Beautiful Boots:The Beautiful Mashup Album

DJ Useo just released the Beautiful Boots compilation mashup album containing 18 tracks from the following 5 mashup producers:

• DJ Useo
• Sfreeman
• Qubic (that's me!)
• Alpha1999
• DJ Newlight

Although there's only 5 producers contributing to this 18-track album, I think you'll find an interesting selection of diverse styles throughout.

Download the album from Groovy Time with DJ Useo.

Here's the details of the 2 tracks I contributed (including a play button to listen to them right here):

L'Éternel Enfant Roi
Noir Désir - L'Enfant Roi
Yello - Eternal Legs
6:33 / 320 kbps / 15.1 MB

Oíche Suaimhneach, Fir Caoin
Mediaeval Baebes - Umlahi
Loreena McKennitt - God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen (Abdelli version)
Loreena McKennitt - God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen (Instrumental)
6:05 / 256 kbps / 11.3 MB

The Winding Road 2 Cubism

I have a chance to win a brand new Nissan cube®. Nissan Canada is giving away 50 of them, and hundreds (maybe thousands) of everyday people will need to compete for them.

There's a tall order to win, and I'll need to jump through some techno-social hoops to have a chance at winning.

So please follow me on my long and winding Road 2 Cubism. It's a dedicated blog so people can follow me and leave their own additional comments and experiences.

L'Éternel Enfant Roi

L'Éternel Enfant Roi
Noir Désir - L'Enfant Roi
Yello - Eternal Legs
6:33

UPDATE:
Preview and download now available here...

You won't find a play button or download link here for this mashup track because L'Éternel Enfant Roi (aka: The Eternal Child King) was included as an exclusive mashup track in the Ramdom Thoughts podcast show #138 released this weekend.

It's a pre-release track to the upcoming compilation mashup album, Beautiful Boots, which is planned for release at the end of March. The release of this compilation is being coordinated by DJ Useo, and you'll find the release at Groovy Time With DJ Useo when it's ready.

So if you want to hear this track for a sneak peek at Beautiful Boots, head over to Ramdom Thoughts to download podcast show #138 or subscribe to it through iTunes. Otherwise, you'll have to wait until Beautiful Boots is released.

Ted Talks

TED (Technology, Entertainment, Design) is an invitation-only annual event where the world's leading thinkers and doers gather to find inspiration.

What does TED have to do with music, or music have to do with TED? Quite a bit, actually.

Last year, Thomas Dolby described his TED experience on his blog. He mentioned that playing music between the TED sessions was important to providing a means for these leading thinkers and doers to relax.

Thomas Dolby also talked about James Horner's experience as a speaker at TED. If you don't recognize James Horner's name, he was the composer behind the movie music scores for 'Titanic, 'Apollo 13' and 'Braveheart'. It's interesting to read how a music composer could contribute to and inspire a room full of the world's leading thinkers.

This year, one particular TED Talk caught my attention. It was the talk about Siftables - toy blocks that think. Besides presenting a very interesting new way to interact with a computer application with exciting implications for learning, there was an example of using Siftables for music sequencing. Check out this TED Talk video about Siftables - the music sequencing example starts at 4:42, but you'll want to watch the whole thing from the start so you understand the basic idea and see the other nifty examples of how they can be used.

Q-Picks 2008

I realize we're already into February, but I've finally got around to jotting down my favourite music for 2008. I tried to keep the lists to the top 10, but when it came to jotting down my favourites for the bootleg songs, I honestly couldn't chop it down to 10... So that ended up being a list of 14.

When I was going through my iTunes lists to write down my favourites, I noticed something very interesting... The number of commercial songs that I collected this past year dropped noticeably compared to the previous year, but the number of mashups I collected was considerably more. And overall, I collected more music this year than the previous year. So my involvement as a mashup producer this year has noticeably changed my listening habits.

Favourite Albums

1. Flying White Dots - 3D [link]
2. Tangerine Dream - Booster
3. Dido - Safe Trip Home
4. Ministry & Co Conspirators - Cover Up
5. 1086 Productions - Mashed in Plastic [link]
6. The B-52's - Funplex
7. WHA!? - Summer of Love 2008 [link]
8. DJ Schmolli - Falco re:loaded [link]
9. Mashup Industries - King of the Road [link]
10. Go Home Productions - Spliced Krispies [link]

Favourite Commercial Songs

1. Dido - Grafton Street
2. The B-52's - Eyes Wide Open
3. Ministry & Co Conspirators - Under My Thumb
4. Tom Jones - I'm Alive
5. Eliza Carthy - Train Song
6. Dido - Us 2 Little Gods
7. P!nk - Bad Influence
8. Suzie McNeil - Fast Lane
9. Feist - Sealion
10. Violent Femmes - Crazy

Favourite Non-commercial Songs

1. Phil RetroSpector - Bluebird Blackout [link]
2. LeeDM101 - Eternal Graces [link]
3. Flying White Dots - Tears of Fire [link]
4. DJ Schmolli - Do It Again and Again and Again [link]
5. G3RSt - Something Stupid This Way Comes [link]
6. Bobby Martini - Here Comes the Sunscreem [link]
7. Eve Massacre - Love Sun or Hate Sun It Shines on the Faint [link]
8. DJ Spider - Sunrise Over the Long Pjanoo Train [link]
9. Simon Iddol - Sargasso Sleep [link]
10. Apollo Zero - Dino's Dream (Apollo Zero Reconstruct) [link]
11. Clivester - Sex with Madonna [link]
12. Wax Audio - Sad But Superstitious [link]
13. Copycat - Does Your Homosapien Know? [link]
14. DJ Useo - The Rabbit Man [link]

Café del Mash - Volume 1

[A Mashup Industries Release]

Café del Mash - Volume 1 just took flight via Mashup Industries Airlines... A chillout/lounge mashup album where you can sit back, relax, and let your mind soar.

Just before Christmas, Clivester from Mashup Industries invited me to contribute a track to this chillout/lounge mashup compilation album. Although my own mahsup project plate was a little full, I could not resist this possible gem of an album and forged some time for this project.

Here's the mashup track that I contributed to the album...

Waiting for the Morning Twilight
Achillea - Prelude / Ragnarok (Twilight of the Gods)
BT - Good Morning Kaia
Niyaz - In the Shadow of Life
Jean Michel Jarre - En Attendant Cousteau
Running Time: 8:37

I have to admit... with the very long slowly fading ending to my song, I figured that it was destined to be the last song on the album so it wouldn't break up the album in the middle. And sure enough, other than the album outro, it ended up being the last song.

You can preview/download the track using the player above.

Or you can listen to and download the album or individual songs from Mashup Industries. Or download the torrent.

Oíche Suaimhneach, Fir Caoin

I had picked up Loreena McKennitt's album, A Midwinter Night's Dream, back in October and enjoyed her renditions of some of the classic Christmas tunes. In particular, I really enjoyed God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen, which was actually based on one of her previous songs, Marco Polo.

The album was also blessed with a few instrumental versions of some of the songs, including God Rest Ye Merry Gentlemen. The temptation to produce a Christmas mashup with this instrumental was brewing... I just needed something else to go with it.

It wasn't until the end of November when I stumbled upon the Mediaeval Baebes song and I immediately thought that this was the song that I needed. I wasn't able to start working on it until the middle of December, but I had some solid ideas, so the little time I had in front of my music production software between Christmas shopping sprints was very productive.

I felt that using an Irish/Gaelic title seemed more suitable for this multi-cultural sounding mashup. I had to do a little research on Irish/Gaelic phrase/dictionary web sites to figure out an appropriate and (hopefully) correctly phrased title... Google and Babel Fish still don't have an Irish/Gaelic translator.

I determined that one of the words in the song Umlahi was "suaimhneach", which was a difficult task since I couldn't find lyrics for the song and had to rely on what I was hearing and my limited knowledge (i.e. none) of Gaelic. I found out that suaimhneach means peaceful, quiet, or tranquil... which was a good starting point for naming this mashup.

Based on the word peaceful, I thought an appropriate title for this mashup in the English language would be Peaceful Night, Gentlemen. So after a little more research on the Irish/Gaelic phrase/dictionary sites, I determined the rest of the words and phrasing and came up with Oíche Suaimhneach, Fir Caoin.

If anyone reading this has a good understanding of Irish/Gaelic, I'd be interested in hearing your interpretation of my translation as I understand that context, region of influence, etc., can produce different interpretations of phrases.

I hope you enjoy this little Xmashup. And I hope you and your family enjoy a peaceful holiday season. Otherwise, have a satisfactory non-denominational capitalist wintertime gift-giving season.

Oíche Suaimhneach, Fir Caoin
Mediaeval Baebes - Umlahi
Loreena McKennitt - God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen (Abdelli version)
Loreena McKennitt - God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen (Instrumental)
6:05 / 256 kbps / 11.3 MB

Download the MP3 file here.