The more I go through the exercise of constructing these podcasts the more quickly I start to feel a theme emerge from the songs I'm presented with. I don't know if my week naturally shapes which songs I'm drawn to or if I'm getting more adept at recognizing patterns and capitalizing on them. This week the unifying theme was the image of a sprawling, dirty, neon-lit city at night (much like Midgar from Final Fantasy 7). The challenges this week were more technical than conceptual, wrestling with tempo changes and the like. My biggest quandary was whether or not to leave Discopolis and the intro to Alpha in, or just straight cut into Alpha near the lyrics. While I recognized that the smart producer decision would be to make the cut, I ultimately serve myself first and foremost with the podcast. To that end, Discopolis felt like it belonged with this week's theme, that it would be a song I'd associate with this week that I'd want to come back and hear later. As such, it got a stay of execution.
The three keystone songs this week were Eclipse, Shanghai, and Cherry Blossoms. Eclipse helped musically set the tone of the dirty city with its dirty beats, and I quickly found the dirty sound a recurring element of the other progressive house songs I was finding for the front part of the podcast. Shanghai is the song that initially jumped out at me and defined the theme of Midgar; it is conceptually and literally the heart of the podcast this week. Cherry Blossoms is the song I was most looking forward to hearing in full this week, the one I'm still the most anxious to keep listening to, and the heart of the trance back half of the cast; all the other songs feel like they are just there to hold up and support that song, in my mind at least.
Also, at some point in the process the master project name became that of a particular two-song mix I had worked on, Kung Fu and Apocalypse; I just left that as the working title. :-P Until next week, cheers!
Friday, December 11, 2015
Tuesday, December 1, 2015
Boots-n-Cats 009: Are You Coming Home?
I started listening to electronic music again six months ago on the recommendation of a friend. I'd been having anxiety dreams a lot more frequently and my friend noted that I had been listening to a lot of melancholy music and that perhaps there was a correlation. He said I should listen to more uplifting and upbeat for a change and pointed me at Tiesto's Club Life podcast. Six months later here we are, a little more rested and a little more upbeat.
My challenge this week was confronting the melancholy again in the form of a rather emotional panel of candidate songs. While I've included some heavy songs on previous podcasts, not as personal nor as concentrated as those this week. It's been cathartic to revisit these feelings in a concentrated form to see how far I've come. That being said, I'm ready to put this mix in the books and move on, hence the early posting.
The standouts this week are perhaps rather obvious. Ghost In The Machine speaks rather directly to the aforementioned anxiety dreams that I've been dealing with. I connect very much with the sentiment of the lyrics and am very happy that I'm not personally in that place anymore. Coming Home is a song I considered including several weeks ago, but the original mix never quite worked for me; Harryson's remix changed that. The song's chorus "the universe cracked open on us; are you coming home?" reminds me all too much of a very tumultuous time in my marriage. The song seems to beg for the feeling of the sun coming up at the beginning of Enceladus; in fact I feel the songs are practically joined in that way. I'm again thankful listening to this song that I no longer live in the place this song takes me too. The final standout song this week, which I think frames this podcast, is Remember. Its lyrics tear into some very raw feelings of love and opportunities lost, but encourages the listener to not dwell and instead celebrate all the things that you have; I think that sums up the feeling I get listening to this podcast very succinctly.
Until next week, when I hopefully have more upbeat wares, cheers!
My challenge this week was confronting the melancholy again in the form of a rather emotional panel of candidate songs. While I've included some heavy songs on previous podcasts, not as personal nor as concentrated as those this week. It's been cathartic to revisit these feelings in a concentrated form to see how far I've come. That being said, I'm ready to put this mix in the books and move on, hence the early posting.
The standouts this week are perhaps rather obvious. Ghost In The Machine speaks rather directly to the aforementioned anxiety dreams that I've been dealing with. I connect very much with the sentiment of the lyrics and am very happy that I'm not personally in that place anymore. Coming Home is a song I considered including several weeks ago, but the original mix never quite worked for me; Harryson's remix changed that. The song's chorus "the universe cracked open on us; are you coming home?" reminds me all too much of a very tumultuous time in my marriage. The song seems to beg for the feeling of the sun coming up at the beginning of Enceladus; in fact I feel the songs are practically joined in that way. I'm again thankful listening to this song that I no longer live in the place this song takes me too. The final standout song this week, which I think frames this podcast, is Remember. Its lyrics tear into some very raw feelings of love and opportunities lost, but encourages the listener to not dwell and instead celebrate all the things that you have; I think that sums up the feeling I get listening to this podcast very succinctly.
Until next week, when I hopefully have more upbeat wares, cheers!
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