NEDRY IS BORN

NEW SONGS

2009-03-26T17:56:00.000-07:00

Welcome back 2 tha program ladies & gentlemen, at long last the day you have awaited has ARRIVED. My new Myspace and a huge load of new songs.

Reptile on Myspace

Miley Cyrus - See You Again (Reptile Remix)
Reptile - White Folks (Feat. Barack Obama)
Christina Aguilera - Genie in a Bottle (Reptile Remix)
Reptile - Reptilian
Reptile - Maybe Be Mine

ENJOY MY FRENDZ

the right kind of music

2009-01-23T19:19:00.000-08:00

Ok copkillers, here is the latest jam!!!

John Davis - Theme From Beverly Hills, 90120

Using only the freshest sounds available in 1991, this song is cheesy and smooth as velveeta!!!!!!!
With an almost canyon.mid esque-synthrock flavor with that HOT OVERDRIVEN GUITAR and CRISP AS FUCK gated drums.

Also check this unrelated extreme fromage:

and why not

HAVE A NICE EVENING

DAS SHANE SONGS SUX

2008-12-14T16:07:00.000-08:00

Elf In the Forest, I'm Not Black Sabbath, Elf In The Forest (reprise), Jeremy is In Beijing

Indian Ocean

das shane songs

2008-12-11T23:46:00.000-08:00

http://www.sendspace.com/file/6x2y0n
http://www.sendspace.com/file/rk6gp2

More great freestyle

2008-11-15T23:57:00.000-08:00

My hourly alarm just went off. That's a new thing. It makes things a little more interesting.

Huge explosion!

2008-08-10T07:55:00.000-07:00

In Toronto at around 4AM this morning!!

Here's the full video.

In this one you can see the SHOCKWAVE...

New virt media

2008-07-26T21:48:00.001-07:00

So, virt, the best musician in the universe, posted a video on YouTube of his new Puggle (pug and beagle hybrid) set to his own beautiful early 2000's era canyon.mid rearrangement. Excellent!

Another tracker in the spotlight

2008-07-26T14:21:00.000-07:00

Wow, here's SymbolOne, who Danger did a remix of, and he's getting lots of attention on MySpace.

SymbolOne - Love Juice

How do I know he's a tracker? It's a hypothesis. But listen to the synths--they give it away. The lead synth that comes in near the beginning, first of all, I recognize as sounding very similar indeed to a particular lead synth sample. Second of all, the portamento effects on the lead synth and the arpeggiating chord synths are very common in tracker music.
Also, there tend to be a lot of very fast arpeggios in these tracks, like occurs about half way through.
And a lot of the synths also SOUND sampled, which is how tracking music works. For instance, the bell thing in the middle quiet part of the song--it sounds sampled.

And that's why I love it!

Good news for trackers

2008-07-26T12:25:00.000-07:00

In definitely one of the best YouTubers I've seen lately, circa 1989 nerdy guy Mark Salud plays songs he tracked on an Amiga and plays the lead LIVE on his keyboard. Then fancy Amiga computer effects make things interesting. BONUS: Comments from the star of the video and the producer of the video itself, who were very excited to find their work again.

Also, I'm working on more evidence that Danger is a tracker, besides, uh, his songs which make it obvious!

New Pink Plasma

2008-06-29T00:03:00.001-07:00

Hi guys. I've been working on some music and I have a few tracks to show you.

My name is Pink Plasma.

Pink Plasma - Maybe Be Mine

Pink Plasma - Faltermeyer in Genesis Valley

Pink Plasma - Baby

Just to give credit where credit is due, Maybe Be Mine is a remash of Michael Jackson's classic song Baby Be Mine. And Faltermeyer in Genesis Valley is a mashup using Justice, Soyo Oka (composer of the Super Mario Kart soundtrack) and Harold Faltermeyer songs.

The best new band in a while

2008-06-28T10:23:00.000-07:00

Lovelock.

Found them via Missingtoof, who recently showcased the web collective pseudo label Valerie. They've got a couple songs posted, along with a ton of other stuff in the same amazing aesthetic. These guys basically take early '80s diagonal neon nostalgia to the next level.

Back to Lovelock. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to find any downloads.

It's like Harold meets Purple Motion meets Two Great Heroes or Totally Radd.

Update:
Funny thing is, I posted this without mentioning another band on the Valerie roster, Minitel Rose, who seem to be really amazing and are already doing a lot of the stuff I have been doing. You should definitely check them out.

The best platypus video on YouTube

2008-06-24T22:39:00.000-07:00

P.S. Thoughts on the new color scheme?

BAM! Respected professor crushes Conservapedia creationist

2008-06-24T21:58:00.000-07:00

A creationist contributor to Conservapedia, Andy Schlafly, B.S.E., J.D. Conservapedia (his supposed credentials) has criticized Michigan state professor Richard Lenski, regarding his recent paper outlining clear evolution by E. coli in detail. The paper was a big deal and some critics on Conservapedia got upset. Andy Schlafly wrote him asking for his data. Their rudeness resulted in a scathing response by Lenski deconstructing their whole project.

Read the whole conversation here:

http://www.conservapedia.com/Conservapedia:Lenski_dialog

Slap Ukelele

2008-06-20T18:02:00.000-07:00

Song of the summer

2008-06-17T20:34:00.001-07:00

MAN, that dancing guy is AWESOME.

Babyface's early 80s band The Deele:

Wow

2008-06-04T20:35:00.000-07:00

This video is over the top!
First, watch it!
Then we'll talk about it!

Wow! A sweded remake of the BeastMaster, a 1982 film that Mr. T tried to star in about a mystical warrior who tries to save a princess from the evil guy who kidnaps her. Oh, and he can TALK TO ANIMALS.
And instead of some stupid guy playing the lead, in this remake, the lead is played by a LITTLE KID.
With AWESOME special effects.
And AMAZING music!
Makes me want to see Be Kind Rewind!

Weird video - Wale

2008-05-30T13:29:00.001-07:00

So according to this Wired interview there's this rapper named Wale who thinks he's gonna be the next big thing - he's making an album with Pharrell, Just Blaze, and DJ Premier, executive produced by Amy Winehouse's producer. He's also been making a mixtape for free download called The Mixtape About Nothing -- inspired by Seinfeld. Apparently inspired by the dialog and characters in the show. And Julia Louis-Dreyfus is a guest. He also says he owns 325 pairs of shoes, mostly "Jordan 3s, all three colors. Jordan 4s, Jordan 5s and Jordan 11s." And he thinks he's friends with Lindsay Lohan. So this guy's pretty detestable, right? Or at least trying a little too hard? But then here's a video he made - him rapping over Justice's 2007 hit D.A.N.C.E. It's a really weird video.

First, there's good things here - the moving through legs opening reminiscent of this classic vid. There's a Star Wars reference and a Seinfeld reference, and a fucking Harold and the Purple Crayon reference. The effects are generally cool but really strange, like having a some kid jump over a 1 foot tall Wale on a skateboard. Also, some of the lyrics are so nonsensical they're funny, and he makes fun of rappers at the end.

There's a lot of bad things - mostly, the song sucks. His voice is way louder than the rest of the music, which gets painful when he tries to sing along to the Justice song. And he doesn't use the good parts of the Justice song, only the backing beat during one section and one of the bridges. Again, the lyrics are pretty nonsensical (it may help to listen to the uncensored version). So pretty underwhelming as a rapper.

I really do like this genre of video, though, where it's just a guy standing in front of a green screen and they don't try to put him somewhere boring, they put him inside a constantly changing cheesy computer paradise. Another one like this was the Get Silly video, and of course the Fat Boys made an early prototype.

2008-05-29T23:01:00.000-07:00

From the Wikipedia page on Mozilla Foundation:

The foundation has an ongoing deal with Google to make Google search the default in the Firefox browser search bar and hence send it search referrals; a Firefox themed Google search site has also been made the default home page of Firefox. A footnote in Mozilla's 2006 financial report states "Mozilla has a contract with a search engine provider for royalties. The contract originally expired in November 2006 but was renewed for two years and expires in November 2008. Approximately 85% of Mozilla’s revenue for 2006 was derived from this contract."; this equates to approximately US$56.8 million.

What!!! No way!
That means Google is basically keeping Mozilla afloat. WHY? Is Google going to buy Mozilla?

Very startling fact. This paired with Google's latest scandals, of censorship in China, makes me wonder whether I should trust Mozilla has good intentions.

La totalité des PLUG-ins

2008-05-29T18:28:00.000-07:00

I found the coolest website today. It is a page for VST plug-ins for Cubase written in French in 1999. I am so glad websites like this exist.

In other news, I am working on a lot of music. If all goes according to plan, I should have several tracks ready for release. This will mark the first time since 2005 I've released more than a few songs at a time. Sweet.

2008-05-28T00:15:00.001-07:00

SUPERGUN THIEVES?

2008-05-19T22:02:00.000-07:00

Sorry about that real teaser of a post from Saturday. I shouldn't do that. I really do have a poll I want your opinions on, valuable readers. I'd like this to be a collaborative blog between you (readers) and I (genius). So I will be asking for your input soon. As soon as I think about it a little more and write up a post.

So I found this band today called Santa Dads who sound very mysteriously like our house band Supergun. They're a two man band who play the uke and harmonize what seems to be almost entirely improvised songs. JUST LIKE SUPERGUN. The only difference is that their songs are based upon a little bit more abstract themes, like whether one can hang one's leg up in here. The other difference is that they beatbox (a little weakly). The only other difference is that they have a MySpace page that got 37 plays today (as of this writing; of course, now that I've blogged them, the Nedry Effect will wildly inflate their numbers into the thousands).

Well, I like them okay. Pretty good ideas. They can't write a hit single to save their lives though. Unlike Supergun. Gott damn unnnhgnghh.

The beginning of a new era

2008-05-17T16:20:00.000-07:00

As I type, I have just finished my last homework assignment for college about 30 minutes ago. Motherfuckin' yes!
So, I anticipate having a little bit more time these days to do some reporting for you, dear reader. And I want you to be a little more involved in it.
More details as they come. I will update again later tonight with a new interactive feature for you!

High-res YouTube

2008-05-13T15:36:00.001-07:00

Now, YouTube has been doing little tweaking stuff for a long time. But there's a little secret you can use to watch any video (as far as I can tell) in higher resolution with stereo sound, simply by editing the URL. It's that easy. I found this tip here.

All you have to do is add the string "&fmt=18" to the URL of the YouTube video you're watching. And the site above provided what he calls a bookmarklet that automatically adds that string to your URL, so you can click it when you're on the page and it does it. Drag this bookmarklet - YouTube WOWzers - to your bookmark bar and you're set! Apparently you can also change your YouTube user settings to make it automatically play at the highest quality, too.

Automatic Mario

2008-05-12T11:44:00.000-07:00

Found via Gameboy Genius, there's apparently a genre of video called Automatic Mario where Mario is thrust through incredibly complex custom Super Mario World levels. This 11-minute epic shows Mario playing along with an 11 minute video game remix song. It is really quite amazing. And for those of us familiar with John Lithgow's Manatee PSA, there is a special treat at the very very end.

Automatic Mario - Kumikyoku "Nico Nico Douga" from Doctor Zhao on Vimeo.

BREAKING FUCKING NEWS!!!! [Updated]

2008-05-11T23:58:00.003-07:00

CRYSTAL CASTLES PLAGIARIZE CHIPTUNE ARTIST!!!!!!!!!!!!
DEVELOPING....

UPDATE 2:01AM
VIDEO HERE

HERE IS THE CRYSTAL CASTLES SONG IN QUESTION, "INSECTICON"
Crystal Castles - Insecticon

AND THE CLAIMED ORIGINAL SONG, BY AN ARTIST NAMED lo-bat WITH THE SONG "MY LITTLE DROID NEEDS A HAND"
WHICH CAN BE FOUND ON HIS WEBSITE, ON THE RIGHT
http://www.lo-bat.be/

AND HERE IS THE SOURCE I HAVE: A SOMETHINGAWFUL FORUM POST THAT LINKS TO THE 8BITCOLLECTIVE FORUMS, WHERE THIS RESEARCH WAS CONDUCTED.

According to the SomethingAwful post, several of the other songs also contain "sampled" material from chip artists.

AND they steal artwork, too.

This post by the same guy has a better summary than the SomethingAwful post.
And he gives a quote from an interview with them in Vice magazine, where they act like total pricks:

vice: You are tired and I don’t want to bother you anymore, but what about this bullshit on the internet between you and this guy pretending that you “stole his art” to do t shirts with Madonna’s fucked up face?

alice: This is really starting to bust our balls. The story is that this guy is not the real author of this illustration. We found this Madonna drawing on an old flyer for a punk gig. The artist re-drew it for us back when we were just a little band, and now that we have some sort of fame, he writes everywhere that we stole it. To tell the truth we always wanted to pay him but he is acting like he doesn’t know, because of all the noise around this story which brings him more publicity. So we had some arguments and we banned him from our myspace page.

ethan: Moreover, we are not rancorous and if this asshole reads your mag, tell him his cheque awaits him.

vice: Message sent…

More specific info on other songs/parts of songs Crystal Castles have sampled or stolen:

Another good post, with more information on similar (even worse) cases.

More to come....

Update: 2:24AM
One of the funniest things about this are replies on SomethingAwful from people getting their first listen to chiptunes and "8-bit" music and they say things like this:

I'm just shocked that anyone has ever listened to an 8-bit song for more than 30 seconds. Seriously 8-bit is just above the demo music that comes installed on your Casio keyboard. Can it get any dinkier?

...people like who listen to Tool or something.

-

Anyway. What do I think of all this? It's a shame. Just shows you the people who get famous doing this stuff are better at being marketers than being creative, so they resort to ripping shit off because they aren't actually better at the MUSIC. Just like Timbaland.

That's not to say these guys aren't good. The fact that they ARE good is why this sucks so much. Just like Timbaland. I didn't WANT to dislike Timbaland, because he's so good, but I had to sort of "boycott" him to punish him for what was obviously wrong. Maybe the worst part is I never gave his two big albums that summer, Justin Timberlake's and Nelly Furtado's, much of a shot. NOT!

So now here we have Crystal Castles, a band that is actually good, doing stuff that hasn't been widely heard beyond the thriving video game music scene, and we find out that they aren't really as creative as we thought. And that they are in fact dishonest, and willing to play dirty.

Now, my understanding of the band is that they are kind of a one man band, the guy, whoever he is, and the girl just sings sometimes. That was my impression. So it's most likely this guy doing this. And they're stealing artwork, too, from other pixel artists. It seems as though this guy loves this stuff, and trowls these sites because it's so good. But they're desperate for fame, or just ambitious, and he steals this shit that is so good he knows he can't make it better, and uses it. The artwork article also talks about how their record label re-released their debut album with the "BANNED COVER!" edition with the stolen artwork, AGAIN, after it had been requested to be taken down. And this Last Gang Records is apparently secretly funded by Canadian music moguls. So this Crystal Castles guy is smart enough to know where to look and make a buck off of what's gonna be cool when he shows it to the world.

So here we are faced with a choice: do we look the other way, and enjoy their music? Or do we boycott?

The worst part is that a boycott will not do any good. We have to at least spread the word, like we had to with Timbaland. But the also ambitious and power-hungry Ableton DJ-blogger boys of the world will just laugh it off because a lot of what's going on in that scene is ripping people off too. Loose morals, the whole lot of them.

Spread the word.

PS: Does this mean it's wrong for me to play trackers like Jeroen Tel, who specifically stipulate not to broadcast their work, on the radio or at DJ events?

Update: 3:20AM
Well, I'm going to bed soon, but for now, here's a list of some of the artists affected, both for them to get their recognition, and so I can check them out later.

lo-bat
trevor brown
Covox
Crazy Q
Ikuma
YM Rockerz, a net chiptune label Crazy Q is on.

One of the only good things about this is that these artists get a little recognition.

Just some good stuff

2008-05-10T20:46:00.000-07:00

Gettin' silly

2008-05-10T17:57:00.000-07:00

So here's actually a good video, very reminiscent in some ways of one of the best from the 80s.
My favorite part about the song is those orchestra hits. Real fuckin' sharp. These guys know what's good.

Holy Shit

2008-05-07T00:12:00.000-07:00

Why did I not hear about this?

a compliment

2008-04-27T21:34:00.000-07:00

11:24 Booj http://nedry.blogspot.com/
11:24 tumult haha why does your website look like micromusic

Fuckin' weird shit

2008-04-27T20:07:00.000-07:00

This book is either amazing or really stupid.

Notice the site is hosted at my beloved university! (More on this at the bottom...)

It's called Sex, Drugs, Einstein and Elves, by Cliff Pickover. It's supposed to be this grand synthesis of all sorts of strange physics/mind/philosophical/mystical/scientific ideas. SOUNDS good, but it seems on the verge of being a fakey New Age type bullshit. For example, the website has a picture of a pineal gland as the illustration for Chapter 4. Presumably, then, Cliff here is going to be talking about how Descartes viewed the pineal gland as the point at which the soul interacts with the physical world. Well, that sounds all mystical, and it would be except for the fact that Descartes just made it up because he couldn't think of any better explanation for how his particular brand of dualism worked.

Still, it could be interesting. No way it can be better than my favorite.

Anybody else know of any books like this?

Edit:
Also, this guy's main site is just great. Lots of good stuff like aliens, mobius strips and an amazing graphics page.

He is also somehow involved in some of the weirdest blogs I've ever seen, including the Women of Wikipedia. He's pretty creepy, actually, and he definitely has some of the crazy charismatic cult leader thing going on. Notice the "crew" he has to moderate this really weird blog; they're all young women! Polygamist???????????????????

I also cannot find any information on WHY this site is hosted on wisc.edu--he doesn't say he has any connections to University of Wisconsin. Looks like this guy named Clint Sprott (what's with these weird names? Something weird going on here...) just wants to host this stuff for him. Cool, I guess.

Fuckin' weird shit.

Tracking in Mainstream - It's Time

2008-04-24T18:55:00.000-07:00

Found this remix of Sebastian Tellier's big hit Divine remixed by Danger, who has been really quite awesome lately.

This song is DEFINITELY fucking TRACKED.
Listen to the beginning. That is a TRACKER.
And the rest of it bears hints of tracking. (listen to those drums (and how they're NOT hyper-compressed) and the distorted guitars near the end) In fact, it doesn't really sound like a Danger song because, while the other Danger songs do bear some marks of having tracked, they definitely don't sound like they're actually tracked.
But this does. It doesn't even sound like it's gone through any mastering to add the trademark blog-house hyper-compression. Weird.

Anyway.
I can't find a direct mp3, so that stream is all I got. Sorry babys.

UPDATE:
Found a zshare download for this mofo.

Here's the new WSUM-Badger Herald podcast!

Music Licensing

2008-04-13T21:23:00.001-07:00

This is mostly a note to myself to remember this article on music licensing and how to make money off it by a very nice member (zircon) of my favorite IRC channel, #vgmix on irc.vgmix.com.
http://soundtempest.net/how-to-make-money-from-music-licensing/
Thanks zircon!

Update:
And a short but sweet vid.

Ironic

2008-04-13T20:12:00.001-07:00

While procrastinating from doing homework, I found this article on how to be more productive. It's not mind-blowing, but it's not some shitty newspaper article either. This guy has a few insights. He introduces the idea of a "mental force-field" that your brain builds up around certain tasks that keeps you from being able to do them, and comes up with different reasons why these happen and how to fix them.
I also found this funny website called Smacklet that purports to help one focus by making you write down what you were just doing and what you intend to do next, so you have to spell it out for yourself and can look back and see what you were supposed to have done earlier.
So now that I know how to be productive, I guess I have to get back to work, huh?

Update:
Two more things of note I found tonight.
Article by the same guy called Who Writes Wikipedia. Jimmy Wales says it's an elite group of 500 collaborators. But our friend here does his own analysis and determines that these 500 elites only end up formatting the original content that many other small-time collaborators actually write.

Color photos from the late 1930s and early 1940s.

Covers

2008-04-10T23:38:00.000-07:00

Everybody knows the Mario Paint composer. And how hard it is to make an actual song with it. Well, somebody can. He's got a ton of video game covers up on his YouTube account. Here are some highlights.

The Guile one is even better! YES! I SAID GUILE!!!

Some Castlevania song I should know--this is one of his more recent, so it's REALLY impressive.

And a video tangential to all this (warning, 12 minutes long)

I am proud to say that I discovered that you could go 3-D in Rad Racer LAST NIGHT, before I saw this! Bam Angry Video Game Nerd! Now I just need to find my 3-D glasses though.

Fuck Buttons

2008-04-10T22:09:00.000-07:00

One of the songs on Fuck Buttons new album is really killer. It is called "Ribs Out". Very tribal. Animal Collective meets Gang Gang Dance meets the soundtrack to Shivers.

Here's a video of them performing it at SXSW, which I saw live when I was there with KCRW. The song doesn't sound as good as the studio version, but you get the idea.

Update:
Here's a sweet video somebody made for another one of their songs. A few of the songs, like this one, are very reminiscent of Dan Deacon blazin' on some hot digital distortion--pep!.

Funny Shit

2008-04-07T17:56:00.000-07:00

Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds have a new album (their fourteenth) entitled Dig, Lazarus, Dig!!!. Yeah, I know, who cares, right? Well, I thought this video was pretty funny. Recommended especially if you're Shane. High quality version here.

More Super Mario World

2008-03-23T18:57:00.000-07:00

There's this insane Super Mario World hack called Kaizo Super Mario World that's like Syoban Action in that it's a fiendishly difficult take on the conventional Mario paradigm. There's a lot of videos of it on YouTube, which are very entertaining. Then there's another take entirely, by a guy who hacked Snes9x to record all the times you reload a save state and play them all on top of one another. The whole thing takes on a quantum-mechanics "multiple-world" kind of thing where there are many copies of Mario doing slightly different things. Very cool.

But while he was testing out this wonderful hacked Snes9x he ran into some problems, resulting in this gem:

Reminds me aesthetically of another very cool (intentionally glitchy) creation, Crystal Castles.

DJ Obama Footage LEAKED!

2008-03-14T16:55:00.000-07:00

We first broke the rumors that Barack Obama has been DJing rare musical events. And now we bring to you LEAKED FOOTAGE of a recent performance in Madison, WI. The dark, gritty cameraphone footage shows Obama dancing fiercely, he does a little scratching (yes!), and you get a few good clips of the kind of music he's interested in.

Tell us what you think!

Update:
We've got a tentative tracklist of a few of the songs heard in these clips, sent in by reader poorlostbread:

The first one is quintessential freestyle, and it is definitely TKA - You Are the One. The second one is a little bit of italo disco, it might be Dharma - Plastic Doll but I'm not sure. The third song sure sounds like Chip Davis, the mastermind behind the hugely popular Mannheim Steamroller. It's probably one of his solo pieces. I'm not sure about the last song--maybe something from the demoscene? Jesus, I never knew Obama could move like that!

Thanks so much for that. On second viewing I noticed the vocal clip near the end, and it's almost certainly from this spectacular YouTube video.

Here's that TKA track.

TKA - You Are the One

స్మాల్ Update

2008-03-14T12:15:00.000-07:00

Sitting on a new track from a Supergun sideproject by one of the Madison band's members, multi-instrumentalist Nick Turco. Until we get permission from somebody, we can't release it, but get ready, cuz it's HOT.

Only Technical Details

2008-03-14T11:33:00.000-07:00

I'm registering my blog with Technorati, so please disregard this post until further notice.

Technorati Profile

Fake or Real?

2008-03-12T13:27:00.000-07:00

http://www.celemony.com/cms/index.php?id=dna

Who knows? Looks impossible to me, I say fake. Either that or it doesn't work very well.

Supaa Mario World

2008-03-12T10:28:00.000-07:00

While trying to relocate my recordings of Sadao Watanabe's amazing smooth jazz-fusion arrangements of Super Mario World (and earlier Mario) songs, I found this interesting cover of the entire SMW soundtrack by what was initially described by some stupid website as a one-man band, getting my hopes up for a Dick van Dyke-in-Mary Poppins interpretation, but what turns out to be just a young man like myself making what turns out to be remarkably competent versions of pretty much every song in the soundtrack. It's actually really good, well, recorded, and almost entirely accurate. They've all got kind of a Jon Brion-I Heart Huckabees vibe going on, if Jon Brion slammed some Howling Monkeys and could get over himself. There are SOME notes that are wrong, but he gets a lot of stuff right that I'm sure I wouldn't be able to do. And it's all free. I am impressed.

You can also download the Goldinum edition from his site, which includes about ten more songs that he didn't include in the original.

Here's the guy's website, just for fun. He's also got an album called CINEMA 80'S, in which he covers 30 songs from video games based on 80s movies.

Not only that, this mysterious Jason Cox fellow outlines this spooky and scary tale of Videogame: The Movie: The Game, a bootleg game that began appearing around 1988 and including "mashups" like Mario during a historical circus fire. He's provided the original soundtrack for us to download, along with cover versions. This guy gets busy.

Here's some tracks for you:

XOC - SMW - Title Screen
XOC - SMW - Donut Plains
XOC - SMW - Underwater Theme
XOC - SMW - Vanilla Ice Dome
XOC - CINEMA 80'S - Indiana Jones & The Temple of Doom Mine Cars
XOC - CINEMA 80'S - Roger Rabbit Theme
And this one's really good:
XOC - Sonic 1 - Green Hill Zone

P.S.

New Hope for Pretty MIDIs

2008-03-09T22:38:00.000-07:00

Well, back in the mid-90s FM synthesis for MIDI playback on most soundcards was pretty standard. When we got our first Pentium with Windows 95, Microsoft thoughtfully included some nice bonus media to show off their new OS. This included the classic canyon.mid, as well as a nice version of In the Hall of the Mountain King, Fur Elise and some others. Anyway, this era of FM-synthesis GM was great, and when really shitty wavetable synthesis started to become dominant, I think everybody agrees that it was bad. So that makes me happy to announce that I've found a nice easy way to get something that sounds like the same ol' FM synth stuff, even if it probably isn't. That's right, foobar2000 version 0.9 now has a very nice MIDI decoder complete with synthesizer, and it sounds very nice. You can get the plugin here; it's foo_midi, of course.

And here's a nice MIDI I made for one of our old one hour MIDI compos we used to have. I was never good at MIDI sequencers.

SONAR KILLS DREAMS

In other news, reddit showed me this very interesting page about a man with a great idea: making infrared goggles that block out all light in the visible spectrum so that your eyes start to see what little infrared they can pick up. It sounds so cool walking around on a sunny day seeing things trees glowing pinkish white while the sky is black. Maybe I'll try making these pretty soon.
Note: there may be concern that this will damage your eyes; but I don't think UV leaks through the filters, as shown by the light spectra graphs he has up. It's possible that lots and lots of infrared radiation is getting through to your wide-open pupils, however, and I think that might be a concern.

Adam will NOT like this

2008-03-02T13:09:00.000-08:00

Justice's newest video for "D.V.N.O.", a song from their so-9-months-ago album. Luckily this is a baby that was worth letting hatch.

yoooooooooooobama

2008-03-01T17:10:00.001-08:00

http://houston.craigslist.org/m4m/583071497.html

I am an attractive, in shape hung (9 inches) black male from Atlanta here on business. I am looking for a masculine white male to service me, then get pounded in my hotel room today or tomorrow (saturday). Send your pics, stats and background info. I want to wear my Obama mask while I pound you.

With no pants on

2008-02-16T17:32:00.001-08:00

This guy thinks he's the Sheik of Araby:
http://youtube.com/watch?v=9MS_OIKy2iI

Supergun Leaks

2008-02-16T15:32:00.000-08:00

An anonymous source has leaked these Supergun demos!
Rumor has it these three tracks are demos for Supergun's upcoming yet-to-be-announced album.
You may remember Supergun from their amazing live shows last fall, and they've also worked with and share at least one member with Artic Foxes.
Here are the tracks!

Chariots on Fire
Barack Attack
Rick's Just Blowing Off Steam

Thanks to Nick Turco for hosting the files !

Nick Fights

2008-02-16T13:58:00.001-08:00

For those of you who somehow missed the big Fight last summer, some loyal fan seems to have captured it and put it on YouTube. Thanks Burt!
Watch it here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KWHhiGzGHkA

Update:
For more info on another, more recent verbal fight, check the newest Supergun track leaked,
Rick's Just Blowing Off Steam.

sites that are fake old desktops

2008-02-16T12:16:00.000-08:00

http://chiptune.com/ - the best one, with demos and "games" but WHERE DA FILES AT???/ (includes a WEB BROWSER (WITHIN YOUR BROWSER (within your browser (within...(...(..
http://www.atari.st/ - not as desktoppy but I click on the trashcan!

Anybody know of any others?

chips

2008-02-16T00:09:00.001-08:00

Collection of chiptunes videos and links. Write your own narrative.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FNJ2Bei3xKQ&NR=1 - very awesome flashy tunnel stuff
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MPb7zkCSz7g&feature=related - legend of zelda screen glitches
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XsW4aZH736I
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Js8ub6-OuBY&feature=related - notable for fifth element reference
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bthRjRT7SFc&feature=related
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4zexzRKCTVU&feature=related - fucking creepy
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1iPHCpcNYfA&feature=related - italo disco aficionado will like this one

Most of these are by this 1bit guy on youtube, and they are all pretty awesome.

anyway, found out about this guy from this great chip label:

http://filefreakout.com/
http://filefreakout.com/animal-style

and here's an awesome FM synth EP
http://www.iimusic.net/catalog/2007/10/waveform

Some Ancient Shit

2008-02-14T18:35:00.001-08:00

I found a page of some nice recordings of ancient Greek instruments, the aulos and the kithara (a bigger version of he lyre), recorded on Edison cylinders around the turn of the 5th century BC (from the day Socrates drank the hemlock). Emotional stuff. I especially like the last aulos recording. Very bluesy.

In addition, I did some research on an ancient drink called posset in the Middle Ages, which was a mixture of milk, wine, eggs, nutmeg, and sugar. Sounds like egg nog, right? Yes. And then they let it curdle and sit for a while and it forms these three layers and you eat it with a spoon and drink out the bottom alcoholic layer. Yummy. Sounds good.

But then there's this ancient Greek drink called kykeon that was made of wine or water and barley, goat cheese and herbs. Sounds pretty nasty. I'm hungry though so it sounds good. And apparently they would drink it each year at the Eleusinian Mysteries (which went on for 2000 years - must have been somethin'!), only some people think the barley was infested with ergot, a fungus, which produces some nasty compounds that are precursors to LSD and are way nastier, causing convulsions, burning in the limbs, uterine contractions (even in men!), hallucinations and even death. And there's a theory that ergot-infested rye was the cause of the hysterical behavior in young women that resulted in the Salem Witch Trials. And that the epic poem Beowulf is the memory of a quelling of a fertility cult based upon drinking of ergot whose preserved bodies have been found in bogs in Britain with ergot in their stomachs. Wow.

All in all, a very good Wikipedia session.

Early Computer Graphics

2008-01-23T16:49:00.000-08:00

Well, while searching for backgrounds for my new WSUM blog, I found this site of early computer graphics and influences.
Which led me to the YouTube videos of one John Whitney.

And obviously, I'm behind the times on this:

Fun Toy

2008-01-16T15:35:00.001-08:00

Hard at work making some PSAs, I found this amazing text-to-speech engine that lets you demo it online. While it has a pretty hard time with some basic words (save, manatee), what really makes it great is the number of voices. For instance, there's your typical male and female voices--but then there are some accents. Scottish. British. Annoying. Then there's the real gems, near the bottom--and their names are Dog, Duchess, Shouty, and Whispery. Wow.

Who Fuckin' Knew.

2008-01-04T21:52:00.000-08:00

Conan O'Brien, reeling from the writers' strike, is striving harder than ever for fresh material, and his show these past three days has been of higher quality and more consistently funny than ever when he had writers. (Not that I don't support the writers.) But tonight, he unleashed something that I found truly impressive and inspirational: his stunning interpretation of a country-western standard, complete with hillbilly yelps and well-timed acoustic strumming. It's clear that Conan is a highly competent guitarist and singer with a passion for old-time country. I wish I could tell you what song it was, but it was really, honestly very good. YouTube coming as it's available.

We'll See

2008-01-04T16:01:00.000-08:00

Well, I found out about a new movie from our friend Roland Emmerich, of Independence Day and Stargate fame:
10,000 BC.

Hard to say yet how boring and mainstream it'll be, but it sure looks like there's a lot of awesome monsters (sabre-toothed tigers, mammoths, etc) and fighting and blood and stuff. C'mon, Roland, pull out another killer one for us. No Jeff Goldblum, though.

Special Comment

2008-01-04T13:51:00.001-08:00

Some people have said that NEDRY IS BORN has sold out. They're right. But what's wrong with that? The day two black men, side by side, grace the front page of a major blog is truly a momentous day for history. So was yesterday, when Mr. Obama won the Iowa caucus. If you have any doubt that Obama is the next LeVar Burton, check out motherfucking speech. Spread the word.

In other news: My moustache is more spectacular than ever.

Finally, I want to introduce what I intend to be Obama's entrance theme, for future debates, campaign appearances and inaugurations:
Super Foxes - Penis Boys Entrance Theme
by my new favorite supergroup, a combination of the esteemed Artic Foxes and the as-yet-un-MySpaced Supergun.

Our best press yet

2008-01-02T00:43:00.001-08:00

My friends, congratulations on making the Nedry blog before it hits big. We've just received news from an anonymous source that we've been linked on Largehearted Boy as part of a top albums of 2007 list. You'll be happy to know that we were hand-selected as part of only a few featured blogs. Congratulations to us!

In celebration, here is another most gratuitous of gratuitous MP3s on blogs that really shows the innovation we've been seeing on the blogitalodiscohouse craze lately, this time incorporating Sonic 3 samples:
A Recently Unearthed Abba Demo

Christmas News

2007-12-26T09:06:00.000-08:00

Check it. This was making the rounds on the internet yesterday and I found it highly noteworthy.

In other news, those of you who have been following for a while will be excited to hear that Vocalwriter is every bit as amazing as it should be! Smooth and beautiful!

Edit:
Well, this game is real, and you can download it here, and I did play it, and spent a very happy two hours beating it. Wow. Seriously one of the best times I've had lately! There's so much clever playing on platforming cliches that you never realized were ingrained in your brain.

Sorry I've been so absent lately, it's tough to find time for blogging when you've got so much to do every day.

It's been recommended to me that I provide more MP3s, so here you go.

The Definitive Top 10 Albums of 2007

2007-12-18T00:50:00.000-08:00

Well my little ladies, I have finally got around to it (and I had to make sure I beat Pitchfork otherwise you'd accuse me of stealing their list). I've read an awful lot of top 10 lists this year, and, while they were all completely wrong and that doesn't surprise me, what does surprise me is the amount of good music that came out this year. For example, remember 2006? When everyone's favorite album sounded like when somebody left the DX7 on overnight in the Arctic Circle and the polar bear maidens came to sing, you know it's not a good year. Or do you? But anyway, this year was good, so let's get to it, shall we?

Update: (I forgot Dan Deacon. Now it's a Top 11.)

11. After Dark Compilation

As infuriating as it is to italo-disco aficianados (myself not included) to see this stuff being even associated with italo-disco, luckily that doesn't mean it isn't really good. I admit I wasn't on the bandwagon until it rolled by on this stuff, but this softy gummy groovy aesthetic has been with me since Sonic 3 Ice Cap Zone Act II. The standouts to me weren't the Johnny Jewel projects Glass Candy and Chromatics, but were the Mirage tracks, which definitely had the most polished, dreamy yet groovy thing going on. Also excellent were the Professor tracks. Show this one to your parents, they might like it.

10. Sunset Rubdown - Random Spirit Lover

Another impressive album from our old friend Spencer Krug and company. Their debut Shut Up I Am Dreaming last year was definitely one of the year's best, but that's kind of unfortunate because the memory of that one seems to detract from the excellence of this. Its keyboard/guitar/drum ensemble is more versatile and dynamic than their debut, with equally good songwriting, and Spencer's very unique voice and excellent lyrics to boot. But we're so used to Spencer being so good that it doesn't seem as special anymore. Still, a very good album.

9. !!! - Myth Takes

These guys are so good at what they do. Their tightly orchestrated funk-inspired jam-like grooves are very groovy, and you won't believe some of the grooves they come up with. Singer Nic Offer, previously one of the silliest and the sassiest frontmen, here sobers up a bit and shows a little more depth. Gone are the smarmy lyrics from their sophomore Louden Up Now, replaced by a little more 20-something emotional stuff, like love, 'n stuff. But it's mainly down to the grooves that this album kicks it.

8. A Place To Bury Strangers - A Place to Bury Strangers

This album is characterized entirely by truly excellent melodic post-punk songwriting. Every song is strong and will leave its mark on your brain for days. If the album were just that though, it would either be the best album of the year or really terrible—because, you see, smeared and slathered over each tight post-punk song is a thick, reverby layer of harsh noise. Sometimes it quiets down and lets you hear the music, and sometimes it pierces straight through everything else. It works well enough that I'm not sure if it's necessary to how good this is or whether I'd like it without. Also, the name is terrible, guys. Really bad. I changed the band name in iTunes to the more suitable Electricity but that started screwing with my last.fm.

7. White Williams - Smoke

While !!! have a whole band to fuck with, this guy is just as groovy, and he does it all alone. Seriously, these are some of the best bass-synth-drum grooves you're gonna see, and he does it with a strong sense of melody. These are basically pop songs, yes, but they are created with a unique vision, not the cookie-cutter indie-rock or blog/internet/web/oink/waffles-house that everybody else is doing. Just make sure to skip the terrible “I Want Candy” cover.

6. Justice - †

Obviously the big story of the year. As much as everybody wants to deny it, this album, more than anything else, anticipated and summarized what it was to be 2007. Not much more needs to be said about their Daft Punk thought-theft, but the production work is as painstaking as Aphex Twin or Autechre and the songs are mostly top-notch. There are a few yawners in here though, and that, along with a lack of variety overall, make it inferior to the other blog/mp3/digitaldream/justice/michaeljackson-house album on the list. (Also recommended: try to get into an argument with a Goblin fan about whether Phantom is a remix or merely a sampling.)

5. Dan Deacon - Spiderman of the Rings

While I could start off this paragraph by pointing out that I knew about Dan Deacon before the Pitchfork BNM, I decided not to point out that I knew about Dan Deacon before the Pitchfork BNM. What Dan Deacon does is--like other artists on here--he takes a certain aesthetic, or core musical idea, and he repeats it over and over, and finds goodness in it simply through repetition. That openness to repetition may be the ultimate hallmark of 2007. But here Dan uses the repetition to build synth-indie-rock anthems for late-night Mortal Kombat sleepovers, using his dry synth pulses as rhythm guitars and his drum machine to drive the song while adding pitch-shifted vocals and choruses of friends to add a narrative. The whole thing ends up being a sort of weird indie rock, but with everything you'd expect substituted for something else. But it's mostly about the transendental feeling of victory that somehow fills you when you've heard a few minutes of repeating synth stabs and people shouting about sharks and swords.

4. Simian Mobile Disco - Attack Decay Sustain Release

Here's an album that eschews making a same-y gimmick album (which Justice comes close to), instead featuring an impressive amount of variety in terms of sound, melody, form, singers, and everything. This album is better than Justice's, although it features similar blog/mp3/16bit/v0/ableton-house stylings (but taken only to the second power, and not too overdone). But this album also deserves to be compared to LCD Soundsystem's Sound of Silver, with which it shares a lot of variety and strong songwriting. (Runner-up Digitalism's Idealism is good too.)

3. LCD Soundsystem - Sound of Silver

Like I said, this album has strong songwriting and enough variety to make it consistently interesting throughout (unlike their debut, which was too scattershot to really work). James Murphy, our main man, has really locked down his electron-disco groove for this album, and pretty much all of the songs get going like you want 'em to. The real standouts , though, are when he abandons his feel-good “Daft Punk” thing and goes for the heartstrings in “All My Friends” and “Someone Great.” There are a few real stinkers on this album, though, like, astoundingly, the title track, but the good ones are so good that it doesn't matter too much.

2. Panda Bear - Person Pitch

This album seems to be the consensus album this year, like Joanna Newsom's Ys from last year. And indeed, it is very, very good. Panda Bear has created himself a unique loop-based sound somewhere between Ariel Pink and Optiganally Yours that floats in reverb from far-off skiffle bands. His hymnal pentatonic melodies are always beautiful and catchy, no matter how complex they are, and no matter how stagnant the music behind them remains. The loops are also augmented to great effect by what appears to be results of Panda Bear's field-recording habit, with sounds of bottle rockets and subway rails sounding throughout. The most striking thing about this album, though, is how mature and sober it sounds compared to Animal Collective, Panda Bear's main band, and it really makes one feel like some kind of lollipop-sucking Oshkosh b'Gosh kid to have ever liked Animal Collective. That said...

1. Animal Collective - Strawberry Jam

Well, it can't be because they're my favorite band or anything. This seems to be Avey Tare's project, and here he acts like a kid who just got off a really long, stinky bus trip (that is, Pullhair Rubeye) to the zoo. While previous Animal Collective albums have featured about an even mix of fast- or mid-tempo to slow tracks, this one almost exclusively features upbeat ones. But that doesn't matter, because they're all amazing. With as many good melodies as Panda Bear's album, this album also sets more moods and paints more interesting pictures. Panda Bear has created a very unique work that sounds like nothing else, but if you want ear candy, Animal Collective has got more than you'll find anywhere else. And as their history has shown, it's not a gimmick—and ultimately, this is the only album this year that makes me say, “Boy, I can't wait for the next one.”

Coming soon: The Bottom Five, featuring M.I.A., Radiohead, A-Trak and more!

big fucking news

2007-12-12T19:47:00.001-08:00

By this point you know that anything with that title isn't really that big of a deal.

BUT!
You know how f-zero has an amazing soundtrack?
WELL, I have stumbled upon another soundtrack by the same person responsible for most of it (all except Big Blue), Yumiko Kanki (now known as Yumiko Kameya (she got married)).
It is the STAR FOX 2 SOUNDTRACK!
This game was pretty much completed by Nintendo in 1995 but never released for unknown reasons. Luckily for us, a ROM has been found and so we have all the music.
Let me just say it lives up to F-Zero.
Fuck yeah. More amazing music in the world than I thought.
http://snesmusic.org/v2/profile.php?profile=set&selected=2506

EDIT: HOLY FUCK
http://snesmusic.org/v2/profile.php?selected=14879&profile=set
HIP MOTHERFUCKING TANAKA
DOES
SNOOPY

Into the Valleys We Go

2007-12-09T22:43:00.000-08:00

There's a great article on "the game" at San Francisco Chronicle.

Many of the convicted killers were quasi-homeless in grade school, moving every 90 days on eviction cycles, or bouncing between friends' and relatives' homes, where they slept on recliners and couches and floors.

Inside the home is pure chaos. Typically, they live with a third-generation relative, an elderly grandmother or aunt, who also opens her home to several other wayward relatives. They all pile into one home, bringing their boyfriends and girlfriends and their children. There's no particular person in charge, no house rules, and people come and go.

Often it's in these houses where young boys first learn how to hold a gun, how to break a rock of cocaine into dime and nickel bags for sale.

science

2007-12-06T20:09:00.000-08:00

I made this graph from raw data from my RFID telescope in my backyard. It presents exactly 100 successive pulses from the first pulsar discovered, PSR 1919+21.

A Rather Spectacular Website

2007-12-06T19:42:00.000-08:00

There comes a time when we must reflect upon those to whom we owe so much.

Now is that time.

Edit: http://www.angelfire.com/nj2/startrek/stgifs.html

Nedry's Neon History

2007-12-06T12:43:00.000-08:00

Let's bring you up to speed.

I released an ALBUM back in summer 2005 which revealed my very poppy side of music. Since then, I have created a string of independent singles (link coming shortly) which, it has been suggested, might as well constitute a new album. Some of these can be found on my Myspace.
I recorded a record with one of my current bands, Artic Foxes, last year September and another in May this year. The most recent one is soon to be released. Artic Foxes applies the spirit of jazz onto ancient and modern rock and movie soundtrack paradigms.
My other band, Supergun, is currently going strong and we are working on an album after cutting hours of preliminary session recordings (the Higgins acetates). We've been receiving lots of requests for these recordings. Don't worry. You'll hear them soon enough. (we're in talks with former OiNK mod Paine for his new, ah, filesharing venture.)
Currently, I work at WSUM, Madison's student radio station. I've received requests to put up some of my productions I've made there. Well, I can't contractually put up all of them, but here are some of the old ones I'm allowed to release.
Last but not least, I have created a radio drama series, Neon Tiger, on WSUM, which currently has 11 episodes and may have a sequel series in its future (don't give up hope!) The more feedback we receive on these the greater the chance of more being produced.
Edit: Not to leave you all too blue-balls, I decided to give you guys one of the new WSUM promos. Here you go.

NEDRY IS BORN

2007-12-05T10:54:00.000-08:00

He has risen out of the ashes beneath Dilophosaur.

Hear him perform on this episode of Gatorade Supersoaker.

Gatorade Supersoaker, 19:00
Gatorade Supersoaker, 20:00

4 December, 2007. He begins his act 45 minutes into the first one.