Pangaea Island in Second Life is hosting a Herbie Hancock remix contest in support of his new album, River: The Joni Letters. Thanks to Toko for telling me about it!

I submitted my remix of the track Solitude yesterday and previewed it to the audience at my Mood Lounge show yesterday. The listeners liked it, but whether the judges will like it is another question. You never know with these things ;^) Still, it would be a huge kick if Mr. Hancock heard it himself. I wore grooves in my CD copy of Headhunters, I’m pretty sure.

Here’s a link to listen to my Hermit in the Horde Mix of Solitude…

Following the very successful premiere of Missing Pages in SL, I’m now releasing my track inspired by the film. I’m happy to report that the track was well received and I’m especially pleased that writer/director Jerome Olivier enjoyed it.

Here are some notes about the track, Upstream Downstream (Missing Pages):

I love the way music functions in the film and I had no intention to second guess the composer’s choices. Instead, my track references the film in a stand-alone kinda way – actually I don’t think my track would have fit anywhere in the movie, besides maybe as end-credit music ;^)

It’s a downtempo chill-out track (like most of the stuff I’m doing at the moment) and the title refers to the idea of time as a river that gently runs either upstream or downstream. I was hoping to reflect the kind of utopian / ideal-world vision that Professor Tanokura must have had for time-travel when he was working on it, supported here by the samples from the press conference at the start of the movie – especially the part about using time-travel for peaceful purposes only.

I also wanted to explore the idea of time-travel musically. You’ll hear a number of places in the track where the audio has been reversed, ie. time is running backwards. There’s also a section towards the end that sounds like it’s coming from an old LP record – playing here with the idea of the present as viewed from a long ways in the future.

I was chatting to Chill / Mark Forman earlier about how music actually is the closest thing we have to a time machine right now… how, on hearing music you haven’t heard for years, you’re transported back to that place or frame of mind. Seems applicable here.

Upstream Downstream (Missing Pages) is currently the first track in the MoShang Radio sidebar player and you’re welcome to download and share the .mp3 here. If you’re having trouble downloading the .mp3 directly, try downloading the .zip instead.

This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 License.

Anji Bee has played a number of my tracks on her various podcasts and did an interview with me after the release of Chill Dynasty. Besides being a prolific podcaster, Anji is also a singer and half of the duo Lovespirals. I’ve just completed a remix of Lovespirals’ version of the blues classic Motherless Child. Their orginal version is destined for a new Lovespirals release expected in October. My Long Way From Home Mix will, in turn, find it’s way onto my remix album Asian Variations. Anji and partner Ryan Lum talk about their new album and Motherless Child in the latest episode of their Chillin’ with Lovespirals podcast. They also discuss my remix and play a snippet of it as a play-out to the podcast. Seems Anji and Ryan would both love to visit Taiwan some time. It would be great to meet them in person – hope we can make this happen somehow!

I mentioned in the previous post that I worked quickly on this track. It is intended for a remix contest DJ Doubledown Tandino (Brad Reason) is hosting in Second Life, and with the deadline a mere two days away I had no choice but to work fast. If you do SL at all, or know anyone who does, please head on over to Menorca this coming Sunday (April 22nd) at 12pm PDT to vote for my Do Re Mix.

Your help is sorely needed, since the time of the voting party translates to 4am on Monday morning here in Taiwan – I guess I shouldn’t count on too much support from the home crowd ;^)

Whatever the outcome of the contest, I’ve had fun doing the track and have more material for a full-length MoShang remix album due out in a couple of months and tentatively entitled Asian Variations… more info to follow.

Have a listen to the Do Re Mix in the MoShang Radio sidebar player (now Track 1).

Apparently some remixes are harder to do than others; or at least take me longer. My last remix for Jui-chuan took upwards of three weeks to complete, as did this one – my second for Kou Chou Ching. Actually, if I’m to include the three weeks I spent on vacation and didn’t work on the track, this remix took close on two months! I’d be tempted to think I just work slowly, if it weren’t for the fact that I can apparently also do a remix in two days if needs be (see the post above).

The Little DingDong Mix of Tiu Tiu Ssu Hsiang Chi is currently Track 2 in the MoShang Radio sidebar player (that’s on moshang.net if you happen to be reading this blog elsewhere). Little DingDong is the Chinese name for the Japanese cartoon character Doraemon, by the way… Kou Chou Ching’s original is from their album FuKe and here are their liner notes for the song:

Do you still remember? Do you remember your life when you were a kid? Do you remember when you were a kid how you used to wait for each day’s new installment of comics and eat junk food, back when your favorite superheroes still battled against their arch nemeses?

Time flies and people cannot avoid change. The stresses of life and the influence of the workaday world settle upon us like dust. We can no longer return to our youthful innocence, nor can we reclaim that feeling of satisfaction we had when we were young. Thinking about how this story plays itself out again and again in the city, we decided to start from our childhood experiences to write this song.

As its name suggests, this song takes two Taiwanese folk tunes as its central structure. The first, “Tiu Tiu Tang,” comes from Ilan County in Taiwan’s northeast corner; while the second, “Su Siang Khi,” is from Hengchun, a town in the far south of the island. Together, the two tunes make this song a complete mix of north and south. We have also brought into the tune upbeat funk styles. Finally, to give the tune a relaxed and lively feel, we have inserted sounds from very familiar video games of our youth. Bringing together the old, the new, domestic, and foreign is this tune’s most important mission.