SauceCast Episode 2: Ramalution

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In this week’s epsidoe of ThaSauce Cast, SgtRama
guest hosts along the starla. This episodes features a more structured
format that more closely resembles of traditional radio show such as
VGFrequency.
Starla and Rama discuss topics in the community
including Video Games Live, the upcoming Contra IV album by SnappleMan,
and the Freshly Baked reMixer Challenge on the OCRemix forums. They
also showcase some songs, new and old, from throughout the community
including a song off the Mega’s new album “Get Equipped!”, a new
original by RoetaKa, and a throwback original from DiscoDan circa 2002.

Shownotes forthcoming…

Timbaland’s Lawyers Settle with Suni; GRG left in the cold.

I was over on remix64’s forums when I caught a nice little nugget from forum administrator Chris Abbott. Apparently Timbaland’s record company has settled with Janne Suni’s lawyers. Suni’s website confirms his case has come to a close.

Timabaland’s record company settled with that Finnish individual, and
now both parties are trying to avoid giving GRG any recognition, credit
or share.
It’s official with Suni. Court action is still proceeding for GRG’s
case. I know lawyers are lawyers, but the morally correct thing to have
done was to join forces with GRG and get joint lawyers.

-Chris

Recap of the initial events:

In early 2007, Timbaland was accused of plagiarism regarding his work on the Nelly Furtado
track “Do It”. He is alleged to have plagiarized several elements (both
motifs and samples) in the song without giving credit or compensation.[13][14]
The alleged original track, titled “Acidjazzed Evening”, is a chiptune-style 4-channel Amiga module composed by Finnish demoscener Janne Suni (a.k.a. Tempest). The song won first place in the Oldskool Music competition at Assembly 2000, a demoparty held in Helsinki, Finland held in the year 2000. According to Scene.org,
the song was uploaded to their servers the same year, long before the
release of the song by Furtado. The song was later remixed (with Suni’s
permission) by Norwegian Glenn Rune Gallefoss (a.k.a. GRG) for the Commodore 64 in SID format
– this is the version which was later allegedly sampled for “Do It”. It
was added to the High Voltage SID Collection on December 21, 2002.
A video which claims to show proof of the theft was posted to YouTube on January 12, 2007.[15] Another video was posted to YouTube on January 14, 2007,
claiming Timbaland also stole the tune a year earlier for the ringtone
“Block Party”, one of several that were sold in the United States in
2005. A YouTube video comparing all the related songs was posted on
February 13.

Since Timbaland has been accused of directly ripping off GRG’s cover of a song Suni composed back in 2000, many NEW rips have come to up as well:

From Wikipedia:

Another song in Nelly Furtado’s album Loose has the same
allegations as ‘Do It’. ‘Wait for You’ is told to be plagiarized from a
Turkish folk music song ‘Allah Allah Desem Gelsem’ by Muhlis Akarsu,
famous folk music singer. It is believed that the Bağlama
(a kind of traditional instrument) sample is used in Nelly’s song by
Timbaland illegaly. A video comparing the two songs was posted on
Youtube. [17]

The owner of the record group of Muhlis Akarsu has referred to IFPI about the issue.

However, there are several other songs where it is believed that
Timbaland has illegally sampled from them. A video posted on Youtube
claims to show proof that Jay-Z’s song Big Pimpin has stolen samples from Abdel Halim Hafez’s song “Khosara” and Aaliyah‘s songs “Don’t Know What To Tell Ya” and “More Than A Woman” have the whole background from Warda’s Batwanness Bik and Mayada El Hennawi’s Alouli Ensa respectively.[18]

Another posted video shows similarities between Utada Hikaru’s Exodus ’04 and Aitha Al Menhali’s Meshkeltek.[19]

Yet another video shows how similar are the songs Ne-Yo and Fabulous’ Makes Me Better and Sherine’s Aal Saaban Aleh.
The common point of these videos is that Timbaland took big parts of
the songs without making big alterations and without giving credit to
the artists.[20]

Free Shit: Brioskj, Muhr, Frux, Platonist, Candybag, Homo, the death of Kikapu

Another netlabel bites the dust!
http://www.kikapu.com/label/index.html
I dunno what the reasons are, but it’s sad to see another source of free shit go. Not that it contributed much in my column’s short life so far, but that’s probably why it’s no longer around. But not to worry! The old releases are all archived and it’s all on the front page. A lot went down recently, though. Hellven.org’s domain expired, Ronin Collective is now gone, though vinced is focusing on Apegenine Records now. Ansiform might be dead, I haven’t seen a new release from them for a while now…

The rest of these sources are still alive, but the cake may or may not be a lie.
—————————————————————————–

#235a-235e Brioskj / Pyramids [stream]
Its a fine, cheerful welcome back to Mr Brioskj, our resident Italian
artist. He creates some of the most fun and enjoyable tracks, no
elements of darkness need apply. Just happy, easy listening and high
power tracks of great quality and inspiration. This ep, inspired by the
moods and senses of the east, features some truly excellent melodies –
take the chorus in ghibli. Excellent and addictive!

download whole ep as ogg (.zip)
download album art download whole ep as mp3 (.zip) whole ep (.mp3) mirror

———————————————————————————–

Date Release Id File info Artist Title
26/01/08 mtk.mp3.197 [3 tracks, 17 minutes, 23.2mb] Muhr ‘A Lonely Gust Of Wind’
pic by h0l

Message>>
It’s been in the queue for quite some time, but we’re proud to finally
debut ‘A Lonely Gust Of Wind’ from Canadian artist Vincent Fugère, once
known as Vizion but nowadays known as Muhr – a 3-track ambient EP of
stark beauty and obtuse goodness.

We start off, naturally enough, with ‘Part 1’, which drifts in
and out almost entirely for the first half or so of the track, before
laying into some repeated ambient phrased, before ‘Part 2’ starts to
swell a little, laying on the almost orchestral waves – of one of the
most ambient releases we’ve put out on Monotonik for a good while.

Fortunately, the final track ‘Post’ turns up and bears fruit,
kicking out a carefully charged ending that’s just slightly ornate but
fully wonderful. Thumbs up to Muhr.

Download Muhr’s ‘A Lonely Gust Of Wind’ from:
1. “A Lonely Gust Of Wind – Part 1” – (d/l support.nl archive.org scene.org)
2. “A Lonely Gust Of Wind – Part 2” – (d/l support.nl archive.org scene.org)
3. “A Lonely Gust Of Wind – Post” – (d/l support.nl archive.org scene.org)

..or download the entire release [.ZIP link], stream, or review the track at its Internet Archive release page.

————————————————————————————-
PiSTON SOURCE

2008.01.26 (PS029) [Frux]
– Viridian
Three
colors, three songs with chips and beats.
————————————————————————————
http://www.reunionstudio.org/images/header.jpg
073 – Platonist – Piano Doll

EU Mirror (thanks to GaMeBoX)
US Mirror (thanks to SGX)

– style : Electronic
– prog : Schism Tracker
– date : 24 jan 2008

072 – Candybag – Modjoloo

EU Mirror (thanks to GaMeBoX)
US Mirror (thanks to SGX)

– style : Trance/Goa
– prog : Reason 3
– date : 19 jan 2008

071 – Homo Neophilus – Moments Like This

EU Mirror (thanks to GaMeBoX)
US Mirror (thanks to SGX)

– style : Ballad
– prog : Cubase
– date : 15 jan 2008
———————————————————————————

There, that should keep everyone happy for another 2 weeks 😀

Guitar Hero III Wii Replacement Discs

Activision’s Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock for the Wii shipped out with a bug that only produced mono sound – a big deal in a game that’s all about the sound. Luckily, they’ve fixed the problem and have set up an exchange program for those with buggy discs.

We wanted to provide you with an update regarding the status of the Guitar Hero III: Legends of Rock Wii replacement discs. The game has been approved by Nintendo and is currently in manufacturing. We expect to have the replacement discs available in February.
Once we have the discs, we will contact you and then send you a prepaid return envelop with a game exchange claim form. You should return the completed form with your current copy of the game. Once we receive a completed claim form and game, we will send you the replacement disc.

Customers based in North America that want to pre-register for a free replacement disc can call (866) 780-8286 from 8:00am-8:00pm EST, Monday-Friday, or pre-register online at the following website http://www.activisiongameexchange.com/. We thank all of our customers for their support and patience. Should you have any further inquiries, please contact Activision customer support at http://www.activision.com/support.

Free 1-year Subscription to EGM

I usually do this about once a year. I actually started getting my free issues of EGM and Gaming for Windows just the other day. It may a take a few weeks to get there, but you WILL get your magazines. Definitely not a scam 😮

From joystiq:

Surely you leave the house and/or office? And perhaps if your phone doesn’t support our lovely, lightweight mobile page,
you find yourself reaching for the comfortable contours of a print
magazine. Something familiar. Something that reminds you of the days
when you had little more to worry about than remembering to grab your
lunchbox out of the fridge before catching the bus. Something like …
EGM, which has always been there for you.

To make sure you’re comforted in those dark times, we’ve buddied up with the good folks at Ziff once again to give away 22,000
45,000 (we went ahead and added some more for y’all) free 1-year
subscriptions (US readers only, alas!) to their flagship gaming mag.
How free? You won’t need to provide your credit card information; your
subscription won’t be automatically renewed at the end of the year; and
you’ll need to “opt-in” to renew your subscription before receiving any
bill for the magazine. Free. Our way of saying thanks for spending your
computer time with us.

SoundTempest Returns…as a Blog

From OCReMix:

This domain has been basically unused for years, but recently I decided I would actually use it for something useful. Welcome to the new SoundTempest, a blog reporting on and analyzing the latest developments in the music industry.
A lot of important industry news, especially anything relating to entities like the RIAA, SoundExchange, iTunes, Universal, etc. is often improperly reported and thus misunderstood. My goal with this blog is to not only cover news properly, but also break down why it’s important (or perhaps, why it isn’t), what impact it might have on both the consumer and the artist, and my own personal thoughts on the issue.

zircon kicks off the new site with a post about last.fm and their new royalty system.

Check out the blog at http://www.soundtempest.net/ and also be sure to drop in on the IRC channel #soundtempest on irc.esper.net.

Freshly Baked ReMixer Challenge 2008

[Originally posted on OCReMix]
Way back in 2002 a forum user, who’s name escape me
today (sorry if you’re still out there D:) ran a 1-shot competition
called the Freshly Baked ReMixer challenge. In the thread artist signed
up and were assigned challenges posted by other forum users. This is
how artists like myself, Suzumebachi, and GLL all got out starts. There
were also some other impressive tracks by Disco Dan and a few others.
Some time later the same user did the Second Annual FBRC which, while
not as popular as the first one, still saw some solid success.

Since the competition has long been forgotten by most, and seeing all
the talent that’s on OCReMix today, I think it’s time we try a revival.

The Premise:

As stated above the idea of the competition is for forum
users to challenge remixers to remixes of songs/games they request. The
remixer than has a predetermined amount of time to produce a remix of
said material.

The Plan:
Previously everyone just winged it, and sometimes it
worked, sometimes it didn’t. I’ve been tossing around in my head a new
system that should make the situation better for everyone…

Mixers:
Phase 1 will be mixer sign-up. It will last until next
Saturday, and ANYONE wishing to enter may. Be it an established artist
or not. Any and all are welcome, and encouraged to enter.

The Challenges:
Following Phase 1, there will be a 1 week period where
any forum user can submit challenges. Be it from a game, or a specific
song. Challengers MUST include a source tune for reference and ALL CHALLENGERS ARE ENCOURAGED TO NOT PICK SONGS THAT’RE TOO OBSCURE .
This is merely a suggestion as the easier it is for a remixer to get a
midi, or familiarity with a song, the more likely the finished project
will be a quality piece of work. During Phase 2 each user is only
allowed 1 challenge. ReMixers already in the challenge are allowed to
issue challenges themselves.

The Match-Ups:
Once we populate a list of mixers and challenges, a
script be create and will distribute the songs to each mixer. There
will a few days grace period while we sort everything out, and
following that mixers will have 1 month to finish their
challenge. In the event that there are more challenges than mixers
(which is likely) if a mixer successfully finishes their channel
(COMPLETELY a QUALITY remix) then they are free to once again randomly
select another song from the pool. The only stipulation is remixers CAN
NOT be selected to remix a song THEY requested as a challenge.

Winning:
There will be NO voting.
This contest is specifically for remixers to test their abilities as a
mixer, and to give users a chance to get their favorite under-remixed
song finally mixed. Everyone who completes a quality product is a
winner, and every listener wins as well.

Current Status:

  • Phase 1: Wednesday, January 22nd – Saturday, Febuary 2nd, 23:59PM EST
  • Phase 2: Sunday, Febuary 3rd – Saturday, Febuary 9nd, 23:59PM EST
  • Phase 3: TBD

PLEASE NOTE: Mixer sign-ups AND song requests WILL BOTH BE HANDED IN THIS THREAD.

OverClocked Remix at Genericon XXI this Saturday

Look out New York State! OverClocked Remix is coming your way!

This weekend, OCR’s David “djpretzel” Lloyd, Larry “Liontamer” Oji, and Andrew “zircon” Aversa, will be invading Genericon, an anime/science fiction/gaming convention held at Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), in Troy, NY.
Here’s a quote of the thread posted by djpretzel on OCR:

Troy, NY – OverClocked ReMix will participate this weekend as one of several guests at Genericon, an anime/science fiction/gaming convention held by Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
(RPI). Site staff David “djpretzel” Lloyd, Larry “Liontamer” Oji, and
Andrew “zircon” Aversa will be representing OC ReMix, holding a panel,
giving away prizes, and joining in the festivities. Other guests
include Al Lowe of Leisure Suit Larry, King’s Quest, and Police Quest fame, musical group Echostream, and Rob Balder of the webcomic PartiallyClips.

The OverClocked ReMix panel will be held at 3:00pm on Saturday the 26th in DCC 308.

Genericon is being held January 25-27; more information is available at http://genericon.union.rpi.edu/.

Black Mages 3 Release Announced w/ Preview Site

As posted over on OCR’s Forums, The Black Mages are back with their third release. According to the article posted by Arcubalis on OCR’s Forums, Music 4 Games jumped on the story.
Here’s an excerpt from the article:

Dog Ear Records, Nobuo Uematsu’s record label, launched a teaser website
today for the highly anticipated The Black Mages 3 album. The site
lists a release date of March 19, 2008. The album is officially titled
“The Black Mages 3: Darkness and Starlight.”

For the rest of the article, check out http://www.music4games.net/News_Display.aspx?id=816.
For the teaser site, go here: http://www.dogearrecords.com/tbm3/.