictures doing the rounds on a semi-daily basis. Good for a chuckle, but also a bit random, by which I mean that although most of the pictures are amusing, some may scar your brain. You have been warned.

Best Old Games
If you’re around my age, you know that although today’s games are better to look at, they aren’t necessarily better to play. You also remember a time when 640k was a huuuuuuuuuuge amount of memory. Gaze in wonder, then, at this mighty repository of Abandonware. It’s all entirely legal to download, too. Eeeeee, they don’t make ‘em like that anymore, do they Dorris? No. No they don’t.

Optical Illusions
Mangle your brain with this fine collection of optical illusions. My favourite is the colour perception one – the shadow on the chessboard. My head will not accept that the two squares are the same colour, even though I’ve gone and proved it to myself with Potatoshop’s eyedropper tool. Mental.

The All Singing All Dancing Hardgeus
The personal homepage of a geek I find inspiring – not only for his geekiness, but for his formidable weightloss. This link will take you through to the weightloss portion of his site, which is an amusing read in and of itself. The true gold is on the third page in, however, where there is a time lapse animation of the weight coming off. Oddly hypnotic. Also scary when it loops and he transforms from hot to gross again.

Fluffeh time
Obligatory kittens. Ahhhhhh.

Karl and I have been on a sort of enforced hiatus due to our mutual work pressures, but today we managed to get together and make some of the banging thumping noises we so enjoy. Below is a clip from our current remix work.

Bonus points if you can identify the original track (thus giving away your age). And yes, we are looking to collaborate with singers, so if you’re in the Cape Town area and can belt out a decent House vocal, please drop me a line.

In other news, the permissions issue around the Intrepid soundtrack has been resolved, so expect the entire OST album to be available for download some time next week – I’m just waiting on cover art at this point. The cover is being designed by the multi-talented Jeff Hayes, which I’m feeling very smug about.

This is a clip from the back end of Scene 9 where Navar is trying to discourage the crew from investigating the new alien species too closely. I had originally intended this to be Navar’s theme of duplicity, but it just didn’t pan out that way.

In the end, it just didn’t fit where I intended it later, so scene 9 is its lone appearance.

And now, as it’s a Friday, and on the off-chance you are reading this from your desk when you are supposed to be working, here are some amusements:

XKCD
Brilliant and highly geeky webcomic about life, love, and all things intarwebz. Often sharply insightful. You don’t have to be a nerd to read it, but it helps.

Monkey Fluids
Amusing site where a chap called Josh scans pictures out of old Boys Own-type books and re-captions them. Wrong, wrong, wrong. And funny.

Chris has annoyed me for the last time
I was mucking about with After Effects, this is the gory result. Probably NSFW for graphic, if ridiculous, violence.

Purple and Brown
What is this? What is this? I don’t know, but I can’t stop watching. It tickles me in that strange mystical place that makes everything funny to a 2 year old.

I can has cheezburger?
You may. No list of amusements is complete without some fluff. Hooray for kitties!

As you might be aware, our first episode of Intrepid was released last month. It’s pretty cathartic to have it out after all this time.

I intend to release an OST album in the fullness of time, and will do so once certain issues with permissions have been resolved. In the meantime, I’ll be posting individual scenes from the film here.

In this scene, the Captain’s shuttle malfunctions on its way down to the planet. On its current trajectory it will crash into the colony, killing hundreds. After a frantic effort to save it, the crew of the Intrepid have no choice but to shoot the shuttle down.