100% of all proceeds donated directly to Girls Who Code . Per their site at http://girlswhocode.com: "WE'RE ON A MISSION TO CLOSE THE GENDER GAP IN TECH."
An album written as a love letter to the Metroid series, especially its music and one of its createst composers: Hirokazu "Hip" Tanaka.
Much like the game, the soundscape imagines feelings of alien worlds, dread, twisting passages, occasional horror, xenobiological discoveries, ethnography, moments of isolation, boss battles, and glimmers of hope. Not everyone has the mental fortitude or courage of Samus Aran, but we can try.
This recording features several live instruments (guitar, bass, modular synthesizer) as well as prepared arrangements. It also includes a "cartridge-based unintended collaboration" on a KORG DS-10 cartridge (see credits).
While behold the salt and burgersmoke still live in different locations (Eugene, OR and Salt Lake City, UT), this record was created as a collaboration of sounds, ideas, composition and mixing.
credits
released December 5, 2023
Music and sound: burgersmoke and behold the salt.
Track 2 drums and DS-10 sounds: Mute City (Mike Gintz). Programmed years ago on the KORG DS-10 Nintendo DS cartridge, these were never planned as a collaboration. However, much like a time when you could rent a game from a video store and a save file from a prior renter would unlock all the cool stuff and other endings, this save file was used by @burgersmoke in this work as an unintended "cartridge-based collaboration across space and time".
Dedicated to LaDonna Barker (grandmother of @burgersmoke aka Kelly) who gave him his first Metroid game for NES for his birthday in 1988. She would have hated this. However, she would have supported him as she always did even when she did not understand his decisions.
Other Notable thanks:
Make Noise Music for the STREGA, 0-Coast and 0-Ctrl used heavily on these pieces
Noise Engineering for their delightful virtual synths
Butch Vig for his amazing ear, engineering, and Drums virtual instrument
Harold Rhodes who invented the Rhodes piano
Orange and Fender amplifiers which we blasted Rhodes piano through
Omri Cohen for his VCV Rack tutorials
Native Instruments, Valhalla DSP, Arturia, IK Multimedia, NeuralDSP, VCV Rack, and Ableton for their outstanding software creativity
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