Radio Of Aliens (Vol. 2) - Cover artThe netlabel LASER VISA offers a pretty cool release by various artists from their stable as a tribute to Yuri Gagarin. These artists sound like they’re straight out of 1985, in a good way. Artists like Ambelion from Ukraine (Ambelions track White Sky Is Blue stands out in particular) and Ergrover, also from Ukraine (who’s track Prototype is exceptional) represent various countries in eastern Europe that remember very well the oddysey undertaken by Yuri Gagarin back in the early 60’s as the first human in space.

As for the music itself, this is how electronic music sounded back in the pioneer days. The final track is absolutely outstanding. Hearkening back to MODEDIT and other tracker programs with the Tron-esque sounds, if you were a hacker / geek kid back in the day, or if you just enjoy lofi electro, then check out this release, and in fact the entire catalog of LASER VISA.

Radio Of Aliens (Vol. 2)

 

Well well well…

Let me sum up my entire creative output over the last few months, including music creation, photography, creative writing, and blog output, in one word:

Pleh.

I’ve been swamped with school, work, and life in general, and I’ve totally neglected the orbit. Have no fear! Holidays are coming up, and with the holidays comes time off from school. So I should have some time to update and bring you all some awesome music, just in time for Christmas.

Stay tuned.

Update

Dang! I’ve been busy with school for the last few months, it’s such a bummer. But I must do what I must, and for now the music blog is dead. 🙁 But it will rise again…

Testing testing…

Well well well. As many of you know, I lost my job a few weeks ago. My company decided to shut down the plant where I worked. And just when I was loving what I did so much! But alas, the marine world will have to carry on without me from this point on. I seriously don’t see myself returning to anything marine industry related in the future.

So back in October I began the interview process with a company that supplies nuclear maintenance personnel. After two long months of interviews and all day events involving dexterity, mechanical aptitude, and mental instability tests, I finally got the call today. ‘Yes, we’d like you to join our team. Yes, we’ll send you to school for the next two years, on our dime. Yes, you’re going to have one of the coolest (if not one of the most dangerous) jobs in the world.’

I’ll be attending Cape Fear Community College for the next two years, learning nuclear maintenance. Which basically means rebuilding nuclear reactor vessels inside power plants. Sounds like great fun to me, I can’t wait to get started. And I’ll be on the new company’s payroll before my stay bonus from the old company runs out. Wish me luck, everyone, I’ll certainly need it. And if you wake up one night and notice a strange blue glow on the horizon, well that probably just means I’ve arrived in town to work on your local nuclear power plant. 😉

Shaaaaaark!!!

Its a shark!

Its a shark!

So today my family and I are down at the beach. I and my wife are sitting in our chairs, or back and forth in the surf with the kids. At one point, a life guard comes riding down the beach on an atv, whistle blowing, waving everyone out of the water. ‘What is it?’ I wonder. I see a handful of park rangers coming down to the beach, so I walked up to one of them and asked what was going on, thinking she would say something like jellyfish or rip current. Nope. It wasn’t either one of those. She told me someone spotted what may have been a fin up north of us.

Now I’m thinking ‘Come ON!’. I figured someone probably has been watching shark week on Discovery Channel, got a little over excited at an oddly shaped wave, and let their imagination run wild. So I sit back down in my chair. Now, my chair is about four feet away from the edge of the water. And right in front of us, in ankle deep water, appeared a six foot black tip shark! I’m talking ankle deep water. It just thrashed its way right up onto the sand, chilled for about three seconds, then thrashed its way back into the hellish depths from whence it came.

To say we were startled is a tad bit of an understatement. Needless to say, we were done playing in the water for the day. Possibly for the rest of our lives.

Visual Acoustics

Here’s an interesting toy to play with: a visual interface for creating music. Purely an improv tool, Visual Acoustics gives you several ‘brushes’ to paint a canvas with. Each brush is associated with a different instrument, such as strings, guitar, piano, stand up bass, and others.

I found that the strings and flute sound really great to start out with. This should hold your attention for at least a few minutes, anyway.

Visual Acoustics