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

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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.

Twin Boyfriend split with Couch Serf

In 2014 I devised a separate solo project of Darkwave music, called Prime Breeding Material. The name doesn't ring off the tongue, but I digress. The idea was to play cello and sing along to sequenced electronic music in a non-interactive performance, playing songs that people might want to dance to in an especially goth fashion. I played one show in which I used a keyboard instead of cello, which was to come later. And as it turns out, I couldn't figure out the posture to play cello and sing at the same time, finding notes with the two instruments at the same time. So I sat on the songs and used a couple of them for the PJ Baby tour cd. As I'm trying to get most of my unreleased music out, I decided to use this set of songs for a split.

Couch Serf is a project of my friend J.B. from the Kansas City area, an outlier among my old friends who has continued to stretch his creativity and release new music. So I'm happy to have finally gotten a split together with him, and his quirky, new-wavey songs. Instead of playing cello or live keyboard on my songs, I decided to go with electric guitar so I could perhaps do a couple sexy solos. For this fake band, I chose the name Twin Boyfriend. Inspired my by romantic partner's twin sister, who is goth, I imagined what my own goth twin would be like and whether or not this is the music he'd make. I imagine the guitars and vocals would be more washed out, with less overall melody. Maybe I'll do that next time.

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Liquid Crystal by Meredosia

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When I first started making chip music I was challenged by the required use of a noise channel for drums. Naturally, you might want to use the noise channel in concert with the bass, but there are also limited octaves for most 8-bit sound chips. To overcome this, I figured the most challenging thing would be to make a heavy metal album for the Game Boy Sound System. Some of these pieces started as songs for a band I played in called Slortar (later Rahzar). Others were for a song set with the made-up genre of 'high school metal', and others were for a new Glatisant album. The cover art meant for one of four parts of a full album I'd been recording in 2015/2016. But that album never came to be. Still, the initial drawing translated well to pixel art. While there is some stylistic range here, I'm proud to have produced a heavy metal album entirely for the gameboy. Enjoy.

Tim-Tim 2: The Almighty Gnome Soundtrack by Meredosia

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This is the 2nd commission I got to do a game soundtrack, but the First to get a commercial release. This game was in development for a long time, and I knew I wanted to do the soundtrack for it. So I bugged Spoonweaver about it until he gave me the go ahead. I tried to give him a deal by charging for the overall minutes for the soundtrack. And it might have been a mistake on my end to try to make all of the songs around 30 seconds long, seeing how they repeat throughout the game's levels. But I think the end result is awesome. I used Deflemask to program the YM2612 chip (from the Sega Genesis), and I think it sounds good. You should check out the game and maybe pass my name along to any of your friends who happen to be into game design. Thanks to game music, this last January was the most prolific month of my life. And I just want more.

Wood for the Trees by Meredosia

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While I was making my Megadrove collection this last fall, it did occur to me that I should start making real chiptunes. But where to start? After playing with Deflemask, doing stuff for the Famicom's Ricoh 2A03 chip and PCM expansion, it seemed like I'd need to make a bunch of NES songs in order to become good at it. Then I could make an album of it, and move onto the next system. The title comes from the lyrics of my song Gwydion's Pride. I used to tell my audience how I looked upon them as my own personal forest for whom I'd brought a gift, a bundle of firewood.

The cover design was supposed to be used in a four part album of PJ Baby's, which I was planning until the project's abrupt dissolve. So I prettied up the art with some color pixel stuff I've been practicing. And it's a pretty album, worth a listen. I promise. I don't know that anyone dislikes video game music when it's done with such love. So here you go, trees.

Deepest Cuts by Super Famicom

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Among hours of unreleased songs, I'd been sitting on these a few years before getting them properly recorded and released. I didn't see the point in releasing music if, for each release, less people were going to listen to it. Still I found myself recording and releasing songs with other people, and it didn't make sense for me to focus on that instead of sharing work that's all my own. And I don't have a label guy trying to make his money back on this release. And I don't have bandmates floating around town, boasting about what to them might be a rare accomplishment. For me it's another album, another step ahead, easier to make than it is to share. And it hurts that for all my dedication, my music career hasn't gotten much further from where it started. But what am I supposed to do? I'm great getting songs written and recorded, and I would consider it a disservice to my art to focus instead on marketing, daring only to release what might improve mass appeal. Even I'm guilty of hiding in my ego, but I'll try to cut it away for any who might be inspired. It's not my job to please or impress anyone.

So this album is called Deepest Cuts. Most of the instrumentation was recorded in 2019. The vocals were redone several times, but finalized in the fall of 2021. As you might know, I have a lot of frustration with my singing abilities, as if I have no right to sing if I can't hit perfect notes. So I tried harder than ever to make it listenable for you. There are two made-up genres of music on this album. One is NWOFNW, which is the New Wave of Florida New Wave, but there was never a first wave of Florida New Wave. The other made up genre is Fantasy Folk Wave, which is kind of like 70s progressive folk rock, but more new age and pop-oriented. Fitting the two sounds together, I think this album has a truly unique feel. And with whatever attention you give these tracks, I promise I've tried to take every opportunity to express myself and make the most of your time. And It won't be so long until my next Super Famicom album. I still have a lot of unreleased stuff. Thanks.

Megadrove by Meredosia

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I've always loved video game music, and for a while have thought I should try to make this kind of stuff on a professional level. But with electronic music, I have trouble with Options Paralysis, in which it's hard to choose a direction instead of wasting the day playing with different synth voices. So for this collection, I decided to use all fm/pcm samples from Sega Genesis games. That being the case, these aren't true chip tunes, but I could transpose them into a tracker if needed. Either way, I kind of like the voices I chose for these tracks. Some took parts from my old tunes, and others were first composed when I was learning LMMS in 2016. I decided not to make tapes of this collection, mostly because it's entirely digital, and sounds great with digital compression. Check out the google drive link to get the tracks in tiny .ogg files.

Laodicea Volume 1

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Laodicea is an epic dark metal band I play guitar and sing in. In 2018, I'd been contemplating doing another band that had be playing guitar and doing vocals. However, I wanted to write all of the music. I never wrote riffs without a clear idea for what I needed from the drums and the bass, to achieve what I needed to make the riff effective. It seemed like every month, there was a new hardcore band in town with a ten minute set. They'd play a few shows, and if they weren't an instant hit, the members would form a different group with another ten minute set. Instead of that, I wanted to do a set with two songs that were both twelve minutes long. With these things in mind, my friends Zach and Garrett got on board to play this music with me. Before our first set, I recorded myself playing our two songs as a way to solidify how they went and how they were intended to sound. After a time, the recording started to feel old to me, and it seemed like a shame to not let people hear it. So this is it. Two songs that are twelve minutes long, of epic dark metal.

Garrett Oliver split with The Stone Wings

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I had a lot of fun doing the fake band of Menards, while sitting on a stack of fake band ideas. One of those fake bands turned out to be The Stone Wings, playing romantic songs with acoustic guitar, the way I used to with Super Famicom, back when I had a lot of fans. A lot of those old fans are parents now, so I thought I'd make some music for them, and perhaps see if they'd be into it. I've always been a fan of Garrett's music, having engineered his two solo albums from 2009 and 2011. That was a long time ago, and I was really excited to hear he was working on some new stuff, but a new album was a lot to tackle. So it made perfect sense for us to do this split. I hope you love it!

Grind by Civilized Worm

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It took almost no time for Civilized Worm to to put together enough new material for a new tape, and I got to write the music for three of these new jams. Our last release was recorded live in my basement, but we did this one in separate sessions, with the drums tracked first. It sounds pretty heavy. We decided not to release it until the band started playing shows again. If I'd known the pandemic was happening, I would have spent a lot more time getting my drums perfect. Either way, I think this tape shows a great progression for the band.

Menards split with Noah Eagle

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Sometimes I wonder about having a solo project that uses a wide variety of styles. Like, most popular bands only make one specific style of song, and once they have a hit, their sound becomes more specifically focused on the sound of their hit. And before long, all of their songs sound almost exactly the same. With Super Famicom I never did that, which was probably not a very smart career move. In 2020, Noah Eagle asked me to do a split with him, and I said yes. It was always in my plans to start a punk band that played punk for grown-ups. It was going to be called Menards. Instead of playing grown-up punk, Menards ended up playing true midwestern emo. I made up fictional people who are supposedly in the band, playing 2nd guitar, drums, and bass. It makes me seem cooler, having access to a set of musicians with my exact skill level, playing exactly how I would like them to.

Balrogs by Super Famicom

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In 2018, I had been sitting on a lot of songs for a long time, and I wanted to record them really well. A very daunting prospect, considering the lack of external encouragement I felt I'd been receiving to record new music. So instead of recording old, smart songs, I decided to write a bunch of new stuff without putting much thought into it. Often a piece of work isn't improved by puttig extra time and thought into it. Balrogs turned out to be, possibly, by my best-sounding Super Famicom album thusfar, and the playing on it's fairly tight, considering how it was very much thrown together. It was finished in 2019, but I had some complications with getting it released on tape. I didn't want to release it myself, because I wanted to have some form of extra help in promoting my release, and getting it heard. Also, I was hoping to collect a little more external encouragement for recording my next album. That didn't work out, so I released the tape myself.

FAQ

Q: Why do you still make tapes?
A: I like the things I create to have a physical form of some kind, something that can't be erased if I change my mind about some little detail. I like to collect things my friends have made, like tapes and books. I like having a home for those things. So I make tapes, not a lot because I don't sell a lot. If PJ Records is a business, it's not the kind of business that makes products for a profit.

Q: Why do you have a blog?
Because I want to practice writing for readers. I don't have very high standards with the words I write for just myself.

Q: Will PJ Records release my awesome tape?
A: No. This isn't that kind of label. However, I like to do splits, and I have a lot of ideas for fake bands that I could do for a split tape with your awesome music project.

Q: Will you review my album/thing?
A: Probably if you ask nicely. I don't trust authority, so I don't want you to trust that I know what's good and what's bad. Instead of writing Reviews, I like to think I'm writing Reports, like Book Reports.

Q: Why do some of your new tapes cost $10?
A: In the 1990s when a new album was released on cassette, the store would charge $10. 30 years later, most new goods have more than doubled in cost. There was once a saying 'If it ain't cheap, it ain't punk'. But physical releases used to need to be cheaper, for the sake of accessibility. That's not the case anymore. Some of my tapes cost less because they are old and taking up space.

Q: What if I have a question that isn't listed here?
A: Feel free to use the comment section.