Rule 1: Still available in the same or (1b) similar form direct from the/an original artist.
Rule 2: Available from a third party, with reason to believe the artist is fine with this.
Rule 3: So famous that it would be plain silly to leave it out.
Rule 4: Being unlisted is not, on its own, grounds for exclusion.
Yet another week with a full house of five tracks being featured! This is always a good thing, and so we can go right on to the list of songs:
30: WoodLore – Down South in Appleloosa
29: SlyphStorm vs Forest Rain – Duelling DAWs
28: OhPonyBoy – The Blob Symphony
27: Aviators – Heaven Knows
26: dBPony ft. Mic the Microphone – No Chance
Okay, now you know what you're in for this week, let's get a move on and listen to the actual songs!
It really is wonderful that WoodLore allowed people to use his music as they wished (with credit) since it means I can feature this glorious piece of country-folk. If you've ever heard a WoodLore song before (and if not, fix that now) you'll instantly recognise his gravelly voice. This song is truly excellent, one of his best perhaps. All about harvest time in Appleloosa, with a very well judged nod to "Raise This Barn" in there as well. Sadly no Bandcamp version any more, but there's this third-party Soundcloud upload.
Rule 1: uploaded to YouTube 14 Jun 2015
Now here's a little curiosity – okay, maybe "little" isn't the best word as this is 6'43" – since both SlyphStorm and Forest Rain remain very famous to this day, and apparently this track took two years to complete. Yet I remember absolutely nothing about it, and I don't recall hearing it any time in the five or so years since I started listening to Pony music seriously again. DAW is short for "Digital Audio Workstation", but the concept here is a kind of "battle" of alternating 16-bar pieces from each musician, with a nod to the old Solar Empire vs New Lunar Republic fandom days. As Forest Rain explains in the notes, although by 2015 she'd come out as trans, the vocals used here date from before that, which explains their more masculine sound. It's a fascinating piece, though personally I could do without the little spoken parts. There's an MP3 download (192 kpbs) in the YouTube description.
Not the first time French artist OhPonyBoy (still active on YouTube outside the MLP fandom) has been featured in this chart with his "blob ponies", but here we go again! In truth I'm not entirely sure what the relevance of this piece to MLP is, but I assume that there was an accompanying animation with blob ponies themselves; sadly this re-upload doesn't feature them. As well as this short (2'10") original, in February 2017 OhPonyBoy released a much longer VIP version, running to almost five minutes. As is often the case, I think it's a better track on its own merits, but the one embedded in this post is the 2015 original. Both original and VIP versions are available on OhPonyBoy's Bandcamp: €0.99 for the first, €1 for the second!
I know most of Aviators' MLP tracks pretty well, but I'll confess this one (part of the Building Better Worlds album) had slightly passed me by. As you can probably tell from that thumbnail, it's a song about Applejack missing her parents, in this case as she attends a family reunion. As you'd expect from that setup, there's a lot of emotion here, and Aviators holds back some of his usual driving synthpop for something a little more restrained. I think it's a pity there wasn't an acoustic version, though there is a rock edit. The song is based on Caisius's ponyfic All But Two, which I confess I've never read – although it's on my Read it Later list, so I'll get there eventually. Pick up the high-quality version for $1 on Aviators' Bandcamp.
Yes, you have indeed heard this one before! It made no. 28 in "Sounds of 2014" and it goes two places better this time around. With dBPony and MicTheMicrophone at the helm what I called a "no-nonsense rocker of a song" still makes excellent listening today. On top of the two big names credited up top, there's also Lavender Harmony in charge of mixing and mastering. As for storyline, this is a Trixie versus Twilight song, with Trixie's personality similar to the one she'd show just a few months later in Rainbow Rocks. You can grab the HQ version of this very listenable track for $1 on dBPony's Bandcamp.
there was absolutely a video released with the Blob Symphony, because I remember Sombra being the voice of that intro drum kick
ReplyDeletewow, none of these really hit me tonight c_c wonder if it's just me