Okay, I’m still at the office…so I can’t stay here to chat.

That said, some of you may have heard of the massive blackouts currently chewing their way through Florida, where the Beatswamp contributors house their bodies. It is our meatspace - home, where the heart is, where we hang our hats.

Anyway…just felt like posting the following, since it (currently) remains true:

SNAP - THE POWER

…as in, I got it.

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This is a triumph!

I’m making a note here…huge success.

We here at The Beatswamp absolutely friggin’ adore the video game Rock Band. So much so, in fact, that this past weekend was the first instance in a collection of back-to-back (to back!) fortnights that we haven’t spent at Gilbert C Gator’s house engaging in blissful congregation around his television, murdering various songs as we do so. No game since Super Puzzle Fighter 2 Turbo has attracted the near-totality of our friends in the same gaming endeavor…I’d bet dollars to donuts that some of you out there have a congruent experience with the game. A few weeks back I was trying to convince Monkey On A Keyboard to come play it with us, and I used the term “Epic Moment Engine”, and I still believe that to be the case. Without getting too deeply into the Harmonix downloadable content business model, let’s get to the reason for my exhuberance:

GLaDOS - Portal - Still Alive.mp3

Portal is also a great game, maybe Valve’s best in my opinion…though I’d probably receive some contention on that point. Regardless, the marriage of these two properties makes my inner-giblets jiggle with a heretofore unparalleled fierceness. It’s only gonna be 0.99 cents! I can’t wait until it becomes available!

I found this over at Joystiq…there’s a video there of Jonathan Coulton (the song’s original writer) and some prominent people from the tech community playing the song in front of a large crowd at San Francisco’s Great American Music Hall. Good times.

Ah, look at me still talking when there’s Science to do. I need to get ready for work.

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Let’s knock this out of the way early: I’m gonna be posting a bunch of shit like this. Nine times out of ten my iPod playlists are veritably infested with tracks I’ve snagged for free from http://www.OCRemix.org:

The main thing they do over there is mine the quarry of aging video game scores - those bleeps, bloops and digital hi-hats that knock around the back of your head when you aren’t paying attention - for material to remix into songs that collectively defy genre placement. It is a community of artists that produce music for the sheer adoration of the medium, a fact that becomes inescapable when you observe the strength of their compositions. You haven’t lived until you’ve experienced the theme from Kid Icarus as a full-blown, unapologetic orchestral masterpiece. I probably have a track or two that match that description in the queue, so prepare yourself.

Anyway, some of the most emotionally powerful productions have been composed by a dude named Alexander Prievert. Every moment of your life before reading this sentence was mere preparation for the unadulterated awesome you are about to experience:

Alexander Prievert - Xenogears (Broken Mirror Reflection OC ReMix)

If you’re thinking about skipping this track because it was initially sourced from a video game in 1998, you would be doing yourself a great disservice. It is a fine thing, an incredibly moving piece to hear should you find yourself in the proper frame of mind. I’ve never even played Xenogears and I love it. Mr. Prievert - if you ever find this post: Good on ya, sir. Keep this shit coming. It’s glorious.

HARK, MP3 Seekers! Hark unto The Madrock and let us begin the groove unending:

DJ Krome and Mr Time - Suburban Base (SBA108) - 00 - The Slammer.mp3

That there track is one of many that serves to encapsulate the hidden history of the forces behind Beatswamp. Once upon a time, nigh-on a decade ago, the contributers-in-question happened upon the clean, bouncy (yet rough-edged) beats of The Slammer and absorbed its strength via many a sordid social session. I like to think that the secret mission statement of Beatswamp is to endeavor to bring the masses some small sliver of the joy we’ve each found in electronic music…but perhaps I’ve said too much. You weren’t there, certainly, but an experience shared is an experience remembered. It is my sincere hope that you enjoy it.

Purchase this album!