In-Game music for Global Game Jame Bristol 2016 Winner, Randy Birds.

Had a great time writing this, trying to get those randy birds in the mood!

Randy Birds - In-Game Music

I have been working
Working on something
Something you’ll never see

It is a boat
It’s almost done
There’s just enough room for me

You heard the hammer and
You had the question but
Instead you just let it be

Cause it’s been raining
Pretty hard and
You know we live right by the sea

Does it feel good to say goodbye?
Bye bye bye

I had a good friend
We had a good fight
We’re not friends anymore

He cut me down
I asked him why, he said
That’s what friends are for

At the time I thought
He might be right
And it shook me to the core

I found out later
He’d just seen his ex-girlfriend
Just another vote for the war
Well, fuck you, man

Does it feel good to say goodbye?
Bye bye bye

Does It Feel Good (To Say Goodbye?)

'Same city, New Vices.' 

Produced with a variety of analogue and digital vintage synths, recorded hot to tape and mastered to a VHS bordering on demagnetised and overbiasing territory, Calico Brawn is a gritty and decadent reverie of the excess of 1980's Miami.

I spent the winter months longing for warmer climes, watching all 5 seasons of Miami Vice back to back, and ultimately writing this album. Calico Brawn is a soundtrack for the progressive 1980's cop show, with a few 21st century twists, trying to capture that warm Floridian vibe. 

Track by track (+ sampler timings):

01. (00:00) Always Outnumbered, Never Outrun - Sprinkling of a DX's electric pianos over a punchy analogue bass ostinato. Those are some live drums ran through an SSL Talk Back Compressor, in the ubiquitously 80's style of Phill Collins' seminal 'In The Air Tonight'.

02. (01:36) Calico Dawn - The chord progression and melody are from a DnB sequence I wrote on a Korg EMX about 5 years ago...and never used, so it feels good to show it the light of day, albeit in a totally different context.

03. (02:37) Free Fall - Live Peter Hook style bass bits, undoubtedly influenced by re-working my way through Joy Division and New Order's back catalog. 

04. (03:40) Brawn - This track's actually pretty heavy, but I've selected the mellower section here. I just jammed along really and hit on a bouncey cool chord progression. Quite a lot of this album was actually played live, which was a welcome change from my usual workflow. 

05. (04:16) Shore Thing - Pun title-tastic, though not necessarily obvious from the clip. This track starts with a tropical vibe, and some white noise waves, and segues into a rolling bassline. Quite proud of the instable synth lead line in this one!

06. (05:38) Stay Tuned - I love making hip-hop beats, and the 80's undeniably saw the release of a lot hip-hop classics. It seemed to fit the vibe of the album, so I had a jam and recorded a piano and kit to the worst sounding consumer deck I could find. Trippy wobbles and flutters all the way! (Anachonistic trip-hop maybe?)

07. (06:37) The Call - This track is tape delay central, and I chained a few together, then flipped them, and then reversed them back again. I really do like the saturated guitar-esc synth lead line a lot with the groovy bass and live tambourine loops. Cool runnings.

08. (07:46) OJO - This was a 'how much can I make analogue synths sound like a tremolo surf guitar'. It's my washed up in the Keyes music. 

09. (08:30) Exhale - Bit of Fairlight percussion, and a droney dark analogue bass. Drums are played back through a Yamaha sampler for some granular time stretch twists. 

10. (09:16) New Vices - not a guitar! But I ran my KAWAI K1R through my Marshall and solo-ed away. Took a fair few takes, mind! I did a little tutorial on how to get the sound here, with a free multi-sample of my K1R patch: http://ogresound.tumblr.com/post/49960455283/tutorial-tuesday-wednesday-edition-3-simulating-an

11. (10:07) All's Well That Ends Well - So this one starts out as a fairly conventional synth track (if there is such a thing?), then halfway through I flip the beat in a glitch-hop sort of way (which you can hear here), with a lot of live bass bits and some more guitar parts. The snare's is a 909, ran through a hardware saturator to make it pop! 

So there you have it! Probably best enjoyed whilst cruising for leads in your Daytona and busting drug dealing perps downtown. 

Total album runtime: 38:18 
Release date: 20th May, 2013

You can pre-order from my bandcamp here, and get a track early: http://ogresound.bandcamp.com/album/calico-brawn

Hope you all enjoy it :)

Robin 
- OGRE

http://www.twitter.com/ogresounds

Calico Brawn (Sampler)

Composer & Sound Designer for Media
Technical Sound Designer for Games

Randy Birds - In-Game Music

Jake Basten

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