Sponcon OST by Meredosia

Way back in the summer of 2024 I entered a game jam. For those who don't know, a game jam is a contest between different teams of game developers to make a game within a certain time frame with different, challenging constraints. For this particular game jam, we were to make a computer game emulating the graphical and audio restraints of something from the IBM CGA era. So we'd have a palette of 3 colors (including black), which could be switched.

The game SPONCON is a twin stick, top down run and gun. You have to shoot everyone you can and photograph their corpses to earn money from your sponsor, Allgoods. With money you can buy healing packs and upgrades from the Allgoods online store. For sound, the closest thing I could think for the restraints, aside from a regular pc speaker beep, was an emulation of the Covox Sound Master chip which consisted of 3 channels of square wave audio with an option for white noise.

So yes, for this soundtrack only 3 notes could be played at a time. The sound restraints are similar to the chip that came standard in your NES but the NES had four sound channels. One was only for triangle waves and another was only for noise. Either way, I'm very proud of this soundtrack I got together in about 11 days. A few of the riffs were intended for the next Super Famicom release but this project was more enticing. I hope you like it.

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Takoyaki Surprise OST by Meredosia

\This soundtrack was commissioned to me by my friend Matt Edson of Red Triangle Games. Takoyaki Surprise is an action game where you control both and octopus and his swordfish companion to fight off evil food and save the princess. Of all my releases, this probably had the longest production time, mostly because I was writing the soundtrack as the game was being made. And the game took about two years. This turned out to be a good thing because I was able to learn new skills while working on the project and apply them when it came time to get everything finalized for release. I was even able to get my friend Emily Timm (of Sun Urchins and Ghost Mice) to sing lead on the credits' song.

Typically with rock albums, I'll write the songs and make a quick demo, get around to recording drums, get around to recording guitars, and get around to doing vocals. This soundtrack was sequenced with OpenMPT where the performances are perfect as soon as you type in your desired notes, so there was no 'getting around' to doing anything. At times I tried to get ahead of the project and ended up having to start songs all over, which is fine. It's never a waste of time to write music. And you'd better believe those scrapped songs are going to show up somewhere.

You might notice how most songs are themed around a different type of food, which was a very fun challenge for me. In fact, some of the songs were based on jingles I'd jokingly written for restaurants I had no intention of patronizing. Either way, I love having a theme to write a song around instead of going into natural minor riffs and singing about being a misunderstood artist.

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Tchildrin EP

The nu metal band Tchildrin was probably the first fake band I had an idea for, with a strong character for a vocalist roughly based on my teenage self. In fact the chorus for The Forever Anthem was written when I was 14 years old, but I never shared it with anyone until I was touring in my early 30s. It was a great idea of mine (if I don't say so myself) to have my bandmates chant the chorus with me every day in the van, to keep our spirits up and have extra fun for free.

When I visited Washington in 2022, I thought I'd record a lot of songs but that didn't happen. However in Olympia, the most obvious thing to do was record a song with the talented Pat Labahn. We recorded the forever anthem demo, with lead guitars and auxiliary percussion by Pat. He spent forever getting those parts so perfect. As for myself, I figured I'd rerecord all my parts at home to fit with the rest of the Tchildrin songs.

In the spring of 2023 I wrote and recorded the rest of the songs, for a split with Jeff Varner's Brundle Fly project. Like many splits, the other half didn't come together so I released this as its own EP. Jeremy Swindle played the guitar solo on Hammerface. Yes, I probably could've done my own solo but I thought it'd be more fun to have a friend in on it who has been living for rock and metal solos instead. There's no cassette for this release, but maybe some of the songs will go on a weird, limited compilation as something to sell on special ocassions.

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Hello Again! New Posts Coming Soon!

Hello friends and dear readers. As you may have noticed, blogspot is rolling back some if its services and some of my images aren't showing up as intended. So I'd been thinking for a while about migrating platforms, which I will do eventually. However those schemes shouldn't have excused me from updating you find people, so I'll get back on a regular posting schedule with hopes that it will motivate me to do my proper migration and fix link issues. Until all is awesome, thanks for reading. I'll try to keep you updated

China Buffet Dollar Tree by Super Famicom

Here is yet another album from Super Famicom, my solo project since the year 2002. As with last time, these songs had been sitting in Demo Hell for a while. I recorded the drums and bass back in 2023 and then I got bored or busy. Distracted with new achievements. As you might expect, releasing a new set of songs isn't a huge event for me warranting a big celebration and years of promotional activity. Of course I share it with the internet to be fair to anyone who might be interested. Releasing the material is, to me, a final step in considering it Finished.

Do I consider this the Best Super Famicom album? Of course. If you've ever listened to my music before, I definitely think this work deserves your attention more than whatever I did as a kid. Of course you can always let an algorhythm choose what music you should discover. However, if you've ever been to one of my shows at any point in history, the music of Super Famicom is Your culture. I often feel like commercial platforms are trying to shift the purpose of releasing music. This 'content' wasn't made by some celebrity, using you to gain exposure for their brand or increase ad revenue.

The music of Super Famicom was made because its creation is imperative to connecting with my inner self, inventing what I believe should exist in a world that is more liveable than before. Providing a semblance of Agency in my own life, it is too personal to hawk or commoditize. If that is the kind of music you're interested in experiencing, please check it out. Thanks!

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Priority Male by Dildozer

Buy the Tape - Paypal $10
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In 2014, Dildozer made a full-length with some new songs and some old songs, and a new bass player/backup vocalist. Our album cover wasn't loved by all, and that's okay. I always thought punk music was supposed to annoy everyone who doesn't 'get it'. We were before the phase when punk bands were instead trying to write songs in display of their niceness and general caring about pretty much anything. Who has time for that? I suspect Dildozer might have been kicked out of Punk if we'd stuck around. But what do you call this music if it's not punk? It's opinionated. It's catchy. It's mean. It was recorded in the non-climate controlled storage unit where we practiced all year round, in hot hot saint augustine. Dawson played my squier J-Bass, which wasn't set-up for standard tuning, so I autotuned it. On Youtube, you'll hear my newer mix of these tracks, but on the tape and on bandcamp you'll hear the nasty nasty original mix. These tapes were professionally duplicated, imprinted, j-carded, and cased. I would highly recommend buying a box to fill your closet instead of mine.

Dave Ep by Meredosia

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This is an exciting release for me, for sure. It's my first successful remote collaboration, with my friend Dave Lowther. We'd had played many shows together with his old bands Burl and Telepathic Lines. During the pandemic lockdown he decided to record some songs of just drums and send them to a few of his songwriter friends. Immediately, I wrote and recorded guitars for all three tracks but never got them 'finished'. This was before I'd started the fake band of Menards. And this is my year for finishing things and shedding the weight of unfinished songs to regain some of my creative freedom. So I finished the tracks and I'm thrilled to share them with you. Is it still True Midwestern Emo, worthy of the Menards name? You tell me.

ODWMYLTF OST by Meredosia

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This is the first game soundtrack I was commissioned to do, starting in December 2021, making January 2022 the most prolific month of my life as I wanted to get most of the soundtrack done before the end of my holiday break from work. This release took a while to get onto PJ Records because I was more or less waiting for a proper title screen. I was hired for the soundtrack long before the game was halfway through production, and it seems to be part 7 in an epically imagined story.

That's okay. I had a really fun time chatting with developer Hedera Helix, making tweaks to my songs late into the night. It was great to work with someone with a vision for their stylized jrpg game. This was my first project tracking for the Sega Genesis/Megadrive's YM2612 chip. I barely knew how to track chiptunes at the time. But I powered on into it, coming up with a few real hits. So check it out, and let me know what you think. Maybe help spread the word so I can get hired for more soundtracks like this. Please.