xwd is here at college

ilovecopyleft:

DL Summer Mood by Teleidofusion

Summer’s just around the corner here, there was plenty of hot weather back home to welcome me this past week. It’s cooled off a bit, but I’ll keep things warm with this jazzy, chippy track from Russian duo Teleidofusion, composed of C-jeff and Megus. They combine the ZX Spectrum with “real instruments”, which in this case would be Megus’ guitar and bass.

I’m not sure why they don’t think the Spectrum is a “real instrument” though it could just be a translation thing. I don’t know if there are any keyboard programs for the Spectrum like Cynthcart for the C64 or if it’s possible to livetrack on it like you can with the Piggy, so maybe it’s not possible to jam with a Spectrum. (If you know of proof that you can, the comments are open.)

Musing about what’s a “real instrument” aside, this track has a lot of fun riffs. They’re incredibly catchy. Particularly awesome are the sections where the guitar and the Spectrum are playing the same riff - it really lets you see how well the guitar chords mesh with the Spectrum’s AY-3-8910 chip. The bubbly, ultra-fast arpeggios from the Spectrum are also pretty good, these guys love their machines.

If you can’t get enough of this track (I can’t) go snag the full release Around Past from the recently redesigned Ubiktune website. Ubiktune had a lot of great releases last year, and this year is shaping up to be just as good, if not better. The live video of Summer Mood is also great, it includes C-jeff jamming on a keyboard for maximum funk. C-jeff and Megus also sort of collaborated on Electric last year, it combines C-jeff’s programming with guitars from a variety of people, including Megus. It’s also awesome.

The “real instruments” thing stewed in my head for a while when I was at a jazz concert last night. Whether or not trackers and old electronics can be considered “real instruments” isn’t a big problem. After all, Freezepop said in the liner notes for Future Future Future Perfect that “no real instruments were used in the making of this recording.” As long as it sounds good I don’t care.