Catching The Waves

Point and Nick

There's a story behind this interruption of my intensely relaxed posting schedule. Recently, I've wasted a fair amount of time on listening to, selecting and then writing about albums that I've subsequently realised contained copyrighted samples, and have been forced to toss the half-finished review in the bin and move on. What galls me is that the albums in question came from reputable netlabels who proudly display a Creative Commons licence on their website.

The whole point of a CC licence is that the holder has already given permission for the user to download and share: there's no need to ask. But if that same album contains samples that are still owned by someone else and who has not given permission for their work to be disseminated, then the whole process is rendered meaningless, irrespective of whether those samples come from an old, obscure song or album. Either an album is Creative Commons or it's not; bending the rules plays right into the hands of those who criticise the CC paradigm and accuse everyone who enjoys a legal sharing culture to be thieves. One of the reasons CTW is not the fastest draw in the West is because of delays caused by the above. I'm not a musical encyclopaedia and can't check every piece of music used in a song, so I rely on musicians and netlabels not to abuse the Creative Commons licence.

On a related note, and to explain my modus operandi to new readers of Catching The Waves, I usually recommend a free album and then remind readers that it's often possible to send a donation or buy more of the artist's output. Today, I'll recommend an album that is not Creative Commons-licensed and not free at all, but which is actually a commercial album that is technically and regrettably "free" despite the best and entirely honourable intentions of the artists involved. And it's not the one pictured above. It's this one:

Machinarium is an award-winning point-and-click game set in a mechanical world that looks like a cross between Sesame Street and Bladerunner. The Czech makers, Amanita, thoughtfully released the game without Digital Rights Management (DRM), which meant three things:

1. Buyers wouldn't have to enter tiresome sixteen-digit serial codes to enjoy what was now their property;
2. Equally, there would be no awkward online authentication;
3. Anyone could copy the game from a torrent site.

Sad to say, Amanita reported last week that "only 5-15% of Machinarium players actually paid for the game". However, they also announced a "pirate amnesty" in which everyone could buy the game plus its superb official soundtrack and a free bonus EP for just $5 instead of the usual $20, an offer that prompted geek extrordinaire Wil Wheaton to encourage gamers to "do the right thing." Consequently, Amanita sold over 17,000 copies of Machinarium in a week and has extended its amnesty until 16th August.

We deduce from this that a tweet from @wilw to his 1.67m followers...

*flutters eyelashes*

...is rather more effective than Amanita's $1000 publicity budget, and that people will pay for content that is available for free elsewhere if the content is desirable enough; if the money goes direct to the game developers; if they're brainwashed by celebrities advised by people they trust, and if they want to help the artist to produce more of that desirable work.

In the interests of balance, many of the people who have bought the game recently have done so because the publicity has led them to the game for the first time, or because they felt the price was previously too high to justify a purchase. Not everyone on the internet flies the skull-and-crossbones.

However, what sets the game's teasing puzzles, quirky humour and dusty, gently rusting cityscapes off to a tee is Tomáš Dvořák's playful ambient-electronica soundtrack. Dvořák has been called an "electro-instrumentalist" and is a graduate of the Prague Academy of Visual Arts. In Machinarium, he has cleverly spliced elderly analogue synths, smooth sweeps of radio interference/white noise and barely audible, distorted vocals (from an old Apple speech synthesiser) with traditional acoustic instruments. The latter are often filtered through a granular effect, resulting in a clanging, grimy soundscape that suggests Eastern European jazz and post-Cold War industrial decline to my susceptible and over-imaginative ears.

Rarely has such an eclectic,  old-fashioned collection of instruments (piano, clarinet, kalimba, metallophones, accordion, melodica, double bass and cello) sounded so 21st century. The result is oxymoronic: melodic ambient. I'll illustrate just how melodic and just how ambient the official soundtrack is by showcasing a track from the other, free album. (Logic, I laugh in your AND/NOT gate.)

Tomáš Dvořák - Machinarium Bonus EP: By The Wall

Impressive how the piano floats on top of the pads, background vocals and distorted noise, isn't it? By The Wall really blossoms if you wear headphones. The clarinet intro is better than a shot of whisky with a morphine chaser.

Here, Dvořák conveys the whimsical and enticing atmosphere of the game with a jolly bass line, reverberating percussion and, mid-track, a delicately tuneful blast of radio interference:

Tomáš Dvořák - Machinarium Bonus EP: Defusing The Bomb

Please note, those tracks are from the free five-track EP. There are 14 more dreamy examples of sublimity on the official soundtrack, which can be bought separately - but it makes more sense to get both albums simply by buying the game. Do so, and you get the remastered soundtrack, the bonus EP and a gentle, amusing, mesmerising game that is suitable for grandchildren, grandparents and all those who contribute to the global economy. "Buy one, get two free" is a pretty good deal. Speaking of which, I'd like to see Aminita continue its amnesty until the end of the month, when people are more likely to have cash to spare.

If you do get the official soundtrack, look out for the lightly menacing The Black Cap Brotherhood Theme, the turn-your-woofer-down Clockwise Operetta, the café-jazz of The End (Prague Radio) and The Glasshouse With Butterfly, which is one of the best crackling, echoing atmospheric pieces of ambient it has been my privilege to hear.

Failing all that, simply download the free Free Machinarium Bonus EP and keep your money in your pocket. After all, this is where you come to get good, legally free music, isn't it? I won't tell anyone that you have short arms and long pockets. But I do have a song for you:

Tomáš Dvořák - Pirate Amnesty

A reminder, me hearties: you have until 16th August to take advantage of Amanita's pirate amnesty.

Tomáš Dvořák - Free Machinarium Bonus EP

Amanita Design - Machinarium the Game

Manchester United Nil

I like to be on the cutting-edge of the forefront of the avant-garde of the zeitgeist, which is why I'm reviewing Obscure II, an album that has been freely available on the net for just two whole ...years. Sigh. I am the antithesis of trendiness.

Right, drag yourself away from the advert for moisturising handcream that is the album cover and take note: Obscure II is the soundtrack to the depiction of dark corridors, nasty creatures and artistic blood-spatter patterns that are to be found in the 2007 survival-horror computer game of the same name. You're now surmising that you're set fair for death metal, guttural vocals and maybe even a hairy frontman exploding a hot water bottle through sheer lungpower. Well, no. There's not even an exploding codpiece, because metal this ain't. Or rock.

The reason? Obscure II, otherwise known as Obscure: The Aftermath, is the work of Olivier Derivière, a Frenchman who has studied composition and orchestration at the Nice National Conservatoire, jazz and film scoring at Berklee College of Music, and who  went on to spend a year working with the Boston Symphony Orchestra and some hick called John Williams. So expect to hear some decent orchestration. However, Monsieur D. also created the soundtrack for last year's Alone In The Dark, another (though much more popular) grim wade through ghouls and gore. So expect to hear some decent electronica. Indeed, the electronica elements (drums/guitar/synths) are meant to represent the "corruption" of the traditional instruments and vocals that form the meat of the composition.

I find that most cinema and game soundtracks sound necessarily disjointed given the piecemeal demands of the format. Ideas aren't given time to develop or suffer from compression due to the exigiencies of drama. Outcast II doesn't avoid that fate but it does contain some exquisite singing from the Childrens' choir of the Paris Opera (Latin text galore), forthright back-up from the Boston Symphony Orchestra and enough melodic depth to keep the listener happy. It's strange that I find cantatas, masses and requiems from the classical repertoire to be satisfying, even though they too are, by their very nature, programmatic, or to use the technical term, "bitty". Perhaps I'm just a fuddy-duddy. But I'll have to get used to it, for it seems that game and cinema soundtracks have now mostly replaced liturgical rituals as a source of employment for composers. For Kyrie and Dies Irae, read Training and Boss Fight.

Enough verbiage. There are no mp3s for me to link to (grrr), but Monsieur D. has kindly supplied a media player that will drive me to tears while I install it. You're at liberty to play whatever you like, but I'll recommend two tracks you could try first:

• Infested People - This is two minutes of the Boston Quartet (members of the Boston S.O.) going at it hammer and tongs. It starts off as if Shostakovich had written a 16th string quartet, goes along at a fair clip, morphs into some Philip Glass/John Adams at the 01:34 mark and ends far too quickly. I'd love to see the score released or, better still, the movement worked up into something more substantial. It's an entertaining piece of modern classical music. There's a sentence you don't see every day.
• Corruption with Rage and Melancholy - With such a terrible title, this had to be the opening track and main theme of Obscure II. It's a goodly stew of strings, ethereal vocals, electronic growls, and acoustic/electronic percussion. The voice and violin solo near the end is especially affecting. If you like this track, you should like the album.

Obscure II won the Milthon award for best soundtrack at the 2007 Paris Game Festival, and I can see why. I'd never have heard the album (which is not Creative Commons-licensed) if Olivier Derivière had not made it available to download for free, and now he has a new fan who is considering buying Alone In The Dark, all his subsequent compositions, and any Derivière-shaped soap figurines that might appear in time for Christmas.*

I apologise for cobbling together an album cover from Obscure II's game packaging but there were no suitable images to go with the zipped album file. By the way, remember that guff about composers turning away from religious formats in order to earn a living? Monsieur Derivière is currently composing an opera and a... mass. Honestly, I can't win.

Olivier Derivière - Obscure II soundtrack (zipped file only, scroll to third album on page)

Olivier Derivière - blog and flashy website

*This is, of course, in jest. I don't wash.

Woodward Wules The Wacetwack

Wegular weaders - sorry, regular readers of Catching The Waves will know of my fondness for the music of Josh Woodward. I reviewed his music a while back, discussed a song, I Want To Destroy Something Beautiful, recommended another, Shadows In The Moonlight, and gave another of his songs, Stickybee, the unmatchable honour of first dibs at the unveiling of this site's shiny new Yahoo Media Player. The more I've listened to Josh's work, the more I've come to value him as a songwriter and singer. How can I put this?

He. Is. Talented.

Was that last sentence of mine irritatingly pseudo-trendy and patronising? Look, it's the internet - the twin graveyard of grammar and good manners.

...anyway, Audiosurf is a rather good computer game that adapts music, the actual mp3 files of songs, to produce racetracks for people to race around and have fun on instead of doing some work and saving the global economy. The chart of "Most Played Songs" (click image to enlarge), taken at 1500 GMT today, shows that the most popular "racetrack" is I Want To Destroy Something Beautiful. Stickybee is at No.3. Methylchloroisothiazolinone, a hairy-chested rock song, is No.4. And there are a couple more of his songs in there too. (Even Jonathan Coulton sticks his oar in. I'm a fan of JoCo but I've been too lazy to write a review.)

Coldplay gaze up in awe from their lowly eleventh place. It's great to know that Josh is getting run over. Repeatedly. There's only one thing to do. Press the button and have a listen to one of his most beautiful efforts:

Josh Woodward - Gravity

Many congratulations to Josh - he's finally gathering some momentum thanks to his talent, hard work, and the decision to release his music under a Creative Commons licence so that people could hear his music for free.

See, folks? I knew he was good.

Either that or his music is only good for driving over.

Josh Woodward

Audiosurf (a clever, cheap, fun game that uses indie music. Hats off!)