WARNING: I'm probably about to come across as a total dubstep hipster, and in all likelihood one not as informed as he likes to think. Also, to be fair, I don't mind laughing at the world of dubstep, and I don't mind laughing off the people who laugh at dubstep. Man, that was rambling bollocks. Let's all just forget it and kick this off with some Dubstep Hipster Cat, shall we?

It's been interesting/weird/a bit of a bummer to watch dubstep fall into the clutches of popular media. I'm not saying this because I think it's a sacred art form that the masses shouldn't have access to because they don't get it. Nope, I just fret that the crazy oversaturation of the genre will leave me bored and sick of the sound of something I once enjoyed so much.

I've loved dubstep for years now (there, I've ripped that hipster band-aid right off) and, while I don't think I'm as immersed in the culture as some others, I'm pretty sure I'm well-versed enough to launch into this rant. Sure, I'm not really into things like Burial, which is what many alleged purists will swear is the only form of dubstep that matters (and bless them for making sure I'm not the biggest wanker on this topic). I'm more into the bombast that the trappings of the so-called "ravestep" style has to offer, such as the songs of Nero and Metrik.

Speaking of Nero, it's one of their songs that lit the fire under my motherblogging arse on this occasion. You've probably seen the trailer for Borderlands 2 by now, and you may or may not know that the song used is "Doomsday" by the aforementioned dubstep duo. The thing is, we'd already heard that song being used mere days before for another game's trailer, namely Armored Core V.

Herein lies a problem for me. While I certainly don't begrudge Nero the success they're experiencing with their Welcome Reality album – hell, I bought a copy and love it – the worry is that this success is going to lead to their stuff being used every-fucking-where. And when that happens, it's obvious that the impact is diminished. Same thing goes for 16Bit's awesome remix of Noisia's "Machine Gun" which was used in the Far Cry 3 trailer and... oh, somewhere else, I forget now. Side note: GUYS, I CAN'T WAIT TO PLAY FAR CRY 3

So high profile acts are (deservedly) taking their place in the spotlight, meaning they've caught the ear of game companies wanting to pimp their own product. How is this a bad thing? Well, apart from crushing us all under the weight of a relentless barrage of fat drops, to me it just seems lazy and pandering, especially now that the same songs are starting to appear in separate trailers. For my money it just makes the software companies look a bit "me too" and less clued-in than they want to appear. I'd have less of a problem with this whole dubstep-is-in-every-trailer phenomenon if they were picking dubstep tunes that people didn't know about and hadn't heard before.

Dubstep's recent rise within gaming and wider culture has also led to people labelling anything with big, fuck-off industrial beats and wibble-wobble bass (including Nero's "Doomsday") as "dubstep" so I'll just give you a quick rundown. Dubstep is not the name of the sound, although the different subgenres do have their distinct traits. Dubstep is not electro house, breakbeat or drum 'n' bass that uses the same instruments. It's also not the easy-to-confuse-with-dubstep style of drumstep. Dubstep is usually around 140bpm, with the main snare hit typically coming on the third beat of each bar, and a bar in this case usually being groups of four beats... but now I'm probably coming across as really fucking patronising, so it's probably time to wrap things up.

This blog was a lot more "vomit onto page" than the blogs I usually like to post, so sorry if it comes across a bit long-winded and disjointed. To conclude, I'm going to put forth some dubstep tunes that I think would make cracking alternatives for game companies, should a dubstep soundtrack be completely unavoidable for the trailer you're making:

"Raise Your Weapon (Noisia Remix)" by Deadmau5 - Yes, I know I've just railed against well-known acts stealing all the glory, but I don't think this tune is as well known as other songs written by either party involved. A beautiful-yet-sinister slice of greatness, I always imagine this in the trailer for some scorched-earth-space-marine kinda game.

"Armored Core" by Reso - Wouldn't this be a no-brainer for... oooh, I don't know, AN ARMORED CORE TITLE?

"Dirty Disco" by Zomboy - This one's pretty Skrillex-y, but I still love it to bits. Fun tune.

"Chutney Grip" by Schema - A hard hitting, tightly-wound little gem. I always imagine imagine mechs fucking shit up when I hear this song.

I've not done a blog in a while – indeed, this is my first for 2012 – and I'm going to get back into the swing of things with a design. While it's probably going to be obvious what my inspiration was, those who came in late can catch up with all the awesome awesomeness here.

SID-licious is a series of blogs where I post Commodore 64 SID tunes every week. They'll be available for download until the next entry goes up, when I'll be pulling the previous week's files down. I'll probably have the mp3 floating around, though, so if there's some tune(s) you're reading about in a past blog and want to grab a copy, shoot me a PM.

As alluded to in my previous blog, I was a kid who bought (among various C64-based magazines) Zzap!64 on a regular basis. And again, this week's entry is dedicated to something that came on the cover-mounted Megatape. Well, by this stage Zzap!64 had turned into Commodore Force and the Megatape was now called Reel Action, but that's a whole different blog rant and I hella digress.

The Commodore 64 demo scene has always been something I've admired from afar, even to this day. For the uninitiated, a demo is a demonstration (funnily enough) of how a group of coders, musicians and artists are able to push the limits of what a particular machine can do. Demos from the early days are relatively rudimentary, whereas more modern demos incorporate all kinds of mad effects as people have delved into and learned more about the machine. Scaling, rotating, plasma effects and fancy real-time shading on increasingly complex 3D objects are all possible on the C64 in the right hands.

Growing up as I did in a country town in 80s Australia, I didn't have much chance to interact with people who were in the know about cool things I could do with my beige box. The only real outlet for any graphic design aspirations I had was to painstakingly create detailed, animated sprites for games I'd make in the Shoot 'Em Up Construction Kit. I used to marvel at the screenshots in the Zzap!64 demo roundup, and yearn to witness the amazing coding feats described in those column inches. So it was with great joy that I finally got to view some firsthand...

Commodore Force #8 (or Zzap!64 #98 for those playing along at home) came with two cover tapes attached, one of which was dedicated to a bunch of one-file demos. The standout was Breeze of Diogenes from demo group X-Ample Architectures. It was a simple but gorgeous demo divided into two parts. First, a lovely background with a large, rotating X would appear, with sparkles occasionally flashing across one part of the screen or another. A press of the spacebar later, and you'd see a boss-as-all-hell logo for X-Ample below a text scroll and neat graphic equaliser effect which seems to be made up of raster bar slivers. All in all, it's nothing too earth-shattering, but everything is pulled of with such style and acuity that this demo has remained a favourite of mine ever since I first experienced it.

And so to the point of this blog: Breeze of Diogenes contains not one, but two brilliant tunes to accompany the visuals and complete the package. Check 'em out:

[ Here's where the music was. I've probably still got the mp3 if you wanna PM me! ]

SID-licious is a series of blogs where I post Commodore 64 SID tunes (I swear it'll get back to being weekly soon). They'll be available for download until the next entry goes up, when I'll be pulling the previous week's files down. I'll probably have the mp3 floating around, though, so if there's some tune(s) you're reading about in a past blog and want to grab a copy, shoot me a PM.

Back in the day, legendary UK publication Zzap!64 would come with a cover-mounted cassette, known as the Megatape. Every month, this spooled wonder would be filled with complete games and/or demos for upcoming releases. For some reason, enjoying the software that came on this tape felt different to playing other games I had, and even thinking about loading something from a Megatape taps into an indescribable sub-genre of my nostalgia.

Megatape 18 came with the demo for an upcoming title called Spellcast. The game was a sparse and rough (but still very playable) single level demo for a side-scrolling hackyslashy affair. While my memories of the gameplay aren't the clearest – I remember I liked it but there wasn't enough there for too much repeat play – the thing that has stuck with me all these years is (you guessed it) the music.

While Spellcast had no in-game music to speak of, it did have one tune that sprang to life on the static credits screen when you met your end. I loved that music, and while I would never die on purpose to hear it, the fact that it took the sting out of losing just made it more special.

So, what happened to Spellcast that it's only got one song to recommend? Well, the project was scrapped and the Zzap!64 demo was all that ever emerged for the public to see. If you want to read more about the fate of Spellcast and the people behind the project, head on over to Frank Gasking's Games That Weren't 64 and check out the info there.

The final footnote to this entry is that, once again, the High Voltage SID Collection has taught me that a beloved chip tune from my younger years is actually based on a "real" piece of music. And yes, once again, I find that I prefer the C64 version to the original (although the original sounds like something out of a Castlevania game, which I guess is no bad thing).

[ Here's where the music was. I've probably still got the mp3 if you wanna PM me! ]

SID-licious is a series of blogs where I post Commodore 64 SID tunes every week. They'll be available for download until the next entry goes up, when I'll be pulling the previous week's files down. I'll probably have the mp3 floating around, though, so if there's some tune(s) you're reading about in a past blog and want to grab a copy, shoot me a PM.

With the last entry in this series (I swear I'll get this blog back to a weekly thing soon) being a song by Antony Crowther that I didn't mind, I thought this week I'd bring you one of his pieces that I flat out adore. Like Street Gang, the main theme from Phobia is another song I've enjoyed without actually playing the game. However, where Street Gang was something the HVSC revealed to me many years after the C64 was my main platform, my love of Phobia stems back from a file I had as a kid that came on some floppy disk my cousins gave to me.

Buried among the game files on this particular diskette were two files that were called Digi-Bust-something-something. When run, both simply played a single song each. The only visual accompaniment was a black background with some basic white text in the standard Commodore font, while some black bars in the coloured border moved in time with the music.

Although I didn't know it at the time, one of these songs was Phobia (the memory of the other has fallen by the wayside, such is Phobia's potency). As a kid, I couldn't really make out exactly what word the pitch-shifted synthesised voice was saying, but that just added to the song's cool sense of mystery. I forget how I ultimately ended up discovering what game this tune was tied to – a gaudy horizontal shooter with some interesting graphics and ideas – but I've never really played it outside of getting the screen caps for this blog/the GB wiki.

Interestingly, it was while I was playing the game for the shots that I realised that the song isn't easily found in the game. Well, at least it wasn't on the title screen or the first level, which only has sound effects. Maybe it's on the loading screen for the tape version, or the final screen that greets the player upon beating the final boss. Regardless of its origin, though, Phobia still stands to this day as one of the moodiest SID tunes among the clutch I regularly enjoy.

[ Here's where the music was. I've probably still got the mp3 if you wanna PM me! ]

SID-licious is a series of blogs where I post Commodore 64 SID tunes every week. They'll be available for download until the next entry goes up, when I'll be pulling the previous week's files down. I'll probably have the mp3 floating around, though, so if there's some tune(s) you're reading about in a past blog and want to grab a copy, shoot me a PM.

My grandmother died recently, less than a week shy of reaching her ninetieth birthday. She was a lovely and amazingly independent woman who lived on her own for decades after her husband passed away, and had not lost any of her mental edge at all until she went. We had our flights all booked to go have a big party for her milestone birthday, and instead were using those same flights to attend her funeral.

The whole trip was a bittersweet affair, and it caused me to think back fondly on time spent with her. On one particular occasion she was looking after me, I was playing the ace puzzle game Bombuzal (Bomb Uzal to some) on the Commodore 64. A favourite feature was that it had some muddy, crunchy synthesised speech in the game, advising me to "get ready" at the start of each puzzling level.

I'd been playing Bombuzal for hours – the later levels can get really tricky and death is to be expected – and restarting after each brief life was snuffed out would cause my C64 to gurgle "get ready" again and again, over and over. After a while, my grandmother came in and told me:

"If that thing says 'gebbedy' one more time..."

I fell about laughing.

So is Antony Crowther's tune for Bombuzal a world beater? Not at all, although it's a pleasant enough Galway-lite ditty that suits the tone of the game very nicely. What this tune does, though, is remind me what a funny and awesome lady my grandma was.

Note: although it's not in the actual SID file, I've glued the "get ready" sample to the start of the tune.

[ Here's where the music was. I've probably still got the mp3 if you wanna PM me! ]

SID-licious is a series of blogs where I post Commodore 64 SID tunes every week. They'll be available for download until the next entry goes up, when I'll be pulling the previous week's files down. I'll probably have the mp3 floating around, though, so if there's some tune(s) you're reading about in a past blog and want to grab a copy, shoot me a PM.

By now you're probably aware of how useful the SID chip was for creating great music. What you might not know, however, is that it was also pretty damn handy at reproducing samples. Previously featured tunes from Arkanoid and Street Gang both use them, although I didn't really highlight the fact. More famously, you may be familiar with the sampled speech in one of my favourite games of all time.

I remember way back in the day there was a small listing in one of the C64 mags (Commodore Format, I think). Once entered and run, it would allow you to play audio cassettes in your datasette, the tape-based loading device. The quality wasn't perfect, but as a kid I was amazed at just how well the SID could emulate the original music on the tape I'd popped in.

Of course, that was just a simple little BASIC listing that let the SID chip play things on the fly but people with more smarts than me could get nice, clean(er) samples and actually insert them into their C64 compositions. There are quite a few C64 musicians I like that did it, but for my money the master of this practice has to be Jeroen Tel.

Undoubtedly a maestro of the SID, Tel always wrote really catchy tunes that had a great pop sensibility. But then there were times he would add some digital magic through his use of samples, and it'd just turn the songs into something even more special. While there are plenty of his original compositions I enjoy (and will probably feature in future instalments) this week's SID-licious is devoted to his cover of the classic Magical Sound Shower theme for Turbo Outrun. Tel considers his work on Turbo Outrun to be some of his best on the C64, and I couldn't agree more.

I'll let the music itself do the talking (literally) and leave you with a final titbit of trivia from Tel himself, who used his own voice for the samples:

I'm actually saying: 'one two TREE', 'cause sampling THREE would make it sound like 'one two FREE' and that's not what I wanted. ;P

[ Here's where the music was. I've probably still got the mp3 if you wanna PM me! ]

SID-licious is a series of blogs where I post Commodore 64 SID tunes every week. They'll be available for download until the next entry goes up, when I'll be pulling the previous week's files down. I'll probably have the mp3 floating around, though, so if there's some tune(s) you're reading about in a past blog and want to grab a copy, shoot me a PM.

The SID I'm presenting this week is a little different.

Street Gang is not a game from my childhood. In fact I've never actually played it, nor had I even heard of it before downloading the mighty High Voltage SID Collection. This is one of those (many) cases where I've discovered a title through browsing the expansive HVSC catalogue. So with that in mind, I couldn't honestly tell you what I think of the game nor if the music suits it (although if it's about 80s street punks, I'm guessing it fits just nicely). What I do know is that I loved this SID the first time I heard it circa 2001 and it's always on my iPod, ready to roll should the need arise.

The Street Gang intro music is by Christoph Bergman, and it isn't just one tune. Nope, the great thing about it is that it's actually seven electro tunes in one, all wonderfully spliced together into a 10 minute DJ mix and ready to breakdance to.

The two tunes that start at 6:25 and 8:02 are my favourites of the bunch. They're both so intricate, layered and nuanced that they make me forget how few channels C64 musicians had to work with. And for SID music made way back in 1987 it's still got some very danceable hooks in it.

Time to bust out the cardboard and press play, yo.

[ Here's where the music was. I've probably still got the mp3 if you wanna PM me! ]

SID-licious is a series of blogs where I post Commodore 64 SID tunes every week. They'll be available for download until the next entry goes up, when I'll be pulling the previous week's files down. I'll probably have the mp3 floating around, though, so if there's some tune(s) you're reading about in a past blog and want to grab a copy, shoot me a PM.

Two musicians are credited for the music in Stormlord: Jeroen Tel and Johannes Bjerregaard. While the former is a legend and I'll no doubt have more than one of his songs pop up in my blog, his sole (and typically sample-heavy) offering for this game is not his strongest effort. Bjerregard, on the other hand, wrote four of the game's five tunes, with one in particular being the apple of my ear.

The gameplay itself in Stormlord is simply okay-ish. Your detailed sprite trudges left and right, dodging enemies and foiling them with items as he engages in a long and arduous sequence of swap-and-fetch quests. Bjerregaard's in-game tune completely outshines the game it is supposed to be supporting. Sounding like a 'roided up Ghosts 'n' Goblins cut, it travels through a few different phases, starting out moody and eventually building through more up-tempo sections.

A final note on Stormlord: the graphics are actually quite good all over, and the game contains one of the most deftly placed single pixels in the history of C64 graphics.

[ Here's where the music was. I've probably still got the mp3 if you wanna PM me! ]

SID-licious is a series of blogs where I post Commodore 64 SID tunes every week. They'll be available for download until the next entry goes up, when I'll be pulling the previous week's files down. I'll probably have the mp3 floating around, though, so if there's some tune(s) you're reading about in a past blog and want to grab a copy, shoot me a PM.

In a digital world where its meaning and usage have been distorted (and even ridiculed), I never use the word "epic" lightly*. But that's exactly how I would describe Rob Hubbard's stirring tune for Zoids. Listening to it today, it's almost as triumphant and moody and futuristic and mysterious as the first time I heard it.

Of course, back then I didn't know that Hubbard had based the music on "Ancestors" by Synergy. These days, even though I'm aware of the pedigree, I still like the Hubbard version more. I don't know if it's because I grew up with his take, linked as it is to one of my all-time favourite formative systems, or if it's just because I prefer the actual sounds of the SID, but his is just the more engaging version to me.

The actual gameplay of Zoids itself was nigh-impenetrable to me as a young boy, and a lack of instructions didn't help matters. The screen is filled with dials and weapons and systems and icons and buttons, all with no text to inform you of their functions. But dammit, the music was so good that it didn't stop me trying. Occasionally, I'd wrestle with the joystick and actually manage to win the battle subgame, and Rob Hubbard's majestic industrial march was there to make sure I truly felt like the victor.

*That said, I'll probably use "epic" again when I talk about Parallax. Don't worry, stick with me and you'll hear it for yourself soon enough.

[ Here's where the music was. I've probably still got the mp3 if you wanna PM me! ]