Tuesday, March 8, 2016

All Around Sound is Turning Six! Day 2: Chill Mega Chill



My meeting Ian is essentially a direct result of Rafael from Heart & Soul and Dave from Stadiums & Shrines corralling me into my first experience with Portals via their Stadiums & Shrines and Portals initial collaborative CMJ showcase back in 2012. After experiencing what was heretofore one of the wildest, visionary musical experiences of my life, Portals became an important destination for my musical development and their participation at SXSW (unofficially) is one of the reasons I was lured there in 2014. I didn't meet Ian at the Portals showcase however. I met Ian as part of a larger mob of Portals kids roaming the streets of Austin that started a series of random coincidental encounters at other showcases, taco stands, and the like. It wasn't until after the festival, after the spell of booze and tacos was broken that ironically enough I felt I got to know Ian on an individual basis. In fact, I've never actually read Ian's old blog Cactus Mouth and while it features many artists I've like, I've never really paid as much attention to his cassette label Chill Mega Chill as I probably should. Despite our meeting at SXSW, our friendship was born less out of a desire for networking and more of realizing, through aligning music interests, that we'd come to like each other as people. And that's more or less how I approached Ian to contribute a mix for All Around Sound's birthday as as friend who's music taste I trust and enjoy and certainly wasn't disappointed.

Ian's words about his mix WASTELAND:
Genre movie scores had their heyday in the mid to late-80s, but their influence has certainly been seeing a resurgence as of late. The most prominent example of this is probably Disasterpiece's excellent score for It Follows that borrows generously from the past but twists the music in a way that brings it up-to-date. Other films like You're Next, Starry Eyes, and Turbo Kid have seen similar success bridging that decades-wide gap and it shows -- Mondo's vinyl-exclusive soundtrack for You're Next sold out in four hours. But this revival of sound isn't exclusive to film scores. There is a large crop of musicians dipping their toes in the waters of '80s genre film and applying its influence. Even the master himself, John Carpenter, has come out of music retirement and released an album, Lost Themes, whose sequel is soon to follow. For those who were never really into horror movies, maybe all of this doesn't mean much, but to those who were the geeky horror kid growing up, well, it's everything.


Thanks again to Ian for his contribution. Enjoy!

No comments:

Post a Comment