Good Music Get! Kyle Bobby Dunn & Shank

We normally don’t post about music on Good Game Get! but Kyle Dunn contacted me and I felt the instrumental qualities of his pieces could easily lend themselves to video games. Coincidentally Andy wanted to post something music related too!

Kyle Bobby Dunn is a Brooklyn, NY resident and musician. Dunn’s primary musical aesthetic lies in minimalism, yet his scope is maximum. He seems to be able to effortlessly create sounding pieces that are warm, accessible, and never pretentious.

I’m a big fan of simple is better and in the case of Dunn’s arrangements, I’d have to say it holds true for his work.

Listening to one of my favorite songs of his, In Search of a Poetic Whole I really feel like a game developer should get with him as soon as possible to construct a soundtrack for a game. His art and vision are already at an incredible level, and I can only imagine that he is going to keep carefully accelerating towards even more beautiful work.

Words can only describe so much of the ethereal droning and soothing structure that Dunn creates - so I highly recommend giving his work a listen.

You can purchase his latest two disk greatness at Darla.

- Kyle

Shank, the ultra-violent side-scrolling tale of revenge from Klei Entertainment, was released onto the PSN and XBLA this week to mixed reviews. Looking over the reactions, it seems to have potential, but looks to suffer from issues of repetitive gameplay. I suppose that should be expected from a game that has you constantly moving to the right and stabbing dudes, but if that’s the kind of game you like, I’m sure you’ll like Shank.

I can say the same thing about Shank’s soundtrack, also released this week and free to stream or download at the Shank website. I’ve been listening to it all morning and enjoying it’s sharp percussion, smokey acoustics and electric guitar riffs that sizzle like rope-burns. Clearly musicians Vince de Vera & Jason Garner of Vancouver, the creative duo behind this collection, are big fans of the soundtracks of Quentin Tarantino films and similarly moody, Tex-Mex rock.

Like the game, this music won’t be for everyone, but it’s a nice addition to any video game soundtrack collection and worth the time it takes to check it out.

- Andy

good music get! kanye west - 808s & heartbreak

It’s said that when Kanye was writing, producing, and rapping for his debut album, The College Dropout, that record companies initially felt that he wasn’t marketable as a rapper because he didn’t portray the “street culture” in his music enough. Interestingly enough, the first song on Kanye’s first album is about selling drugs to get by, even though Kanye has probably never had to sell drugs to make it.

So did Kanye create a fake image for himself to be marketable? Not necessarily but close, as he has a few single songs that must have been created for the sake of appearing to be “hard” to his audience and I suppose his contemporaries, although I’d whole-heartedly say that his production values dwarf most of the typical crap his “friends” produce.

In The College Dropout, Kanye heavily bashes the conception that college is an essential part of life and necessary for being successful. It’s apparent that West hates the educational process and especially paying for it. When Kanye dropped out of college, he had one goal and that was to make as much money as possible producing and rapping.

His dream came true as he’s an extremely wealthy today, and I’m sure he worked hard for it. However, it’s clear that Kanye wasn’t as socially conscience as he could have been about his music, and even clearer that Kanye regrets some of the songs he’s produced.

I can back these claims by simply asking you to listen to Kanye’s new album; 808s & Heartbreak as Kanye lost his Mother to plastic surgery and he broke it of with his fiance all in the same year he was making the album. While you could say that plenty of other people have faced much more pain than Kanye, you can’t ever measure pain based on how much pain you perceive someone to be in. Kanye may be famous and he may have done and said some jack ass things in his past, but one thing is for sure, Kanye is undoubtedly human and these tragedies have heavily effected his music.

Kanye doesn’t rap on the new record and he doesn’t use any expletives. He uses a controversial auto-tuner to modify his voice and most of the percussion on the album is done with tribal time signatures. West even utilizes entire string accompaniments throughout 808s & Heartbreak and almost every song has the auto-tuner adjusted.

Sonically the album is almost perfect as his production and instrumentation are some of the best he’s ever done. Lyrically, Kanye has never shined, but when he sings things like, “My friend showed me pictures of his kids/ All I had was pictures of my cribs”, you can’t help but feel empathy towards the man since he’s cursing his past vanity. Kanye even touches base on how terrible he feels about focusing on the wrong things in life and how much he regrets not spending time with the important things versus the material and lustful.

The album is an incredible accomplishment in Kanye’s career and even though comparatively speaking it’s a commercial and critical failure standing up against Kanye’s first three records, it doesn’t matter, because for the first time in Kanye’s career he produced music for no one other than himself and he has undoubtedly created his best album yet.

It’s a pop album about heartbreak, and it’s one of the best. Kanye has crafted something special and one can only hope that dismal records sales don’t sway West from creating from the heart again.