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[kirkoid-music]

Janko - August 2022

I began this project in 2020 in the depths of Lockdown, and while I'm unsure of the origin of many of the samples, they likely come from Freesound or Looperman.

As the track slowly grew over a two year period, it became a mixture of sounds, styles, ideas and moods, akin to a musical version of a vintage patchwork quilt or rag rug crafted by your grandmother.

This marked my second attempt to incorporate vocals, and I am much happier with this version. I tried to keep the percussion a little loose to give a more organic feel to this track. The backing vocals I reused from Notice.

Like Open Up My Inner Eye, this is a track I really, really like and have listened to endlessly, but doesn't seem to really hit the spot for anyone else.

Reviews for Janko on Looperman and SoundCloud:

Beautiful track and how you did place the vocal fits perfect. I like it!

I need to give a little comment on that. I think you have many years of experience to make vocals fit this way and the part of your math brain that cooperates. My math part never worked lol. I just use my ears but i cant trust them always.

I feel like the mood completely doesn't match the vocals, just me probably, otherwise sick tune.

I really enjoyed this remix.

[kirkoid-music]

Pound In My Pocket (Vern's Alphabet Soup Mix) - May 2022

This is a track I originally started way back in 2007. I sampled some funk guitar and built the rest of the track around the sample. I decided on a beat half the bpm of the guitar because that just felt right.

I did add some vocals, but I was never really very happy with them. This was one of the last few tracks I made before discovering ccMixter, so my sources were very limited.

In 2022 I was taking care of some unfinished business and decided to revisit the track. I removed the vocals and popped onto ccMixter. Once I found these vocals by Stellar Art Wars, I knew I had my fit. To me it's got a whole Ian Dury vibe going on.

Reviews for Pound In My Pocket (Vern's Alphabet Soup Mix) on ccMixter and Looperman:

Dig the track you created that fit the vox so perfectly. I don’t know if the vox need to be turned up (it did!). I would probably cut a bit of the low end on the vox to help them stand out more but that is the only thing I noticed.

Awesome backing track, gels with the vox.

Such a fun track! Great mix!

the beginning caught me right away. 30 seconds of tension. which leads into a rapping-like techno funk house explosion. very punchy the whole remix. congratulations.

I grew up with the music of Ian Duty. It was weird and exciting to us - we didn't get the lyrics, we certainly didn't get his appearance but boy did we get the energy. There's also this amazing docu on Stuff where they tell the story nobody wanted to perform after Dury because no band could top that energy. Yeah, I get it, and you are getting very close to the energy of the band. And that's saying something. Very well done my friend!

It was an Editorial Pick on ccMixter:

Electro pop for the summer! Kirkoid’s remix of Stellar Art Wars is a super-fun feel-good gem with a great beat, catchy melody and cool vocals.

[kirkoid-music]

Notice (Snow Mix) - April 2022

Having enjoyed immensely getting back into music making, I decided to revisit a couple of pieces I'd started half-heartedly messing around with during Lockdown in 2020.

This was the first one to get dragged out of the dark recesses of my hard drive where it had been languishing for two years and dusted off.

It was simply some melancholic backwards piano, looping around some crunchy beats. I found SackJo22's spoken word piece Notice on ccMixter and it fit the vibe perfectly. I'd called the original piece Snow, I have no idea why, it probably made sense at the time.

Reviews for Notice (Snow Mix) on ccMixter:

So trippy and chill. Reminds me of Boards of Canada

Nice arrangement. Beautiful for meditative movement. Thank you for setting my voice up in this sweet setting. Peace.

Love the gradual build and hypnotic beats. Very cool.

[kirkoid-music]

Alone (Demonic Mix) - January 2022

After a very long break I finally got back into music making in 2022. I had started messing around with a few samples in Lockdown in 2020, but didn't get around to finishing anything.

This was a track I worked on a few years earlier, with different vocals. I was never totally happy with it, and that hung around in the back of my mind for years, I had unfinished business with this track!

So I revisited it and found Kara's wonderful rendition of Alone by Edgar Allan Poe on ccMIxter. It was a perfect fit. I did think about adding the original vocals back in, with one on each channel à la The Murder Mystery, but decided against it as I had messed around with them so much trying to mask them, and couldn't find the original.

The demonic voice in the background is actually a slowed down sample of speech from a well known Sci-Fi movie. At one point it reveals itself.

Reviews for Alone (Demonic Mix) on ccMixter and Looperman:

Deeply cool groove.

Hey Kirkoid! It’s great to see you here! I really dig your dark, hypnotic mix with those crisp, catchy drums. Thanks so much for including my vox.

Wow, what a fantastic intro my friend. Great track. Well done, Maj.

Cool, it is retro and future at the same time. awesome!

Really creative work and like Maj said, the intro was pretty awesome. Well done. I hope all is well. Bear

[kirkoid-music]

Arthur's Heart - February 2016

I took a bit of a break from making music in 2015, I'd gotten married the year before, then we moved house and had a baby. Old habits die hard though, so while waiting in the hospital for 52 hours listening to my unborn baby's heartbeat on a monitor, I eventually decided to record a snippet on my phone for later use.

And eight months later, use it I did. It had a BPM of around 130, so, looping it up in Audition, I began to build a track around it. As usual, the samples guided the direction of the music, but when I came to look for some vocals, I quickly stumbled on Mr Yesterday's 30 seconds of spoken word on ccMixter.

"Born in the middle" it starts, wow, could it be more perfect? He talks about being at a crossroads, "you could go any which way". I knew I had found my vocal.

So the track starts off with the heart beat, the lyrics, then the music slowly comes in. This is how it was on the day, hours of just that heart beat, then, slowly but surely, signs of increased activity, tension building. The hours of anticipation, the birth, then, it's all over. You are left alone, just the two of you, now three, suddenly holding the ultimate responsibility, it's real.

Reviews for Arthur's Heart on ccMixter and Looperman:

Well, congratulations! Actually seven months to bounce back isn’t so long…. I enjoyed the field recording aspect a lot.

Very cool. The precision blend of beat and heartbeat is impressive and the build is joyous. (And the sound is excellent in my headphones.)

Fantastic dance music this.

Nice work on the track.

its funny but i can sing were on the rode to no where by talking heads to this lol and it works kinda

Hello Kirkoid,

what a great idea!?! This is a fantastic track to welcome a new Baby (Human). Greetings, Matthias.

There is something exciting when the sound created by nature merges with the electronic sound and they complement each other perfectly.

Beautiful work my friend - lilting gentle beats and a warm pulse with soft melodic elements woven in and just a little bit triumphant and nostalgic sounding which is all absolutely fitting : )

The sound of the heartbeat with the spoken word gave me goosebumps man. That's awesome.

I like the idea of the track with the panned keys mimicking the heartbeat. Great idea. I do think the transition from the original heartbeat to the high notes (the C-F-C...C-G-C bit) is a bit sudden - I would consider to fade that in softer. You don't want to startle the baby, right? :) And... congrats!!! Lovely track and I'm sure a lovely baby! (even if that's now 5, 15 or 25 years ago ;) )

The first time I heard my Daughter's heartbeat I thought 174BPM! What's going on in there? LOL... This is an incredibly creative idea. Sounds great. I wish I would have thought of that. Great track. Faved. PEACE...

After my son was born I distinctly remember looking up at the sky and stars and knowing for sure that Love was the principle that held the universe together and that without it nothing would work. This is a sweet wee track that somehow mirrors that.

[kirkoid-music]

A playlist I've been inspired to come back to after crossing paths with a young person just beginning their musical journey away from the mainstream.

I first got into music from this period when someone gave me a cassette with the soundtrack from the movie 1969 on it. I loved all the 1960s tracks on it, but not the 1980s ones (I remember my friend being the way around with it).

So this playlist kicks off with those songs.

Back then (1989?) you only discovered music if someone gave you a tape or played you something. I always remember the people who first introduced me to an artist I went on to love, hopefully I've introduced and inspired others as much as they have me.

Sometimes it was the things people said in passing that put me on to an artist. I used to wear a brown corduroy cap and whenever I went to the pub the older blokes would say "oh here comes Donovan again". So one day I popped to Our Price and bought a Donovan cassette. He's now my number 3 favourite artist according to my Last.fm page.

[kirkoid-music]

I found this on an old floppy disk, I think I made it around 1998 and shared it on Comic Chat. Very silly. The piano sample is Fats Waller from what I remember.

[kirkoid-music]

Another migrated playlist brave enough to leave the safety of my iPod Classic.

This one starts in the 1920s and meanders its way through several genres until around 1960. I've loved early jazz since I copied a Fats Waller cassette off a friend at school, I've used that tracklisting to kick this playlist off.

My offline version of this playlist is much longer, as it draws heavily from CDs of 78s recorded by the Shellac Collective and other sources that I've picked up on eBay from time to time. A lot of this stuff has simply never made it online, which is a shame.

Out of 274 songs lasting nearly 13 hours, I've managed to get 247, so just over an hour missing 😒.

[kirkoid-music]

Roll The Credits (Kirkoid Mix) - January 2015

A mix I put together using samples to fit some vocals uploaded by BO Crew Lab to ccMixter. I gave myself some interesting visualisations making this track, especially in the second part.

I initially didn't like the first part, then I realised the vocals were slightly out of sync compared to the second set. I gave it a little tweak and suddenly it all slotted into place.

Reviews for Roll The Credits (Kirkoid Mix) on ccMixter

Toe tappin mix, K.

I couldn’t say better than TRF, perfect rythm, and good association with Bocrewlab.

[kirkoid-music]

This is another one of my playlists that I have recently finished moving online from iTunes. Fewer tracks are missing this time, but there are still some version differences.

I have been growing and evolving this playlist since 2005 when I got my first iPod. I used to enjoy sitting in the chillout room of a local electronic dance nightclub. They had a DJ there and I liked listening to his mixes. When I got the iPod, I started to create this playlist on iTunes, inspired by what I was hearing. Since then it has headed off in its own direction.

Now we have 22 hours of chilled-out beats, tunes, remixes and reimaginings. Warm sounds, synths and sonic voyages of discovery.

Happy place.

[kirkoid-music]

The first of my playlists I've finally gotten around to taking online from iTunes. A few tracks are missing as they're not available, and there are a couple of version differences, but on the whole I was able to find the right tracks in the end. I've been working on this playlist since around 2007 when I got the Right On! CD box set.

20 hours of funky jazz, jazzy funk, and a little bit of soul. This playlist picks up from another playlist (coming soon) around 1960 and struts it's way forward to today.

[kirkoid-music]

My Inner Mystery (Kirkoid Mix) - November 2014

My remix of a track by Stefan Kartenberg, it was my entry in a 2014 ccMIxter competition. I remember I was a bit stuck to start with, then discovered an Indian drum track sample that made me think of thunder, so then I decided to add some thunder, rolling across the verses.

I took the stems and distorted some and flanged the rest. Initially the vocals were very phased, but then I came back to it undid that to made them stand out a bit more. Then, I missed the phasing so I redid the backing vocals to get the best of both worlds. I think now I need to make the distorted guitar louder.

Reviews for My Inner Mystery (Kirkoid Mix) on ccMixter

Great great work!!!

As they say in ReBoot this is “Alphanumeric!”.

Quite a transformation, from source material to mix. Very inventive.

This is freakin crunchy fantastic… Auto tuned campfire music :)

Wow! Love your treatment. Has a great sound and feel — totally unique despite familiar sonic references. Great job. Thanks so much for being part of the ccMixter musical family!

So much amazing guitar work in this! i love the static and the driving acoustic tracks. feels like a modern day Simon & Garfunkel song - the use of the thunder is awesome. divine from start to finish.

A nice mix - thank you very much, Kirkoid.

This is amazing!

[kirkoid-music]

Happy Cassette Week! This one was the soundtrack to summer for me over 30 years ago.

[kirkoid-music]

So, AI upscaling has arrived. I have some mp2 files from the dawn of time (or maybe the mid 90s), tracks that probably haven’t been treated kindly by time. It’ll be interesting to hear them in their original glory again, and who knows, maybe one or two will make the official Kirkoid chronology!

[kirkoid-music]

Mood Swing - March 2014

My entry in the ccMixter Winter 2014 Secret Mixter event and the third of my trio of most popular tracks used in YouTube videos.

I love the ethereal sound of backwards piano, and I love a bit of analogue synth, the contrast between the two in this track lead to its name.

Reviews for Mood Swing on ccMixter and Looperman:

Love love love, something I’d do myself but likely better.

Very cool. I always find reverse music especially eerie…

Excellent remix. I love what you’ve done. Thanks for that.

Pink-Floyd-like tones with driving rhythms and inviting melodies. deserves multiple listens.

Loving that old-school analog vibe.

Like the synth work, K

Would it be okay if I would use this for an fnf mod?

Nice track bro, lovely melody bass and beat, good variety, nice mix.

That works really well!