The Troubleshooters of Nerdcore

The Troubleshooters is a project from nerdcore artists int80 of Dual Core and kHill from Thought Criminals.  They have released an EP, Lead Time, for all to enjoy.

It is only four tracks, but it is all they need to rock it so hard.  I just feel this is the best that rap can get and each song shows off what these guys can do.  I will say it is not heavy on the nerdy lyrics, more of a thing for computer fans, but still good for all.

c64, the other half of Dual Core, helps out on turntable.  Mixing by cecilnick of Autocorrect and cover art by Maria Morales.

Get the EP for only $5.

 

“The TroubleShooters started like all other music projects for me: Emails are exchanged, beats are uploaded, lyrics are written, etc. But then we took a slightly different approach of hopping on Hangouts to discuss song ideas and composition. We also simultaneously wrote lyrics in shared docs so that we could play off the other person’s parts. This gave TroubleShooters a more cohesive feel in creating the music. To complete the project, I flew to Mikal’s house in the mountains of North Carolina and we spent hours in his frigid basement recording and creating new songs. There I was wearing all my layers of clothes from my suitcase, clutching my laptop’s power supply trying to stay warm; while Mikal was in a t-shirt and khakis drinking a Juan Collins like he was on vacation. Truly, this EP nearly drove me to insanity.” -int80

“There was a point one night after we had finished tracking vocals that we decided to play Tecmo Bowl for NES. I was incredibly hammered and never figured out how to pass and 80 beat me… his score was in excess of 100 points and mine was zero.” -kHill

 

 

Top 10 Harry Potter Music List to Avada Kedavra to

The novel and movie series of Harry Potter are big business.  They helped make YA literature what it is today.  Many fans have fallen in love with the characters and the world which they show through many creative ways including music.

1. Wizard Rock.  The whole scene and bands.  I am just lumping them all together in one or this would just be me listing some of them.  I wanted to show off some other acts that are Potter fans too.

2. Insane Ian noted that River Cuomo of Weezer looks like a grown-up Potter, taking this idea we wrote a parody album of Harry Potter set to Weezer songs.  He calls it Weezard.

3. Adam Warrock and Mikal kHill of the Thought Criminals have worked together a few times on mixtapes.  One of them The Slytherin House Mixtape.  Sampling the orchestral scores from the movies, they created a mixtape focused on the franchise, from the point of view of the more cunning and ambitious students.

4. The great Luke Ski has Christmas in Hogwarts, a parody of Run DMC’s “Christmas In Hollis” about Harry Potter at Christmastime.

5. Team StarKid a musical theatre production troupe, originally from Ann Arbor, MI and currently based in Chicago, who created their A Very Potter Musical and A Very Potter Sequel.  Darren Criss of Glee fame plays Harry and wrote the majority of the music.

6. The nerd rock band Nuclear Bubble Wrap has done a number of Harry Potter songs over the years: Act Pottery, Avada Kedavra, and Draining the Lizard on a Dead Gay Wizard.

7. Not Literally is a trio of girls who love to make videos.  They have done a whole slew of Potter music videos.

8. Scych has done an electric progressive rock song inspired by the Elder Wand in the HP series called the Eldruhn Wand.

9. Hello, The Future also has a Christmas song about Harry Potter; Merry Christmas, Harry Potter.  What is it about Harry Potter, Christmas, and comedy musicians?

10. If you were wanting more nerdcore, here is The Wrock Snob’s top ten list of nerdcore songs with Potter references.  Includes Kabuto the Python, Dr. Awkward, YTCracker, and more.

Honorable Mention goes to an 8bit version of the Harry Potter theme also know as Hedwig’s Theme from the movie series.

 

Black Friday Deals

With today being Black Friday, which is not the biggest shopping day of the year, I decided to gather some links to various artists doing special deals.  Most are only good for today, but some go till Small Business Saturday or to Cyber Monday, so hurry and get what you can.

The Whomping Willows Black Friday sale has everything (CDs, t-shirts, hoodie) for just $5 + shipping.

All music at Gamechops is 50% with code “thankyou.”

All Mega Ran music, including pre-orders, is also 50%.

All Mikal kHill products are 50% off this week, plus t-shirts are reduced to $10 before the discount.  Also when you buy any one physical item get an exclusive kHillcast CD-R with special mix of music, unreleased demos, and music from the new group he is starting.  Just use the code ” FUCKWALMART2X”

Abney Park is doing their Black Friday sale this year.  CDs and novels for just $10, figurines for $5, and dog tags for $9.

Get brentalfloss music 55% with code “wishbones55.”

Get all three of the LeetStreet Boys albums for $30, including shipping.

The Black FuMPDay Sale has select items in the FuMP store 20% to 40% off.  Items include albums from Baldbox, Carrie Dahlby, Cirque du So What?, Devo Spice, great Luke Ski, Possible Oscar, Sudden Death, Worm Quartet, and all the Best of the FuMP albums.

Luke Ski also has all his CDs for $8 and DVDs for $12.

MC Lars is also doing a 50% off sell on everything.

Video Game Music Bundles has five albums for $1 or twenty-four albums for $10.

DFTBA is offering $3 shipping to anywhere in the world.  They have albums by Chameleon Circuit, Alex Day, ALL CAPS, Harry Potter Alliance, Epic Rap Battles of History, and more.

Draco and the Malfoys are offering free shipping in the US and half off shipping outside of the US.

Professor Shyguy is selling his two albums for $5 and his acoustic and instrumental albums for $2.50

The Megas have 50% off their digital downloads with the code “blackandblue”.  Plus the Robot Sketch t-shirts are off 50% at their store.

 

Top 10 Zombie Music List To Shamble To

Zombies have become big in both nerd circles and the mundanes’.  Which of course means songs, albums, and bands inspired by them.  Here is some to get started listening to and Happy Halloween.

1. Zombie Blues by Tom Smith gives you the blues from a zombie perspective.

2. MC Lars, YTCracker, Shaffer the Darklord, and ZeaLouS1 do a tribute to zombies and Bruce Campbell with Do the Bruce Campbell.

3. The Gekkos take a different approach to the zombie apcolypse in Pokemon of the Living Dead with having the Pokemon be the zombies.

4. If I Were an Undead Crawler by the nerdy duo Debs & Errol, a song they wrote at a convention workshop to the tune of “If I Had a Million Dollars.”

5. Mikal kHill of the Thought Criminals produced his definitive zombie story as the album The Walking Dead.  Guests on the album include Jesse Dangerously, Tribe One, Sulfur, Adam Warrock, and several other friends of his.

6. A hard rock song by Yoda Guitar called Zombie Town.  Free song, which is good cause it is going to get stuck in  your head.

7. Undead Love Song by John Anealio is a great love song about a zombie and a woman.  Both sweet and gross at the same time.

8. Mega Ran and Richie Branson got together to do an album last year called Ghouls ‘n Ghosts (number two is out this year) on it is Walking Dead a song with an easy rolling beat.

9. Insane Ian gives us two great zombie tunes.  Some Zombie by George Romero tells of a man obsessed with zombie movies becoming one, features The Stacey.  The other one is There’s Something About A Zombie – The ZombAid Benefit Song, a benefit parody which features lots of the other FuMP guys on it.

10. For those of you who have always wanted a zombie themed surf rock band, I have you covered.  The Wakening dress as and make songs about zombies.  What it says on the tin.

Honorable Mention:  From Mystery Science Theater 300 alumni, RiffTrax sells MP3s, VOD, and does live shows making fun of movies of all kinds.  They also put an album of songs based on some of the movies they have riffed.  One of the tracks on it is Zombie Mambo, it lists some great reasons to go zombie.

Top 10 Anime Music List

Anime (animation from Japan) invokes a lot of passion from people who watch it.  So of course some turn this passion into music.  Here is my top 10 list of music inspired from anime.  Songs and albums about a specific series or two.  This does not listen soundtracks, cover songs, or songs about general life as an anime fan.

1. Adam Warrock and Neo-Tokyo, his album about Akira, the classic movie based on one of the greatest comic series ever.  He also has songs on Gurren Lagann and Evangelion.

2. Beth Kinderman has Heavy as Stone about Fullmetal Alchemist and Vash’s Song about Trigun.  Slower and sadder than rest on this list.

3. The Man Power has a song about one of the hottest women in anime Fujiko from Lupin III.

4. Maja and his Bleach album Bleach’d Out was one of the first nerdcore albums I ever listen too.  Remixed music of Bleach and smooth raps.

5. Tom Smith wrote two songs about Death Note.  The first one is Who the F @#$ is Matt, about a short-lived character in the anime who still gets lots of fangirls (not child safe) and the second one he wrote while sick and he got both Death Note and Dr. Horrible’s Sing Along Blog.

6. Area 11 is a British band who’s first album, All The Lights In The Sky, features 11 songs, with 6 of them having a reference to an anime: two songs for Code Geass, one for Elfen Lied, one for Death Note, one for Cowboy Bebop and one for Gurren Lagan.  They have done more since then too.

7. Richie Branson, know for his Toonami rap, did an album about one of the most popular Gundam series, Gundam Wing.  He has another one, Otaku Tuesdays, about various other series.

8.Ever wanted an album that contained a bunch of songs about Speed Racer on different genres and artists with some tracks from the original soundtrack?  Ok so no one wanted this till it was created, but here it is Speed Racer: The Soundtrack.

9. Mikal kHill‘s, of the Thought Criminals, album with Romero Shaw, dust, has a track about Big O called R. Dorothy Wayneright.  An almost love song from Roger to Dorothy.

10. If you are a fan of Dragonball Z or thought it was pretty stupid than I suggest checking out That Darn Anime by Flying Like Wilma.

Honorable Mention goes to Luke Ski and his song Anime Fan with Carrie Dahlby.  A huge list of various animes get named drop through out the song.  Also check out this cool AMV for it.

 

 

Slytherin House Mixtape Review

Adam Warrock has rapped about many topics in the past, lots of comic book stuff, webcomics, Firefly, individuality, unity, not watching Doctor Who, and more.  His latest project, produced by Mikal kHill of Thought Criminals, tackles Harry Potter in the Slytherin House Mixtape.  The album uses remixes from the Harry Potter movie soundtracks with original lyrics.

The album was delayed a few times, with hard drive crashes, laptop stolen, and being busy with other projects. Worth the wait though.   The album features Tribe One, Sulfur of the Thought Criminals, Ceschi Ramos, and Dr. Awkward.  The songs cover various topics of the Potterverse from a Slytherin perspective.  Going over topics related to the house (Parseltongue, Ambition), members of it (Malfoys, House of Black),  or just stuff about the dark arts in general (Dark Mark, The Hallows).
Now personally I am not a big Potter fan.  Just never really got into it.  I have seen a few movies and my family who have read all the books and seen all the movies have told me stuff.  There are a few things in the songs I am able to pick up on, but true fans will have an easier time getting all the meanings.

The album has eleven tracks, the first one is audio from the Goblet of Fire when Voldermort is finally resurrected.  The other ten are all music.
My personal favorite track is Parseltongue, also the longest track.  Becoming evil to become powerful through dark underground classes.  Talks about how outcasts and the beaten can seek revenge.  Well that is my interpretation of it.
Wands Out, next favorite, continues on with this theme.  More about the unity of the house and how they deal with those that mess with one of their members.
The beats of the album are melodious.  Flowing along easily with a good tempo.  Lyrics play along with the beats.  Talks about the dark side, how people come to it and what they do with it.

You can get the whole thing for free at the Slytherin Mixtape website.  Something for any Potter fan or fan of good hip-hop in general.