We've all heard the tired phrase, "What happens in Murkaatoo stays with you forever." It was a warning to those who came to the City of Sins and of the sinister. The actions that take place beyond this point will change the very molecules of your shell. The truth was that Murkaatoo was a playground for the unemployed, the over-aged, and the desperate. It is a hellish nightmare of neon, sparkling advertisements that, when activated properly, could provide you with experiences not seen since the heights of the Abundant Aughts. Sure, there were things to preoccupy even the smallest of creatures (the stage shows, the nightly fireworks made from grissleboids), but it was the seedy underbelly that coated the exterior of the flyways and byways that made it truly a madman's delight. Dear Audionauts, there have been many an artist who braved the maniacal offerings of Murkaatoo to play sold-out shows and win the adulation of the creatures seemingly left behind my moral society, but none more so than Neon Pearl. Comprised of Norrick Neon and Proodle Pearl, this duo was not afraid of a little ambrosia, and would never say no to a romp through the glitzy, vomit-filled streets. It was here that they cut their teeth (another tired phrase, "If you could make it in Murkaatoo, you can make it anywhere," also is applicable here). From the ringing of gambling machines to the call of addicts in the distance, their beats infested your brain with the same intensity as the city itself. A walking, throbbing adventure through the highs and lows of neon pink and blood red. Getting their start in comedy clubs along the famous Murkaatoo Muck quickly built a following, and soon, every creature from Agonoids to Zulbununs was flocking to the City of Sins to take in the sites. The influx of tourists did little to help the droll of the city, and soon Neon Pearl, like most acts who tried to satiate the denizens, eventually left town to pursue more profitable and comfortable conditions. It'll All Work Out In Murkaatoo would be their most unique-sounding album, the plunking synth and drowning drums provided a night's worth of delights in just a half hour. Owing it all, of course, to the city that never, ever, barely sleeps.

In Tunnels

Hey. was the epitome of every teenager's angst and fear. The waffling position between appearing too cool or not cool enough. Chummy, like most creatures in the Universe, succumbed to these years with awkward yearbook photo after awkward yearbook photo. He tried to impress the other Charccs with his acoustic guitar playing, to repel them with his sense of fashion and poor comic timing, and longed for someplace in the world that would make him comfortable. Fast-forward 15 cosmic years and Chummy is on top of his game. Having grown exponentially from his teen years into his current heartthrob status, it was the painful memories of where he had come from that shaped his third album, Hey. A playful jab at the nonchalance of appearing cool while actually doing nothing that could be misconstrued as, the album was a look back on the moments that had made the Charcc the massive success we know him as. His acoustic-minded background shines here in most tracks, interwoven with synthetic beats that chart the journey from his bedroom to the stages of interplanetary festivals. The solemn tone of the closing beat offers yet another what-if in the long-standing catalog of the IBP. If not for that fateful day, would Chummy have gone on to become a prolific beatmaker? Or would his star have fizzled out, the dreams he had conjured in his lonely bedroom remaining as is?

Hey.

There's no shame in dumpster diving. The best of us have been on the receiving end of the scavenger life, counting our Space Bucks like each one is worth ten times their weight in gwolfs or abarduns. For DAY OLDS, life on the street became a part of their identity, the pride of living off of practically nothing (even when their albums sold in the trillions of units). For it was the streets that gave them their name, their sound, and their swagger. Munching on stale, baked treats and absorbing the rhythm of the alleys in Gorrex City (the capital of the land mass known as Bantam on Ujj IV), trash cans and empty bottles became their drums, the electrical fizzling, their bass, and the honking of car horns, their melodies. Busking on the elevated and underground railways, they became a massive tourist attraction and caught the attention of influential producers, all of them vying for a piece of the quartet. Lead keyboardist, Springkle, rejected the drama of the bidding war and DAY OLDS formed a pact: to reject fame's trappings and give back to the community that had become their surrogate family. Using a tape recorder (an ancient form of musical delivery with a brief brush with fame), they created their debut album, Unfinished Business, an ode to the streets, the treats, and the beats that formed their musical knowledge. The lead single, Ralph, was mistakenly attributed to Ralph "The Baker" Dozen, a famed sweets-magician who often gave the foursome free food. Instead, it was dedicated to the act of vomiting (to ralph or ralphing), a weekly act for DAY OLDS due to the quality of the leftover food they consumed. With Space Bucks pulled from every ratta hole in the city, they converted the tape to vinyl and sold it on street corners and grocery stores, off-track-betting dens and the homes of misters and mistresses of the night. Fame did not elude them, but their power to reject it remained strong (even through three subsequent albums). For DAY OLDS, the streets would always be their home and their family. If you should be walking the streets of Gorrex City these days, you might hear, and maybe even see, DAY OLDS themselves, munching their way through the tastiest of beats.

Ralph

Ahhh, Fall. For those creatures relegated to systems that produce only a single season, the joys of Fall are somewhat foreign. Foliage decaying into orange, red, and yellow, the air crisp and chill, but not too cold. The suns are a little whiter during the day and a little more ochre at sunset. And, of course, that delicacy known as pumpkin. While the Milky Way's Earth may have been the progenitor of this juicy gourd, the seeds have certainly traveled millions of lightyears, most famously into the bucolic and quiet farm of Inknacious Bartolomewti, or, as he is known to his neighbors, Inky. Inky was a shy, humble farmer whose small, tentacle-built stand opened only in the brisk calm of Fall, for pumpkins were his specialty. The eight-legged Inky worked tirelessly for just a few weeks of excitement, where the line for his gourds would stretch into the next cosmic system. His pride for his pumpkins meant that others could not witness his process nor touch the merchandise before it was ready (though many tried, including several intergalactic conglomerates who attempted to steal his heirloom seeds). What drove Inky to toil all year long for the rush of Fall was more than just pumpkins, but his love of music. Obsessed with the likes of Squidword and Blobby Fisher, he would lord over his crop while their tenacious beats filled the air, compelling him to offer his own eventually. Partly inspired by his local cafe's lack of musical checkout options, Harvest Festival became a staple of his own counter. A vinyl record in one hand, a pumpkin under the other arm, this was the Inky Shuffle, as patrons too became obsessed with the tasty Fall-inspired beats that permeated the album. Going by the stage name Village Green, Harvest Festival was more than just a cash grab; it was the synthesis of Inky's entire process and the joy of the gourd that was known the Universe over. Unfortunately, Inky passed away only a decade after its release, leaving behind several remnants of other songs, but nothing was ever regarded as official. The pumpkin fields lay barren now, but his beats became the seeds for the Comfy Couch Movement, a series of albums and artists who embraced the chill of Fall and wished to pass a lifestyle that most of us hope to achieve someday. Rest In Pumpkins.

Foliage

With Pizza Bear laying dormant for decades and Honey Bear obsessing over her second album (though it was never released), the gap in bear beatmakers had swelled from a crack to a canyon. Enter Beans. Orphaned when he was just a cub, he too drew on the inspiration of New Bear City, not of the dizzying highs but of the scummy lows. The southern neighborhoods of NBC were often coated in a mist, the sun rarely shining due to the pollution pouring forth from factories making cheap knock-offs of well-known products. Here, the rain was not a weather event but a guarantee, a soggy neighbor who would not stop borrowing your stuff. Beans did not seek the shelter of the streets, which the citizens often did (illegal substances, gambling, crime, and the like). Instead, Beans filled his time with studies, novels, and the excitement of ragged comic books. These worlds sheltered him from disappointment and allowed him to create a version of himself that he thought he could never become. Beans, as we know him, has returned to the City that made him, but he is not a prodigal son; he is a force of change. Looking into the heavens, he counted the rhythm of the rain and formed the basis of Toy Glory in his head. With the help of his computer, he tapped away at a keyboard, fully aware that his understanding of music composition was limited. With time, frustration, and the beats in his brain, his debut album was born. Harrowing as it is toe-tapping, this was the other side of the New Bear City coin. While Pizza Bear had lived for the moment, Beans lived to survive. Within is the fuzzy warble of passing cars, the driving, twinkling rain, and the heartbeat that drove the beatmaker through the smog and into the heavens above. Toy Glory symbolizes his need to regain his confidence after being thrown away as a young cub, and the essence of this sadness permeates the album. Sharing in his misery was a cure, not the poison, and listeners went bonkers for the album, outpacing production. Beans did not go on to have a storied career (his next album flopped due to production issues which replaced the drum tracks with the sound of him eating cheese doodles), but his influence is still felt in the southern reaches of New Bear City.

You've Got An Enemy

Bad Scientists were always honest about their backgrounds. No, they were not certified in any field of science or mathematics, but they had witnessed the phenomenon known as "string theory" firsthand. Most today know this as String Law, but in 4885, it was still regarded as a mere theory, begging to be proven. The trio of Bad Scientists (Emmitt, Keenbeen, and Wouldstokk) had heard the theoretical framework in passing but were surprised, in the summer of 4884, to have stumbled upon the aforementioned strings in a routine space flight. Only passengers, the invisible coffers opened to them, the strings that connected the universe suddenly revealed to them. Vibrations surged through each string, transferring heat, energy, and momentum in every direction. The spaceline regarded this blip (seen by other passengers) as "an anomaly caused by space dust caught in the shuttle's window sashes." The public accepted the explanation, and so did most of the other passengers, except, of course, for the Bad Scientists. Already working on a debut album, they scrapped the intended sound (polka meets black metal) for an otherworldly sound matching the chaos and beauty of the strings in the pitch-black void. The move proved, in theory, to be the right one. The album revived the debate on String Theory, pushing legislators to fund scientific research to find ways to turn the discovery into a Law. Space travel and intergalactic construction, management, and conservation would be affected. String Theory, the album became somewhat of an anthem to the egg-headed and four-eyed, though the band lacked these physical attributes themselves and propelled the trio into the niche world they had no intention of entering. Their follow-up, Hypothetical, failed to make a significant splash due to the band's lack of scientific knowledge. One listener was quoted, rather unhappily, with a phrase that followed Bad Scientists for the rest of their career, "They should probably just stick to music."

Parallel Voids

The parasitic, invasive spore known as Aethelthryth III lived under the shadows of their forbearers Aethelthryth I and Aethelthryth II, both megastars in their own right, but where A-I and A-II had the advantage of having spawned in the vessel of two already talented musicians, it was A-III who was birthed in the unsuspecting body of an astronaut who had already filed for retirement. With resources mostly drained from the flesh, A-III needed to work quickly. Rather than manipulate the aging astronaut, attempt to learn how to play music, and make strides to complete an album, A-III made their appearance during the astronaut's retirement photoshoot, exploding forth from his neck and offering a terrifying, thorny smile that, while attempting to appear friendly, caused an undeniable panic. With the astronaut dead but A-III very much alive, they used their leafy appendages to puppeteer the astronaut to the nearest LibroTron to begin the painstaking process of absorbing music theory and millennia's worth of beats. Because of their rather unorthodox entrance, A-III was sealed within the astronaut's quarters (welded, duct-taped, and superglued), so, in essence, there was time. However, while they feasted on the meaty remains to stay attentive, a limited amount of nutrients was left before A-III would need additional sustenance (or a keyboard or two) to continue its musical mission. Fattened, stronger, and, for all intents and purposes, smarter, A-III made quick work of the precautionary restraints that had fastened the door, the automated smart-gun sentries, and the sleepy crew members who had vowed to take varying shifts until the creature had perished of its own accord. Fearing that their investment had been lost, the financiers of the mostly scientific vessel decided to scuttle the ship with a series of timed explosives. With the coordinates locked in, and the threat of further annihilation on the precipice of being squashed, a halt code screamed across all the open channels, insisting listeners tune to the tasty beats pulsating from the zombified ship. A-III had used its thorny appendages to grab any and all loose tools and equipment to bang out an eight-track Hail Mary. Clanging, rhymical, hollow, and haunting, H.O.S.T. was as much a war cry as it was a cry for help. A-III could not help its station; the unsuspecting astronaut, unfortunately, consumed the spores of its creation as they had frantically escaped the mutated vegetation's homeworld. Would the mothership have the courage to prevent the spread, or would they embrace the infectiousness of A-III's genre-defying beats? Well, dear Audionauts, I believe we can safely say that the unforgettable album cover and the lasting effects of H.O.S.T. are still felt today, although allowing A-III to leave unscathed turned out to be a massive, ignorant decision. With time, A-III engorged itself with the innocents in its path, gaining more musical knowledge than we dare to speculate. However, access to this information did not lead to an increase in creativity. A-III's sophomore album did little to ignite the charts (though, mostly due to seven of the eight tracks consisting of munching and eating noises). H.O.S.T., however, will stand as a testament to tenacity, an unwilling, drone-like sentience that lifted A-III, dare we say, from the pit to the pinnacle, replacing A-I and A-II in the annals of parasitic, invasive, spore-based beats.

Mass Of Spora

Loneliness, we can all relate, dear Audionauts. The counting of petals does not do much to satisfy the yearning, whether that be for a sense of place, purpose, or potential. Alienation, they call it, and the nom de guerre of perpetually lonely and double-jointed (we'll get back to that), Nedley Femtome. A member of the Uorescene Galaxy, no single species like Nedley existed. Abandoned at birth, his biological ancestors were nowhere to be found, not a photograph, an etching, a recording, just silence in the void. Because of the lack of classification, Nedley's species became colloquially known as Unks or Unknowns. Saddled with this burden, Nedley was a shy creature, not one to speak out, picked on, surely, by classmates who gawked at his height despite his age and the way in which his limbs gyrated in their double-jointed sockets, giving him the appearance of a ratchet noisemaker. One such incident at Qualifying School XXI left him sobbing in the nearest waste receptacle stall, his spinning limbs and high-pitched moaning emanating like a synthesizer from his mouth. A concerned teacher, fearing that a bomb was counting down to some inevitable catastrophe, pounded on the stall door, demanding to know what was happening. But it was just Nedley, sad and lonely. At the time, the educator who found him had been known as Farghut Bertoosis, a similarly, near-extinct creature of the Bertoo clan of eight-foot-tall, blue-haired, ogre-like mammals. Today, we know him as Colonel Snow Barkman, a ruthless and uncompromising concert promoter with a knack for scooping up young talent and bleeding them dry. Nedley was the first of his victims, encouraging him to use his unique singing style to record an album in which his spinning appendages could accompany him as his band, his vocal cords replacing the synthesizer entirely. And, dear Audionauts, it worked. Save Our Ship, as much a call for help as a masterclass in lonely melodies, was an immediate smash hit, connecting with creatures across the Universe who also felt alone. But, there was hope, for Save Our Ship's message was not merely the beauty of solitude but the hunt for family, home, and purpose. That connection sealed the album's status and rocketed poor Nedley into another dimension, promising he would never be lonely when his fans were at his doorstep, begging to enter. Colonel Snow, though, had other plans for his young apprentice, slowly siphoning money from his young protégé to cover his gambling debts and serious drinking problem (Pork Soda was his preferred poison). He pushed Nedley to tour constantly, refusing to allow him to record new music, fearing that he would not be able to replicate the success of Save Our Ship. Justice came for Colonel Snow several decades later when a string of allegations upended his business model, and evidence was able to put him behind laser bars for good. Unfortunately for us, Nedley took his own life just a few years after achieving fame, leaving behind one of the largest what-ifs in the Intergalactic Beets Catalog. We still mourn the loss of one of the loneliest creatures in the galaxy, who, for a brief time, made it acceptable to share, acceptable to listen, and acceptable to turn those emotions into some of the tastiest beats in the Universe.

Heart(s)break

Dawdle, fresh off of her 2243 album Playing Dead, had excused herself from public life, seeking shelter in the Northern Hemisphere of Akerwood, where deciduous trees are plentiful, and the leaf-peeping is beyond reproach. Nestled into her hollowed treehouse, Dawdle was content to pass the time in solitude, taking up hiking in the mornings, tea in the afternoon, and delicious cheese plates at night. It was here that she escaped the chaos of her sudden fame. Playing Dead was a breakout hit in a sleepy-toned field, elevating it above the monikers that the Relaxercise Movement had self-imposed. Fearing that the masses would demand too much of her, she crept to Akerwood and decided to hide herself away for the time being. Maybe music would never percolate inside her brain, but her decision to bring her synthesizer and electronic drum kit was just one of the many signs that a follow-up was just around the corner. Without Purpose or Direction was a cathartic balance of anxiety and bliss. Based upon the directionless walks she would take through the forest, the album shocked fans with her evolutionary turn. Not unheard of, but most artists are stuck in the mire of their style. Dawdle was adamant about building upon her foundation on Playing Dead, employing her dreamy and bright tones with distorted drumbeats and thumping, hidden basslines. Without Purpose or Direction, however, did not save her from the forest, per se, she made it her permanent home and, in a disappointing move, cancelled any hopes of future touring. The decision was twofold: first, to maintain her secluded lifestyle, and second, to allow her to continue creating music without pressure. The trees captured what would have otherwise pushed her to abandon her creativity and inspired her through the sneaky beams of light and the wistful, falling leaves. Without Purpose or Direction is a masterclass in transporting the listener right into the cozy inner sanctum she worked so hard to build, and one would be hard-pressed to find another home as welcoming and as tasty as the beats within.

Wandering

Bloom never shied away from their interests and obsessions. Moonshine was another in a series of flora-focused albums highlighting the indescribable process of growing by strict moonlight. A hobby for not merely the night owls and owlets but a lucrative industry with its own set of heroes and villains. Bloom, hot off their 2968 album Pesky Buds, had taken it upon themselves to enlist the help of some botanists who were adept at growing plants known for their psycho-reactive properties. After wasting the profits from the album and getting no closer to their dream, it was time to get back into the studio. Moonshine did not come overnight. However, it wasn't until the cost-effective method was pitched to the financially reeling band that the concept became clear. With some startup cash, their investment could triple in just a few months. The plan was simple, purchase land on LW-419, which was orbited by a large moon mass, saw the sun for only six days a year, and grow varieties of lunas cannabaceae (blue, purple, red, yellow, etc.) which flowered and bloomed only in the intense overlord-like gaze of a moon. It seemed simple enough, a proven method with a desired product and, to boot, a concept for a tasty menagerie of beats. Off to LW-419 flew their money, and into the studio shambled Bloom. Moonshine proved to be a landmark album once it was complete: a buzzing, synth-heavy blossoming of the band that dug their hands into the dirt and, for once, got themselves dirty. The beats were crunchy, whimsical, enchanting, the perfect companion to the inebriating smoke produced by lunas cannabaceae or Moonshine, as it was colloquially referred to. With the album already at the presses, Bloom took it upon themselves to visit LW-419 to check in on the status of their investment. Only LW-419 did not exist. It never had. The ruse had been perpetrated by the equally inebriated, the funds lost to space, hopefully well spent. Devastated, and with the album the only lifeline they had, Bloom bet the pot and prayed that Moonshine would someone penetrate even the most remote turntables. Luckily, for us, and Bloom, Moonshine is as ubiquitous as the stars, a triumph of production and construction, it became a bible for some. Why, you may ask, dear Audionaut? Because, unbeknownst to Bloom, plants loved the album. Harvests became heartier, tastes became euphoric, it was a fertilizer without the pesticide, and every creature in the universe now had a secret weapon in their fight against forgetting to water their shuttle plants. Unfortunately, the Plant Wars (both I and II) would place the blame squarely on Bloom for their negligence. Still, as far as we are concerned, the healing power of music was on full display, saving not only the budding friends on our window sills but Bloom as well, who would go on to release three more albums (though they gradually turned away from their original obsession to focus on fauna as well).

From The Ground Up

The Intergalactic Beets Project captures real beats from across the universe, presses them to vinyl, and issues them for all creatures to listen to.

Heart(s)break

The Intergalactic Beets Project

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