i’ve not been making things have i. there’s a very good reason. my guitar amp (which also serves as my DI) has been broken for a couple of weeks now. i sent it off for fixage but everyone is slow to do things it would seem. it’s not just me who drags my heels when it comes to doing a thing that needs doing. so thats my (for once fairly decent) excuse for not making new things. i never really realised just how vital my guitar amp is in my setup… very.
anyway despite this lack of home recording ability i am pushing on with the band. we SHOULD be giggable very soon. it’s just a case of drumming (heh) the structures of the chosen songs into the memory of the drummer and then playing in a place in front of some people as they consume alcohol.
the lunar pack has just been released on steam. it includes lunnye devitsy which is all exploringy and atmospheric and wake which i did the soundtrack for in 2010… and i still consider it one of my best bits of work. get em both for dirt cheap.
in other news i have a live band gestating… should be gigging in a month or two unless something drastically bad happens.
Fun little nugget of trivia here: the song used in Really Big Sky and Big Sky Infinity for the hell cascade event (is one of mine but also) wasn’t originally composed for this purpose. Though it fits perfectly it was actually originally part of the soundtrack to a 2007 project of mine called The Cheese Factory Incident (a remake of a 2003 game of the same name for any interested) maybe one day i’ll actually make that game again but who knows.
it was for an ice level but came out a little too sinister. i’m just glad it found a home in a game which not only saw the light of day but was actually a bit of a runaway hit! huzzah for unused songs i say! i have a bunch more random bits and bobs in the bank made for projects that never happened.. so when i’m in a fix i can just reach for the nearest hard drive!
The game is out in europe today. US got it yesterday even though it’s (to my knowlege) an all british production team and such… but we get 12/12/12 so we win at number alliteration basically. go have a looksee at this pile of graphical eyeporn!
The cool thing about this release for me is that it’s for playstation 3 and playstation vita, a much larger audience than ever before for the likes of my silly music and vocal noises! yes like Really Big Sky i provided all the annoying narration parts and maybe half of all the songs you’ll hear.
Recording the voiceovers was fun… the nice chaps at ripstone dragged me across the length of the country to their fair city to stand in a vocal recording booth for the day and call them a tit in a variety of tones. that was a very strange day actually, i had little to no sleep the prvious night so i was working in a haze. you’d be surprised how often that seems to help. a certain unhinged defocussed feel which helped me not to over think things. also powerful radioactive strength coffee helps. There exists a huuuuuge amount of outtakes too. or at least i hope they kept them. i know i messed up the lines enough times. i just couldnt stop saying “flip the drill around” instead of “engage the drill”!
The lines were always utterly silly and where possible a quote or referance to something that myself or james (James Whitehead, bossbaddie boss man) are into. so lots of british comedy referances, some running gags, some futurama referances and some things that i would just say in real life. back in the Really big sky days i’d say most of the narration script was written by me but as time went on it grew from both of us. When it came to Big sky infinity james wrote a whole load of new lines to correspond to the huge amount of new features which i hadn’t seen yet and so couldnt comment on… also some terrible puns may have found their way in.
The way i found myself in this role is pretty odd really, i’m a musician. i’m not a voice actor. but we needed something to add some extra flavour to Really big sky and i had recently bought myself a half way decent microphone. we just put it in for a laugh but it worked. it was really a case of me saying what i would say if i was the annoying friend watching you play over your shoulder… over time it got more and more exadurated but still based on myself. i guess the moral of the story is don’t play a game if i’m sitting behind you because i’ll likely call you a tit when you die.
In other news i’m releasing a new bandcamp albumoid soon, it’s only 25 minutes long but i cant sit on it any longer, it’s making my bum hurt.
partly to bring a new lease of life to it and partly because i’m an amazing person i have decided to allow payments of £0 on the album. this means that all of my releases on bandcamp are now pay-what-you-want with no minimum. also i’m back working on a second one now. that will also be the same deal… soon. i hope.
…a portfAUDIO if you will (and i will) i’ve been meaning to put one together for ages now. in fact i had one ready. there is now a page on this here site go look you buggers.
a new musicy youtube vid because i felt like it. this song already has an alternate version which is going to be on a second bandcamp album… eventually.
