Sunday 3 February 2019

Sounds of 2011: Nos. 29 to 25

I think it's time to get this moving along. You'll probably have noticed that I've been putting slightly more songs in each post than I did early in this series. I'll keep doing that until I get to the top ten, and then I'll slow down again. I'm not entirely sure how much, but the number one song will get a post of its own. Right then...


Yet another Chain Algorithm track now. The guy really was popular back then, wasn't he? Yet seriously, when did you last hear someone (other than me here!) mention his name? Even though his songs are still up, he's dropped almost completely out of sight. This track is "zubstep", a genre invented by Chain Algorithm using "a triple oscillator and wavetable/granular hybrid system run through band-based equalizers". As any fule kno. It's not really to my taste, being very repetitive, though there are a few show voice samples scattered about to add interest. Unfortunately both Mediafire download links in the video description are dead.


This track, on the other hoof, remains instantly recognisable across the fandom. Thanks to Alex S. having an official archive channel, it's also very easy to find! Its name tells the story: this is a very smoothly produced glitch reworking of the show's opening theme, and I've heard people say they wish this was the song they heard at the start of every FiM episode! It may be four and a half minutes long, but it seems to pass in a flash. Truly one of the finest brony remixes. The Mediafire download got copyright claimed(!) but it's not a problem, as there's a name-your-price HQ version on Alex S.'s Bandcamp.


You know what I just said about great remixes? Well, here's another excellent one from the ever-reliable Sim Gretina. The YouTube upload is dated 2012, but this is definitely a 2011 production. The big musical number from the S1 finale lends itself pretty well to this kind of treatment, though it does perhaps make the song a little longer than it might have been. I'm not entirely keen on the vocoder-y bits, but isn't that much of that and the beat is, as the cool kids probably said about 15 years ago, banging. For 320k MP3 goodness, look on pony.fm.


I should be so Pony, Pony Pony Pony... ahem. This wonderfully retro d.notive song deserves to be better known these days. As he says, he's channelling Stock Aitken Waterman here, which explains all the echoes of Kylie (Minogue, not Jenner!) and company around the place. Given a time machine, you really could imagine people with big hair jumping up and down to this three decades and more ago. It's a shame that the MP3 download in the video description is only 225 kbps, but maybe the quality of a song like this, harking back to a time when cassette was king, shouldn't be too high!


Finally for today, here's one by StormWolf (now JoshLohMusic) that's another take on a huge fandom classic. As its name suggests, this is a take on "Nightmare Night" that reimagines it as an orchestral, film-score-ish piece. It's really rather epic, though it could perhaps have done with a smidgen more bass. The crashing symbols and blaring brass really work well for this song, though. Want to hear this in higher quality? You're in luck! The Mediafire link in the video description is still active at time of writing and will bring you a 320k MP3.

Next time, a song that's transcended the fandom to the extent that it now has many firm fans who've never watched a single episode of FiM. And no, it's not Tombstone's remix of "Discord". Wrong year!

2 comments:

  1. It amazes me how fantastic that glitch remix of the opening remains to this day. :D Back when I played guitar regularly, one of my favorite things to do was throw in a rendition of that remix on the tail end of the extended theme song. Not easy to sing!

    I've always liked Sim Gretina's remix of At the Gala, too. :D Using Rainbow's section as a chorus was genius.

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    1. It's tremendously polished for the era. In a different class to a lot of the songs in this Top 100 on that score.

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