One can say many things about Crispin Hellion Glover. But oddly enough, you’ll never be able to say enough about the man and his work. Allow me to explain. I went with friends (one a big fan of his work) to see Mr. Glover perform and watch his feature film “What is It?” last Friday at the Casto Theatre (which, is a rather nice place once inside).

I admit, I quite enjoyed “Crispin Hellion Glover’s Big Slide Show” where he displayed no less than eight of his short “story” books all while reading aloud up on stage with a wonderful excitement about him. It really gets you geared up to enjoy the next presentation of his feature film. Now, before I go on, I admit, I did see the trailer on his site and was confused but sorta knew what I was getting in to. . .complete madness and a bunch of head-scratching (let alone, Glover himself was in the credits as “Dueling Demi-God Auteur and The young man’s inner psyche”, you gotta wonder, right?).

As I understood it (from Glover’s own Q&A after the movie), he set out to create a short piece profiling taboos and primarily using actors with down-syndrome (I suppose taboo within itself). Without going too far into what I thought about the Lynch inspired production (and, my there was much to think about), I’ll say that if you’re into watching a guy with down-syndrome get locked outside of his house, kill bunches of snails, fight his inner racists demons, see other “MRs” (as put by Glover) hit each other on the head with various blunt objects, and see a crippled man in a oyster shell get his junk knocked around by a woman with rather enormous breasts wearing a monkey mask, it’s gonna be your kind of movie!

All in all, it was an experience to behold. It wasn’t great but at least it was a movie we couldn’t stop talking about (for better or worse). Interesting point I realized later is that even if the movie was re-edited and the scenes were reordered, I don’t think you’d lose any clarity in the plot development.

GAH! Why didn’t I ask Glover about his role in the upcoming Beowulf movie?!

What is wytebred doing lately? Good question! The answer would simply be that I’m trying my damnest to do justice to my latest remix assignment for my friend Wally, aka gotye. Yes, this fine lad asked me (rather I begged him) to remix one of his sweet tracks off of his latest album, Like Drawing Blood. I can’t just say yet which track I’m going to mix, but it’ll be great. . .hopefully.

In the mean time, enjoy this little wackiness I cooked up tonight. It’s roughly titled Horns on the Way (wytebred ain’t foolin’) for some reason (well actually it was going to be part of the remix but I threw it out). It’s pretty fun even if not totally outstanding.

And for even more fun in wytebred’s mind, check out Exercise Seven! It actually may make it on the album if I get around to smoothing it out and figure out a direction. ENJOY!

Let’s see, it was back in March 2005 when bazooie dragged me over to his house to listen to this one track he was working on. “You’ll really dig it!” he cried, “It has all sorts of strangeness my usual sound doesn’t and so you’ll have fun remixing it! I even used my girlfriend’s voice in it!” Well, I waited for him to complete it. . .and now, my remix is done.

Oh right, so for those that don’t know, bazooie asked me a long while back to remix one of his tracks cause he was interested in remixing “Better Blue.” Yes indeed, the track I did back in 2004. So, time passes and of course, I never see “Better Blue” remixed but I can’t blame him, cause I have trouble sometimes figuring out my own work in FL Studio and for someone coming from the world of Buzz, I had my doubts. But, now let’s fastforward 15 months. He’s now married to said girlfriend and life has changed. However, bazooie actually informs me in June that he has completed this long overdue track (visit his site to download the original) and it was pretty darn good. Needless to say, I get crackin’ on what I believe is an even crazier remix of his original. Hell, it’s not really as much a remix as a total recomposition.

bazooie - Over Oceans (wytebred mix)

Here’s the lowdown on the wytebred mix. I don’t use Buzz, so I ended up pulling everything out by hand (hey Buzz guys, ever heard of a midi exporter?) and transposing it back into FL Studio. This actually worked for the better cause I didn’t get everything, but only the pieces I felt were the strongest and would make the best impact. So, with everything finally imported I began reworking the intro (which I think came out really well) and then the vocals (which I also like, since you can barely tell what she’s mumbling in her dreamy state). There are also some other weird samples I added in for that wytebred flavor and an overall video game vibe from the instruments.

Out of everything in the piece, the orchestral pads came out the blurst. I got carried away and created this stunning orchestral piece to smooth out the background and unfortunately it took over the melody. So much so I kept cutting out sections and pushing it to the back. I just don’t care much for it but it works and adds a bit of human touch to an otherwise computery track. Oh and I think the ending turned out cool too. I figured it was appropriate seeing as how the track is “Over Oceans” to use some recordings I picked up while out in Italy on my fancy new field recorder!

Umm yeah, so in summation, enjoy and go visit bazooie for the original. It may just change your life.

If ya know me, you know one of my favorite tracks is Dave Cortez and the Moon People’s “Happy Soul (With a Hook)” for its fantastic breaks, organ jam, and horn stabs (not to mention a funkier-than-it-should-be guitar solo). Sadly, Christina Aguilera’s producer has abused this fine piece with “Ain’t No Other Man” off her new album Back to Basics. For shame. . .

The new season of Project Runway started this week. Yeah that’s right, I watch it and I love it! It sparkles my imagination for clothing (as an art form), has some hot models, and some witty banter (er sorry but I couldn’t come up with a tasteful way to say I like to watch gay men argue). But honestly, what I really find myself drawn into is the design process. It seems for any medium, from video games to designer wear, a designer goes through a process of brainstorming, trial and error, building and eventually, final design. As a designer of games I respect that in any medium.

Anyways, the new season has brought us even more quirky designers battling it out for the top spot. At first glance I was rooting for Stacy since she was a bay area resident but unfortunately she was knocked out in the first challenge unjustly. Bradley’s comforter trash should have been kicked. So, now I gravitated towards the lovely Alison without too much remorse. So far she’s as talented as she is cute! So, let’s hope she’s in it for the long haul! Alison! You’re Hot! Call Me!

Now we play the waiting game. . .

I love Venture Bros. on Adult Swim. And the fact that Hank (one of the naive Venture Brothers) referenced The Amazing Cosmic Awareness of Duffy Moon in the latest episode, Hate Floats , is probably the best thing I have tivo’d all year.

You CAN do it, Duffy Moon. . .

Oh yeah and if you haven’t ever heard the intro theme to Venture Bros, it’s worth a listen to at least a couple of times. It’s composed by none other than James George Thirlwell (yes, of Foetus fame) and has a killer horn and drum section!

First off, before I start bitching about Sudoku, I received a link to this wonderful set of free VSTs called KarmaFX. The set contains a professional sounding filter, delay, reverb, equalizer, and full-featured synth.

Oh yeah, and I’m selling my Roland TB-303 Bass Line Synth on eBay. It’s a sad day, I know but in its ashes shall rise the mighty Marantz PMD660 solid state recorder! Gimme some money and go bid on it!

V E R S U S

Now, normally I’d stay away from Sudoku games but Nintendo, themselves, published this title. And none other than the busy little bees at Hudson developed it. Well this can’t be too bad! Maybe even Bomberman will show up and rock some puzzles with me in that crazy way only the Japanese can rock my games! Besides, one would think that after the stellar release of a hundred or so Sudoku puzzles included in Brain Age, it’s hard to screw up Sudoku from this point on, right? And with a tagline like “Mastering sudoku has never been easier, thanks to Sudoku Gridmaster.” my sudoku times will be all the merrier, right?!?

Playing Sudoku Gridmaster is harder than it needs to be. Hell, it’s harder than any game needs to be! First off, the hand writing recognition is the worst I have ever seen for a DS game. I have no idea how to write the number five according to Sudoku Gridmaster. I also have not mastered the numbers one, three, four, and six. Maybe this all steams from me being left-handed and this game doesn’t support left-handed players. Is it so hard to reverse the playfield and the input section? Beyond that, the worst part really is having to switch to the notes mode. In Sudoku, you need to jot down possible numbers in the box before making a correct choice as to what the number in question could be. In Brain Age, all one needs to do is simply write the number a bit smaller in a section of the number box. They also split the box up for in into nine parts so you can comfortably write all nine possible answers. Not only that, but in general, the box you wish to write into will be zoomed in to full screen. This is great! So fast! So intuitive! However, in Gridmaster one must click on a little box in the upper right-hand of the screen to toggle the notes mode and then the game only allocates four possible numbers. Maybe the great players play this way, but some of us like the thought of putting whatever numbers we want as notes.

Since I was having such a blast with this game I thought I’d whine about a couple other issues I had with the interface. The loading speed of the game is terribly slow. The game actually has save and load screens that last way too long for a game with this simplicity. Also, the awful music cannot be turned off while sound effects remain. It’s all or nothing, baby!

In conclusion, don’t waste your money on this piece. The only interesting thing about Gridmaster is the points system that unlock new puzzles and sudoku tests. Unfortunately, I’ll probably never collect enough points to see any of the cooler puzzles. Lastly, the onther feature I actually enjoyed was that with a simple click on any number, all similar numbers would highlight, allowing for a quick count. Buy Brain Age instead. You get some fun brain tests and a great version of sudoku with enough puzzles to last until a better sudoku is released. Nintendo, you should be ashamed of yourselves! Is the Touch Generations brand so important to you that you’ll throw garbage at your consumer base?!

This year’s E3 was a lot like last year, which was a lot like last year, which was a lot like last year, and yeah, I guess the Dreamcast didn’t make a showing this year but that was about the only difference. Every game looked about the same really. They all offer guns and killing and a protagonist so handsome and cool, he should have his own line of clothing and cereal.

Sure, the PlayStation 3 was there! Sure the Wii made it (if you wanted to wait three hours) and while these sytems boasted the new direction in control with tilt sensory, they didn’t look any better than the Xbox 360 offerings. And if you ask me, you won’t see any differences in graphics for quite some time.

Yes I loved all of my precious DS games (hello, Pokémon and Harvest Moon) that’ll be out soon enough but I’m also thinking of PSP. I played a TGS demo for LocoRoco a while back and fell in love with it. Once the PSP has a redesign, I’ll probably buy both of them. Other than that, I guess I gushed a bit over Lost Planet from Capcom.

I’m sad to say but the SEGA booth really wasn’t impressive this year. Their biggest offering is the latest in Sonic the Hedgehogging visting the wonderful city of water, Soleanna, with, yet aother new character added to the roster, Desaturate the Hedgehog. I just don’t know about SEGA anymore. They just don’t try it seems. On the plus side, Atlus, NIS, Capcom, and Konami all looked strong. And, not to completely plug Eidos/SCi, but they did have some good looking games behind closed doors. Just Cause is one to look out for as well as IO’s Hitman: Blood Money showing some incredible handling for drawing large crowds onscreen.

Now, excuse me while I go preorder a PS3 and Wii.

Check out my photos from Electronic Entertainment Expo 2006!

Recently, Freezepop had a remix contest for one of their fantasmo tracks, Boys on Film. This contest ended back at the end of March, and after much deliberation they announced a winner or two.

I didn’t win.

Actually, let’s rewind that statement a bit. I don’t think much deliberation went on as the winner was a Harmonix employee and most likely, a friend of the band. The actual remix wasn’t what I would call glowing by any means, but that might just be my taste. I also suspect that the remix will be on Guitar Hero 2 set to be out later this year. I don’t mind the thought of helping a friend out by plugging their music (hey bazooie!) but honestly, I’m sure there was something better someone submitted besides a played out death metal guitar slasher. I’m not saying I should have won (well, maybe a bit) but, personally, I think mine mix was way more inspired.

Freezepop - Boys on Film (wytebred remix)

But don’t take my word for it! Judge for yourself! Freezepop was kind enough to allow everyone that submitted a remix to offer it for download at no cost. Maybe next time I’ll be a better friend to Duke, Liz, and Sean and win me some something!

Back in 2003 my friend Brian introduced me to an Aussie, Adam, who was way into house and damn good at improv and sexy basslines. He liked one of my breakbeat tracks of the time, Better Blue, and asked me if he could remix it. I always enjoy letting people remix my tracks, especially if they enjoy ‘em as much as I do (and who didn’t love Better Blue?).

Now we fast-forward three years! I have totally forgotten that Adam (now going under the quirky pseudonym of Dogberry) took up remixing the track until he presented me the following, something that instantly reminds me of old school Royksopp (which is a good thing). He even extended the Cosby vocal and the finished product is a minimal house affair that just seems to work! So without further prolonging the mp3 download, here ya go! Enjoy and thanks Dogberry! Awesome remix!

Better Blue (Dogberry remix)

Oh yeah, and he even did a little graphic for it! How awesome is that?!