Twin Boyfriend split with Couch Serf

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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.

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!