Soul time! Not Brothers of Soul or “I shall devour your eternal soul” or souls-like-soul, but the groovy rhythm & blues kind with horn instruments and a vintage twist.

SOUL DUTY is the title, and why not!

To be a little more specific, I think the song is “algreenish soul”, without the magnificent vocals of course. It’s got very laid-back groove, something I connect with Al G. There’s also a teeny-weeny latin vibe going. You know the shaker and the rhythmic brass stuff.

Al is a rare occasion when I prefer listening best of-record rather than “real” albums, ‘cos there are a good bunch of mediocre songs in those albums. But you know, it happens when you record an album or two every year.

They really used to work back then. For example, in 1972 Deep Purple released an album, recorded an album to be released the following year, and played 126 shows around the world!

Modern artists, show some effort!

ETERNAL HYMN was a good 80% done, when I signaled a timeout. There was just too much happening in there. So, I removed the B-part altogether and expanded the original idea to cover the whole piece.

I picked up the B-part from the cutting room floor, because you never delete anything that can be used later, and then forgot the whole sketch until now. To be perfectly honest, it sounded like crap, so my decision to not include it turned out to be the correct one.

Maybe there’s something in there. Maybe the lump of dirt can be refined into a beautiful work of art. Maybe not.

We shall see.

Anyway, our tune of today is meditational synthesizer stuff with big chords. It’s everywhere and it has no hurry of going anywhere. So it’s like common cold.

What? No autumn pop this year?

Well shoot.

Instead we got TRIPLA. It’s pop rock, which should suffice. It may be a little more happy than normally, but whatever. It’s not like I have official rules regarding our famous autumn pop or anything.

Official rules for songs to be considered Autumn Pop (TM):

1) Must include guitars (mostly real physical ones)
2) Overall more plaintive than cheerful mood
3) Released during thermal autumn
4) Rules may be bent like those twisty balloons at the carnival

Yay! Rules!

Time for everyone’s favourite pagan ritual summoning holiday that has diminshed into a obnoxiously commercial and lukewarm puddle of marshmellows and lager, which still tries desperately to make us believe that we’ve been scared, and therefore entertained, by the yearly cashcrabbing, money-making, pumpkin-baking activity, which only leads to the feeling of total disillusionment and confusion what was the point of this sentence anyway!

When the time comes, Happy Halloween, folks!

NOTHING IS QUITE THERE is the title and it’s appropriate for the season. It slowly creeps in with a bang, bang & bang.

The movie I last saw in theater was “The Beyond” (1981) by the legendary smut-meister Lucio Fulci. (My last movie theater visit was like a month ago, not in 1981. It was a 4K super-duper remix) I think something from that movie carried over to our tune here. In spirit I mean, not in a taking musical influence sort of way, because the music in the movie was jazz-rock fusion, and mine’s not.

Yes, there’s some bangs (to the head), and then there’s some actual music. Off you go to the madness, in fun ofc.

Ahh, Italian horror films. There’s just something about them. Weird dubbing, unconventional plots & scores, (over)acting paired with imaginative photography, genuinely unsettling special effects, being very, very classy and trashy at the same time, and end credits that roll right after the last kill.

I think the starting point for ARPOET was the following:

– Use mostly arpeggiator synths
– Big, exotic chords
– Twist some knobs

Aaand the explanation for our three pointers there would be:

– When you press chords on keyboard, arpeggiator makes arpeggios of it, aka play the chord’s tones one at the time in a certain order
– Meaning chords with many, many individual tones in them
– Twist knobs, you know like DJ’s do – not like wrestlers do – hence altering the timbre

That’s it. The music itself is something like electronic art music to accompany time-skip videos, with Frank Zappa making special appearance in the role of the corner sun. Also, not scary, unlike…

There’s this Pigsy guy. We’ve met him before.

Who is he? What does he want? Why he doesn’t wear a cape? Why he just prances around like a darn fool?

Well, beats me.

Anyway, here’s PIGSYS RIVERSIDE ADVENTURE. It’s something that we in the music business like to call “silly stuff with fabricated real instruments & ummpah & stuff”. Plus, there’s some delightfully pointless prancing.

Coming soon: Pigsy Takes Manhattan, Pigsy: The New Blood and Pigsy vs. Freddy & Jason.

Dance music not intended to provide the set for dancing. Or sure it could if you’ve got restless feet, but I choose to stay put & place my trusty ol’ buttski safely on the rockin’ chair.

BIG SQUEEZE is story driven video game techno pop music extravaganza.

I’m picturing it all: 1ups, coins, loot, damsel in distress/prince in a predicament, fun boss, nasty boss, how is that even fair & NG+. And of course mutant space pirates platforming the medieval village, while steam-powered zeppelins split the sky of the psst-apocalyptic world.

“Don’t tell anyone it happened.”

Soundcheck is the ultimate bringer of ideas, cornucopia of riffy stuff unheard, and a pretty good situation to come up with something new! That’s when your musical defences are down, you’re just messing with an instrument without a plan or compass.

FEATHER FLOW came to me while doodling with a guitar: Playing E-major – adjusting the amp – playing A-major + a few notes here and there – adjusting the tone, reverb and so on – repeating the procedure until forgetting that you was supposed to look for a nice sound, not write a song.

Well, I’ll take it.

Also, the vibe and mood of the tune translated perfectly from my head into the tape. This is a pretty rare occasion. I usually hit very near the center, because it’s fun to leave some space for changing you mind during production. This time the path was unsurprising but pro.

I’ll take that 2.

… and then, even more that guitar-oriented stuff:

HYPNOTIZER. It’s mid-tempo-heavy-mania to the max! Like med-swing of metal, without the swing or med, because it’s metal and everything goes to eleven, except time signature.

Starting about 1.57 and onwards, you can hear these notes, the little quick ones. They kinda remind me of Doom. Not the impending one, but the 1995 game.

In case you didn’t know, Doom’s soundtrack is… umm, heavily inspired by several well known rock & metal songs. There’s the “not-Behind the Crooked Cross” by not-Slayer and the tune that doesn’t at all have strong resemblance to “Angry Chair” by Alice In Chains. Doomwiki (I’m sure there is one) tells you the rest of the story.

So, Doom copies metal classics and I’m ripping off Doom. What’s next? Anthrax records an soundtrack album full of kongano originals for the all-female reboot of Doom the Movie, thus completing the circle?

Be my guest.

“Hmm, I think I’ve got very few tunes with guitar in it, and now that I’m feeling like playing guitar, I really should make guitar-oriented songs.”

Aaand then it turns out ¾ tunes this month have guitar in ‘em…

So, I guess I’m recording guitar at night while sleeping, or just don’t keep tabs of the contents of my hard drive.

Anyway, POPPING WITH A STRANGE CURVE is the name and… umm… popping with a strange curve is the game. Check the EQ of your music player. You’ll get it.