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All posts for the month October, 2012

Listen to “The Attic of the Milestone (Decisions, Decisions) (prod. by DJ Empirical)” by Mikal kHill.
Mikal kHill asked me to craft a new beat for an older song of his, to be placed in a new context as a part of a zombie-themed concept album, The Walking Dead, which was released in conjunction with Halloween. The album features a raft of nerdcore specialists, and is quite good overall. (And Z, of the blog “Hipster, Please”, agrees.) Check it out!

Incidentally, I think this is the first released thing I’ve done that features one of the excellent Sufi plugins. In this case it’s (perhaps obviously) Palmas, the clapping drum machine. I love these things and hope to make wider use of them.

Listen to “Shivablast (produced by DJ Empirical)” by Beefy.
Rusty Shackles, the amazing artist who did my birthday show poster last year, had the idea to put together nerdcore rapper Beefy with a slew of producers to create a tribute EP to the show The League, a comedy about fantasy football. Knowing I had at least a passing interest in the show (I’m a huge fan of How Did This Get Made, a podcast co-hosted by some of the same actors involved), he reached out to me to contribute.

I produced two of the tracks, which bookend the EP. First, the lead-in track “Shivablast”, which musically homages NFL music* while incorporating elements of Indian music, referencing the ethnicity of “Shiva”, the girl their trophy is named after. She comes in again at the end of the EP, with the other track I produced, “SKSK” (short for “Shivakamini Somakandarkram”, Shiva’s full name). This one’s not a proper “song”, so much as just a funny way to end the record: the guys on the show sing her name to the tune of “Hava Nagila”, so I sampled them, added Indian drums, and some sub bass.

Go check it out — it’s free, and fun. The other folks involved are great, and the end product came out nicely.

Oh, and here’s the instrumental of “Shivablast”:

Listen to “Shivablast (instrumental)” by DJ Empirical.

*This had to be suggested to me, as I have no knowledge or interest in football.