From the Age of Analog

I love analog, lo-fi sounds. The soundtrack to my childhood was made of Little Thinker tapes, squarewaves and sawtooth tones from the NES, scratchy crackling old vinyl, the Peter Howell version of the Doctor Who theme, Wendy Carlo's compositions for Tron, et cetera. I suppose some of my fondness for that era of electronic music is due to seeing it through nostalgia goggles, but I'm definitely not the only one out there who feels that way.

There are a handful of artists out there who deconstructed this stuff, took apart the basic components and used them like found objects. The samples themselves, or the looping structure, or the recurrent themes, or the sound quality. I love this music because to me it clearly conveys the subjective nature of some of these memories in a way that words can't. Childhood memories are unique because kids don't get everything (and don't feel a need to), and that's kind of how this genre of music is -- it doesn't have a "point" to make, it just kind of wanders around the backyard with a tape recorder in hand, studying the curious world around it.

Here's a few tidbits. Pretty much everyone knows the first one, but I can't make a post about this sort of thing without including Boards of Canada.

Boards Of Canada - Skyliner by parse

Baths - Maximalist by ericstein

Tycho - Coastal Brake by Tycho

isan - 64 fire damage by Katahati

Oneirist by Ochre

Thank you to Soundcloud (and its users) for hosting this stuff.

Fear of Tigers

While my blog's definitely about stuff I create, I've decided I'm also occasionally going to post plugs for things my friends are doing, short reviews of stuff I think is cool, and so on.

Anyway. If you love '80s-style synth and nostalgic electronic music, check out Fear of Tigers. This guy gets it.

Fear of Tigers - The Remixes Part 1 by fearoftigers

What to expect here

For the most part, this blog's probably going to be a showcase for the stuff I create. This might include any of the following: sketches, finished art, designs, photography, animations, color jobs I did on someone else's art, and so on. I might occasionally post my opinions and reviews of stuff, but that isn't really the main focus. (Plus there are far more articulate critics and pundits out there than me.) I may also occasionally post links to stuff I think is cool and/or events I might be attending.

That's basically it. I'll try to keep it fun.

Inaugural Post

Hi, internets. I'm Ben, and this is my blog.