Opinions Enter the House of Flame: January 2010

Wednesday, January 20, 2010

Magic and Music: Step Links

Magic and Music: Vorosh (Green-Blue-Black)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81275/

For my last trick, I unveil Vorosh. There are very few differences between this one and Teneb as an album, except for the slight differences between white and blue. In other words, this album's a lot more focused on beat, pulse, and the electronics of it all, while white allows for more acoustic textures in its Golgari-type musings. There's also a large black Simic component to this one. Enjoy.

Global Communication - 4:02
Future Sound of London - Lifeforms (Path 3)
Order in Chaos - Dismiss Space, Science
Mystical Sun - Innerworld
Deep Forest - Deep Forest
Opus III - Outside
Blu Mar Ten - Coloratura
Future Sound of London - Cascade (Part 1)
Bassic - Precipitation
Joachim Spieth - You Don't Fool Me
The Orb - Montagne D'Or (Der Gute Berg)

Magic and Music: Numot (Red-White-Blue)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81270/

Primarily red Azorius and white Izzet, Numot has a weird but orderly time of it. The beats may be passionate, but they're in their place, the way Boros would want them; it's just that Numot adds blue to make it techy rather than military-y. This compilation's a bit more hodgepodge genrewise than several of these, but it's all right; blue-red combos don't care about such things.

BT is the ultimate in Numotocity, and he proves it with "The Internal Locus" off the immensely colorful This Binary Universe.

Biosphere - Phantasam
(Mega Man) - Electrolytic Man
Plaid - Squance
BT - Ride
Black Dog - Seers and Sages
Blu Mar Ten - The Feeling (Remix)
Deadly Avenger - Deep Red
BT - The Internal Locus
Plaid - Headspin
Way Out West - Sequoia
Aphex Twin - Come to Daddy (Little Lord Faulteroy Mix Version) [just to begin and end the album with weird child voice songs]

Magic and Music: Teneb (Black-Green-White)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81274/

This wedge is the most balanced across its combinations of green Orzhov, white Golgari, and black Selesnya, consequently feeling complete. That said, it suffers from the same issues one would have listening to Golgari or Selesnya; not a lick of excitement (without blue's oddities or red's passion, what do you get?). But its mood is spot-on, and it's perfect for a wintry night.

(Secret of Mana) - Pure Lands
Marco Torrance - Real Love
Leftfield - Black Flute
Susumu Yokota - Soft Tone
Mystical Sun - 7 Generations --> Ceremony
Opus III - Guru Mother --> Cozyland
Underworld - To Heal
Banco de Gaia - Maya
Kraftwerk - Mitternacht
Opus III - Stars in My Pocket
Durutti Column - Requiem for Mother

Magic and Music: Intet (Blue-Red-Green)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81267/

This is one of my favorite lists, for although it doesn't really have a strong flavor Magically or musically, it holds up well as a compilation. Like the Simic, the biggest issue with compiling is that you have neither white nor black; all moods must be firmly in the middle. It's almost all green Izzet and red Simic, as blue Gruul is one of the most antithetical combinations around (though "Lush 3.1" pulls it off). I think of the five wedges, this is the one that most feels like it's the colors it is. If I asked you, "this CD is made of three Magic colors - what are they?", you'd probably do a fine job at getting them. This one surprised me with its high quality, I'm proud to say.

BT - Divinity
Underworld - Banstyle/Sappys Curry
Amon Tobin - Nightlife
808 State - Doctors and Nurses
Orbital - Lush 3.1
Hybrid - Beachcoma
Susumu Yokota - A Slowly Fainting Memory of Love and Respect, and Hatred
Underworld - Please Help Me

Magic and Music: Oros (White-Black-Red)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81271/

The wedges have their flavor defined entirely by the Apocalypse expansion and the Planar Chaos dragons. That's not much to go on, so I just named them for the dragons and did my three-part breakdown to make compilations. As a whole, I think you'd say for each one that they feel like their colors, even if those colors don't have a unifying theme Magically.

As I've mentioned, to me Oros's colors are the traditional gaming music, so this one will have the most immediate appeal to playgroups trying this sort of thing out. VNV Nation is an Oros-themed band, and Dream Theater likely is too, both as white Rakdos, which predominates this collection over black Boros and red Orzhov (both being guilds I had a hard time with). It's probably the most-supported wedge aside from Numot (red-white-blue), who gets BT, Plaid, and the like.

Dream Theater - Stream of Consciousness
Spock's Beard - Thoughts
VNV Nation - Kingdom
Hybrid - If I Survive
Blu Mar Ten - Last Dance
VNV Nation - Dark Angel
Eisbrecher - Mein Blut
Porcupine Tree - Anesthetize

Magic and Music: Naya (Red-Green-White)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81277/

To my surprise, this compilation turned out very nicely. Made with 2 cups white Gruul to 1 cup each of red Selesnya and green Boros, there are many exotic instruments thrown around a Gruul/Selesnya frame to create a feeling of jungly goodness. Of the various compilations, this is one of the best for feeling like you're truly in the place for which it's named. I can see Naya springing up around me with this one. (The Dimir and Simic are my other top ones for this.)

If you want a study in color contrasts, check out "Ten-Day Interval" here v. its cousin "Four-Day Interval" on Jund.

The list:

Brand X - Sun in the Night
Banco de Gaia - How Much Reality Can You Take?
Way Out West - One Bright Night
Ashley MacIsaac - Sophia's Pipes
Jaga Jazzist - Animal Chin
Genesis - Wot Gorilla?
Days of the New - Skeleton Key
Tortoise - Ten-Day Interval
Steve Hackett - Ace of Wands
Jamiroquai - Didjerama
Ashley MacIsaac - MacDougall's Pride
Genesis - The Cinema Show

Magic and Music: Jund (Black-Red-Green)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81269/

Most of you could build a better Jund playlist than this; I don't care for it much. I like the shard all right; I just didn't have the stuff to make a good list. Again, it's my library's general lack of red music. Jund is made of:

Red Golgari (passionate jungly death)
Black Gruul (blood and gore in the darkness)
Green Rakdos (paranoid evil with leaves?)

And it all combines to make a compilation a bit less speedy and exciting than I wanted. Ah well.

(Secret of Mana) - On the Day the World Changed
(Legend of Zelda) - Fear of Sufferance
Future Sound of London - My Kingdom (Part 1)
Peter Gabriel - Passion
Amon Tobin - Bridge
Durutti Column - Mello, Pt. 2 --> Lisboa
Tortoise - I Set My Face to the Hillside --> Four-Day Interval
Safri Duo - Snakefood

Magic and Music: Grixis (Blue-Black-Red)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81265/

I had a hard time making this one cohere. I expected this one to be more blue Rakdos than anything, but instead it's black Izzet (and barely red Dimir). So it's crazy first, dark second; based on the flavor of unearth and all the death going around, I would have preferred my collection giving me more black-centered songs, but it wasn't meant to be. The flavor of Grixis always seemed big-picture death things rather than something you could pinpoint the way you could with Bant or Esper. The compilation suffers as a result, but it's far from bad; it just doesn't do it for me the way its component two-color combos do. Maybe you'll disagree.

Side note: Blu Mar Ten's contribution here may be the only five-color song in existence. It's here in part because the album needed help and in part because its bassline is so very Grixis, but...it's Fusion Elemental. Or Karona, the False God.

Underworld - Pearls Girl
(Shadowgate) - Mystic Piano
Leftfield - Phat Planet
Hybrid - Kill City
Blu Mar Ten - By the Time My Light Reaches You I'll Be Gone
Fluke - Kitten Moon
VNV Nation - Strata --> Interceptor
808 State - Souflex
Autechre - Eutow --> Teartear

Magic and Music: Esper (White-Blue-Black)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81263/

My music library skews Esper anyway; this wasn't hard for me at all. The Esper wanted to turn themselves to artifacts to be immortal, so they mechanized themselves as much as is feasible. Let's see...music that sounds as mechanistic as is feasible? Yep, got that under control. It's important for flavor, however, to note that the Esper largely were humans who made the choice to do this to themselves. There's an emotion, even if it's a cold one, in choosing to be part-machine, and this separates the Esper from their brethren in Mirrodin who were in fact machines. There's color to these artifacts (literally), and so while their ideal world is machine, there's a human side that shouldn't be overlooked. This is how the final song, Cardamar's "Steam," justifies its presence on the disc. Esper wasn't where machines ran everything; it's where humans ran machines. I'm repeating myself, but it changes what music you throw together out of the loads of techno that feasibly could be Esper.

The order is:
White Dimir (ordered, precise, and dark)
Black Azorius (explains itself)
Blue Orzhov (only one song like that on here; hard to define)

Autechre - Clipper
Orbital - Spare Parts Express
Sasha - Xpander
Black Dog - EVP Echoes
Autechre - C. Pach
Black Dog - Dada Minstab
Underworld - Mama Nuxx Jam
Mocean Worker - Intothinair
Sasha - Bloodlock
Cardamar - Steam

Magic and Music: Bant (Green-White-Blue)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81261/

Now we come to the shards. Since some three-color things already were on the guild ones, these are 60 to 64 minutes long instead of 70 to 74. It's harder to find three-color songs than two-color, but they're often richer and therefore more fun.

You can approach a three-color compilation in a couple of ways. You can do like they actually did to make Shards of Alara and define the three colors together by what two colors aren't there. You can go by the uncommon Shards lands (I found this approach unproductive). Or you can do the additive method: taking the principles that made the guild mixes and finding songs that shade toward a third color enough to where they "round up" into the shard or wedge. The last one's probably the most practical if you're trying to do one of these with your collection, because if you're like me, your collection skews to a couple of guilds anyway. It's also the easiest to categorize them by that third method, so I recommend it. This is most helpful when making the wedges, as Magic's given them no flavor save for the Apocalypse expansion and the Planar Chaos dragons.

On to Bant...Bant's flavor is noble military, which seems to skew it toward red-white when you play with it. Wizards has admitted that Bant's signature card, Finest Hour, just felt Bant even though its ability is red. You run into the same problem making a Bant compilation; how do you make it sound all Exalted without turning it into Boros 2.0? The trick is to focus on two areas: the smoothness in the electronic rhythms (what Azorius prefers, which is as far away from red as possible), and the organic sounds (emphasizing the green). By the three-part breakdown, you get the combinations below; for this and all other shards/wedges, I'll list them by their prominence on my compilation, most frequent to least frequent.

Blue Selesnya (dancing hippies)
Green Azorius (natural order)
White Simic (experimenting on nature but only releasing the orderly bits)

Blu Mar Ten's Black Water album is the Bantiest thing I've heard.

So it all leads to this:

Blu Mar Ten - Black Water
Delerium - Silence (Sanctuary Mix)
Bassic - Tranquility Bass
Cardamar - Start
Banco de Gaia - Last Train to Lhasa
(Secret of Mana) - Fear of the Flava
BT - The Road to Lostwithiel
(Gauntlet) - GAUNTLET!!
Blu Mar Ten - Ghost Trio --> Turtle Beach
Chicane - Saltwater

Magic and Music: Simic (Green-Blue)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81273/

This is one of my top 5 compilations flavor-wise, and it's one of the most important to me, as it's my belief that blue and green are the two most ignored colors for gamers' playlists since they're the two least inclined to power, rawkin', and all those things that many gamers like about gaming.

The Simic were about improving on nature with technology; this calls for a rather specific group of songs. A lot of the environmentally-oriented techno works here (esp. if it's got an aquatic motif, given that we're discussing Islands). Warp's seminal Artificial Intelligence compilation set off a wave of excellent music, a good chunk of which was green. Global Communication's 76:14 album is quintessentially green-blue; one of its flagship songs is on here. It's a narrow mood (it can be tricky to find songs that are neither light nor dark in mood), but if you can put all the songs together, it makes for a powerful compilation.

Mystical Sun - Blue Magnetic Ocean
(Donkey Kong Country) - Blue Vision
Plaid - Gel Lab
Susumu Yokota - The Loneliness of Anarchic Beauty Achieved by My Ego
Global Communication - 9:25
B12 - Interim
BT - Embracing the Future --> Poseidon
B12 - Telefone 529
Bassic - E-World
Xerxes - Cell Progression

Magic and Music: Boros (Red-White)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81251/

The Boros compilation was one of the most difficult, and I'm not usually in the mood for it (although some are keen on it). The way I framed white and red music, combining them was like saying a did not equal a, but it came through eventually. As I don't own any military music or the Gladiator soundtrack, I had to scrounge a bit, but the main theme is mixing white's orderly songwriting and clean production with Red's tempo and loud, propulsive beats (like military music, the Boros set has the loudest snares of the compilations.) How well it coheres, I don't know, but there are plenty of great individual moments all through here, and it's a good album to pump you up without feeling all metal/dark.

Mu-Ziq - Scaling
UltraMax - Arwen's Song (Galadriel)
Way Out West - The Gift
Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke - Tempest [at least Gerrard was the female voice on the Gladiator soundtrack]
VNV Nation - Electronaut
Bassic - Instigator
Doves - Crunch
Way Out West - Spaceman
Hybrid - We Are in Control
Ken Ishii - Dinosaur.R
(Jackal) - Mounted-Machine Gun Funk
Blu Mar Ten - If I Could Tell You
Durutti Column - Meschugana

Magic and Music: Golgari (Black-Green)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81264/

Like the Orzhov or the Selesnya, the Golgari's premise is
translated easily into music: where death meets life. The
angle I took for them is creeping lush soundscapes, sort of
"When Nature Documentaries Go Awry." This concept already
has an amazing album behind it, Future Sound of London's
"Lifeforms," but dark acoustic/tribal music can work here,
highlighting the difference between Gruul and Golgari in the
process (Gruul's red makes that nature talk about passion,
while Golgari's black channels it into darkness.)

As I found out when making the Teneb (BGW) and Vorosh (GUB)
compilations, I'm in a black-green mood a lot when I'm
contemplative; this means I have a lot of music for it. This
was a simple one to put together, but it may be too...bland
for some. Unless you like darkness, this is a pretty
downtempo, late-night collection. I'm in that mood a lot, so
it works for me, but your mileage may vary even if you agree
that it's undeniably black-green.

Future Sound of London - Lifeforms (Path 1)
Hybrid - I Choose Noise
Future Sound of London - Papua New Guinea
The Orb - Oxbow Lakes
Future Sound of London - Dead Skin Cells
Delerium - Flowers Become Screens
Porcupine Tree - Lips of Ashes
Genesis - Entangled
Electric Skychurch - Limp
Susumu Yokota - The Destiny of the Little Bird Trapped Inside
a Small Cage for Life
Deep Forest - The First Twilight
Leftfield - Rino's Prayer

Magic and Music: Izzet (Blue-Red)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81268/

I'm proud of the Izzet list for its nuance. Izzet music is misunderstood, much like the guild itself. While the guild appeared outwardly to be insane geniuses, they had many highly competent fellows in there; Chronarchs, Dragonauts, and Niv-Mizzet all knew exactly what they were doing and were brutal to deal with. It's the same with their music. Oh, you could say that a bunch of weird techno for 70 minutes could count as a guild album, but that's not really how it works either. The Izzet were passionate about knowledge and loved to express it in whatever way was available. The Izzet loved knowledge for its own sake. In that vein, their music should be extraverted, in-your-face blue. "We have technology and this song is cool because it's complex and technological." That leaves room for the occasional oddity, but extraverted bluism is what should predominate, and that doesn't have to be kitschy or unsettling.

BT early in his career was green/white/blue. Now he's red/white/blue. If you know much of his career, it will show you the competent side of red-blue that I think best represents Izzet. Boards of Canada's Geogaddi album is about as blue-red as it comes, with shades of green.

BT - Orbitus Teranium
Thomas Fehlmann - I Wanna Be a Fishy
Underworld - Cowgirl
Aphex Twin - Polynomial-C
Cardamar - Tears of a Man Who Never Cried
Underworld - Puppies
Boards of Canada - Dandelion --> 1969
Underworld - Deep Arch
The Orb - A Huge Evergrowing Pulsating Brain that Rules from the Centre of the Ultraworld

Magic and Music: Orzhov (White-Black)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81253/ (Playlist complete)

The enemy pairings are a little bit more difficult to nail than the allied ones because of the color hole between them. For example, with the Orzhov you're hitting a lot of Azorius and Dimir artists, except that they can't have any of the blue bits in the song. That's not always easy to find, but fortunately the Orzhov are one of the easiest to patch together, because light and dark, hauntings, and sacred grounds (or Godless Shrines as the case may be) are common musical themes. Like the Selesnya, the Orzhov are easy to understand; it's just making their music cohere that proved to be difficult. Most of the music on here is reverently dark, as you'd expect, but the thing that makes most of it go together is that it's slooooow. Unless the song so exhibits light and darkness to the extent that the Orzhov will accept it on that basis, the songs need to be church-paced to feel reverential of the area it's covering.

Fortunately, just as the guild would have ethereal, God-sounding music, so it also would have more vocals than the average compilation; a church implies people. Several Dead Can Dance songs could show up on here, but Anywhere Out of the World defines the guild best. Porcupine Tree, a true Orzhov band, shows up prominently here too. (It's that white element that lets me like them, as opposed to several proggy metallic bands who have too much red.) I don't know how well the compilation holds together, but there are plenty of good songs on it.

Black Dog - Biomantric Life
Dead Can Dance - Anywhere Out of the World
Aphex Twin - Icct Hedral
Lisa Gerrard & Pieter Bourke - Pilgrimage of Lost Children
Bassic - Tech Demon
Black Dog - Witches Ov
Porcupine Tree - 'Light Mass Prayers' --> Gravity Eyelids
Hybrid - Blackout
UltraMax - Beauty of My Inner World
VNV Nation - Rubicon
Hybrid - Finished Symphony

Tuesday, January 19, 2010

Magic and Music: Selesnya (Green-White)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81252/

Hippie nature lovers...I mean, the Selesnya, are all about nature, like the Gruul are. But where the Gruul like it hot, the Selesnyites are about the calmer side of nature. My comment on red improvising while white writes its songs on sheet music applies most directly to the Gruul-Selesnya divide; while Selesnya contemplates life and nature, Gruul wonders what contemplation is.

Of the guilds, the Selesnya compilation is one of the easiest to understand: calm, primarily acoustic music, preferably with female vocals. Green has enough passion to rear its head once and again (the Selesnya did bring us Autochthon Wurm, after all), but it's tempered by the order of white at all times.

Here come the hippies:

BT - Firewater
Bassic - Sunbound
BT - Tripping the Light Fantastic
Chicane - Low Sun
Blu Mar Ten - Home Videos
Susumu Yokota - For the Other Self Who Is Far Away That I Can Not Reach
Dead Can Dance - Cantara
Genesis - Horizons
Steve Hackett - Hands of the Priestess, Part 1
Lisa Gerrard and Pieter Bourke - Forest Veil
Deep Forest - Sweet Lullaby
Delerium - Nature's Kingdom
Cardamar - Nic'nik
Delerium - Aria

Magic and Music: Gruul (Red-Green)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81266/

The Gruul would find this introductory sentence too long. Smashing things with big things is all Gruul likes to do, all day and every day, and the more passionately one can smash, the better. In particular, the Gruul distrust artifice, preferring to get all their rage out on natural instruments and thus separating themselves from the claustrophile Rakdos. The jazz-fusion instrumentals of Genesis are a good touchstone here; Genesis, a fairly green-white band overall, ventured into red whenever Phil Collins got a hold of instrumental passages (the Gruul love drums, especially the greenness of tribal drums/percussion). Though the idea of prog rock is kinda complex for a Gruul mind, theirs is a world of feel, and if the long instrumental feels right, then it is right. The sound of musicians letting 'er rip gets the Gruul all happy, and here's to them with the following songs:

Peter Gabriel - The Rhythm of the Heat
Phil Collins - Droned
Genesis - '...In That Quiet Earth'
Easily Embarrassed - Little Trees and Mysteries
Juno Reactor - Pistolero
Banco de Gaia - Obsidian
Susumu Yokota - The Scream of a Sage Who Lost Freedom and Love Taken for Granted Before
Banco de Gaia - Creme Egg
Terrestre - Eita-Leitale
Brand X - Malaga Virgen
Porcupine Tree - Tinto Brass
Genesis - Los Endos

Tuesday, January 12, 2010

Magic and Music: Rakdos (Black-Red)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81272/

The Rakdos were hellbent on many things, hence their ability word. Dark and destructive, they sought power and they sought it passionately. Anyone who's played with Rakdos the Defiler or Anthem of Rakdos knows how this works. Accordingly, dark passion is bubbling all through this compilation. Many Magic players are conditioned by video games and nerd tastes to put black-red music as game-playing background anyway, so this isn't much of a leap here. Progressive rock instrumentals (which usually are more passionately delivered than lyriced ones) and the frenzied end of drum'n'bass sit remarkably well together on this compilation.

The Rakdos go even more nuts when they hear these:

Blu Mar Ten - Grey Area
Underworld - Pearls Girl (Tin There)
Spock's Beard - Skeletons at the Feast
Riverside - Reality Dream III
Porcupine Tree - Wedding Nails
(Super Mario Bros.) - Bowser Is Ticked
Blu Mar Ten - Clipjoint
Cardamar - Depths of Communication
VNV Nation - Entropy
Blu Mar Ten - Close (VIP)
VNV Nation - Descent
Eisbrecher - Polarstern
Gary Numan - Asylum
Dream Theater - Panic Attack

Friday, January 8, 2010

Magic and Music: Dimir (Blue-Black)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81255

The largely underground Dimir barely revealed to the world of Ravnica that it even was a guild, preferring secrecy and stealth in all their actions. Watery Grave does a nice job of conveying this, although the uncommon land Duskmantle, House of Shadows gives the Dimir game away as well. The album, pretty obviously, is going to be a dark one, although unlike black-red it won't be fast, and unlike black-red it necessarily features electronica.

The easiest way of conveying an underground feel musically is to keep all the notes low - literally looking underground if you had sheet music. That may sound odd at first, but considering how high strings and vocalists give an ethereal feel to white, black sitting on the other side of blue can flip that around to get what it wants. There's a sense of subversion to blue-black, and this compilation is trying to get that across.

(Before posting, a note on vocals. The first song on here has, amazingly enough, appropriate lyrics for the guild, although I chose it for its music. You could make lyrically themed compilations for the guilds and shards; I just went with music ones. I also tried to stay away from vocal songs unless the mood so fit the guild that I had to include the song. It's amazing how easily one or two vocal tracks can derail the flow of several instrumentals, so where possible I've kept compilations instrumental.)

The Dimir love the following:

Hybrid - Choke
Sasha - Immortal
Autechre - Foil
Black Dog - 4.7.8.
Cardamar - Capacity (How Much Can You Take?)
Underworld - Winjer
Leftfield - Swords
Blu Mar Ten - Above Words
Hybrid - Gravastar --> Marrakech
Aphex Twin - Blue Calx
Black Dog - Skin Clock
Sasha - Boileroom

Thursday, January 7, 2010

Magic and Music: Azorius (White-Blue)

http://www.lala.com/#memberplaylist/47893P81260/

Going around the color wheel, our first stop is at the highly legalist Azorius. Because the Azorius weren't that well-designed (only 9 Forecast cards and most of them bad), their true flavor is somewhat obscured. This is the beauty of going off dual lands for initial inspiration; they give the barest, bonesiest info you can find. And in this case, it helps a lot. Hallowed Fountain was not the flavor I got from cards like Grand Arbiter Augustin IV or Overrule, but it implies that this lawmaking and rules lawyering is somewhat about serving a higher purpose.

To that end, the Azorius compilation is about a few main ideas:

- Maintaining order (everything's measured, especially on the beat - too many frills and it's red, the shared enemy color)
- Clean and pristine production (a white value combined with blue's technology)
- High strings (as opposed to deep bass, which blue likes okay but is more of a black tendency)

So most of the Azorius will be the ethereal/chilly end of trance, with some room for ambient tracks that advance that cold feeling. There may be some warmth on the hallowed end of it, but as the Azorius were generally cold and distant, so should the album feel the same way.

Before listing the album, a few notes about presentation of songs. Artists in parentheses are actually OCRemix-submitted arrangements of the video game listed in parentheses. Many of the names are weird, long, and altogether unhelpful, so the video game is more instructive, with the caveat that I'm not lifting the game versions themselves. Also, if the same artist has consecutive songs on the album, I'll list both songs on one line separated by a --> . Many times, the songs go together on their initial album in the first place. It's just easier to post it that way.

Last, but not least, the most archetypal songs of the guild/wedge/shard will be in bold. If you're truly interested in the album, YouTubing these will give you the best encapsulation of the concept.

Here it is - the Azorius album:

Orbital - One Perfect Sunrise
Sasha - Mr. Tiddles --> Magnetic North
Electric Skychurch - Creation
BT - Giving Up the Ghost
Black Dog - UV Sine
BT - Rose of Jericho
Chicane - Andromeda
Blu Mar Ten - Brother
Gus Gus - Detention
C&M - Dream Universe (16B Still Waters Symphony Mix)
Sasha - Wavy Gravy

If you know any others that you think might fit, feel free to list them. Depending on if I agree, I might buy them just to make the compilations better.

Wednesday, January 6, 2010

Magic and Music: Intro and the Color Pie

Early in 2009, I made guild mix CDs for my Magic: the Gathering playgroup, and they turned out to be a hit. I’ve updated them a few times, and in the process learned a lot about how Magic translates into other fields. If you’re like me and fascinated by music theory as well as the Magic color pie, then you’ll enjoy this discussion; if not, you’ll wonder what in the world I’m talking about.

Before I get into specific CDs, it’s important to know where I’m coming from on how Magic colors relate to music. If you’ve seen one of those big fold-out things for new Magic players, where it discusses the philosophy of each color, then you’ll recognize me doing the same procedure for music.

While technically I didn’t start here – since my aim was Ravnica guild albums, I looked at their rare dual lands as the two-word encapsulations of their ideals – behind the best of my song inclusions was a nod to these color philosophies. This worked for my collection, which is about half rock and half electronica; depending on what you have, you may want to fit these ideas to your collection.

Without further ado:

WHITE

In Magic: White loves order and defense. Many of their emblems are sun/light related, with their concepts favoring good over evil.

In music: There are many sunny songs out there, and many of those are fairly well-ordered (i.e. opposed to chaos). So, white manifests itself in these ways:

Writing: Without a doubt, white composers plan their entire song before performing it. It’s written on sheet music to the last detail, with nary a stray note to be heard. To do less would grate on white’s sense of order. Everything is in its right place.

Arrangement: The most important thing to a white arranger is structure – cleanliness would be an appropriate term. They can tell you why a thing is where it is, and they hate the soundfield cluttered with random or too many sounds. This often applies to the beat especially, which is preferred crisp and predictable.

White is also a sucker for high strings and similar pads, as it reminds of ascension and triumph. The ethereal and angelic are highly prized, and a light touch in the arrangement can work wonders in making the white listener feel at home.

Performance: On simple songs, white may be fine with performing live, but sees the real creative entity as the song, an abstraction outside the creator. Once the perfect take is recorded, that’s the song forevermore. White sees no reason to deviate from perfection once attained, so live performances aren’t particularly exciting.

Why White isn’t the other colors:

Blue: White and blue share a love for order and pristine condition, but blue music is much more likely to experiment for its own academic sake (white finds that it messes with good things too often) and pursue technological advances at the risk of losing the song inside.
Black: White and black differ on the value of the ethereal, obviously. This is one of the easiest to understand in Magic, music, and all of life.
Red: Red’s love of passion and feeling swallow white’s ordered tendencies whole.
Green: White and green share a love of nature (nature is highly ordered, after all), but for green it is essential to be organic and show that you’re alive, whereas white tends to subvert feelings and expression somewhat. White also doesn’t know why green tends to shun modern development when it could express its ideas better with technology.

An example of a white artist: Dead Can Dance is the easiest example of a white music outlook. Trance is largely white-blue; English folk music is green-white.

BLUE

In Magic: Artifice. Intelligence. The academic. Isolation. Water.

In music: There is no blue rock music. (If there is, it’s heavily experimental stuff. Peter Gabriel, Tortoise, Wayne Coyne, and Kid A-era Radiohead are possible blue rockers, but even that’s up for debate.) Blue simply does not understand why rock artists would limit themselves to a few instruments; it does not compute.

Writing: The use of technology is understood as the only way to write. Why wouldn’t you lean on the best devices at your disposal? This lends a degree of academic experimentation to the proceedings; blue songwriters are the ones most likely to be considered “out there,” even if it makes perfect sense in their bizarre universe. Like white, blue has a tendency to lay everything out, but blue also has no problem following wherever the technology takes it, as the most creative works come out of the strangest places. Asymmetrical time signatures are favored as a means of exploring the complex and the unique.

Arrangement: Blue arrangements are the most technically proficient of any color, as the production is as or more important than the core song itself. (The other colors tend not to get this about blue.) Blue producers may layer parts countless times, or send the mix through a weird effect, or any number of seemingly leftfield things that become an intellectual triumph.

Performance: White doesn’t feel the need to do anything live because the composition’s there on paper or in the recording. For blue, the recording’s production values and quirky elements are of massive importance, so blue rarely performs either. Blue’s songs tend to have no point live, as the production’s gone.

Why blue isn’t the other colors:

White: Blue and white can get together on several projects, but when blue starts talking all techy, white tunes out, talking to green about a more natural project or sympathizing with enemy red on how annoying blue’s technology jones is. White will work on the melody line while blue will create weird sounds from nowhere, and if they find the other’s work pointless, they can’t work together.
Black: Blue and black create many a dark, scary mood when they collaborate, but it’s that sense of mood that also drives them apart. Blue figures the mood will come from the production, while black is far too easily attracted by any dark object, according to blue at least. When blue is feeling especially academic, creating a dark mood is just too easy, and it’s here where the colors converge.
Red: Red is far too impatient to work with the methodical, experimental blue on a regular basis. Much like white’s problem with red, blue stares at red’s passion with bewilderment, wondering how red gets anything done with that impulsiveness. Red has a similar disdain.
Green: Green has this nature obsession and a love of the organic that blue feels went out with yesterday’s news. To blue, green can accomplish very little new with that mindset. Blue feels held back by green in a number of ways, and green sees no point getting together with a navel-gazing freak.

An example of a blue artist: Aphex Twin sometimes gets into other colors, but he’s about as blue as they come. His crazy stuff is more than blue, but if you consider his ambient works as well, he’s a blue songwriter to the core. Trance is white-blue, but sometimes blue-black depending on the artist. Many other electronic forms are blue-black because of their dark undertones, though if it’s too passionate it will be black-red.

BLACK

In Magic: Ambition, darkness, and a general pall over the proceedings.

In music: Dark music is plentiful, and black loves it all, no matter what else is going on.

Writing: Black may be orderly or chaotic, but it’s all to the end of creating something menacing and powerful. In general, power dominates whatever black is doing. Muscular riffs, relentless rhythms, and an overall growl work just fine for black.

Arrangement: Still about darkness, though this can manifest itself different ways. Like white, black loves strings, but the point is to create unease, not ethereal tones. Black is unsure of major keys and anything deemed reflective music, relenting on the latter only when blue convinces black the song’s dark enough.

Performance: When black is allowed to set the mood of the venue, then black has no problem performing – it’s all about mood, so the song can be performed if the mood is right, regardless of how it sounded on the album version. Do not expect black to play Selesnya’s outdoor festivals anytime soon – stupid hippies taking all the power out of music. (Seemingly every discussion among teenagers about metal gets to whether it’s dark enough; this is a discussion on the blackness of the music.)

Why black isn’t the other colors:

White: They disagree on mood almost all the time. White wants to add this high strings bit, and black hates it because it furthers the wrong mood. There is common ground here, but that ground is always in a bit of mood tension.
Blue: Blue has the technology to fuel black’s desires effortlessly, but black is too obsessed with the desires to let blue experiment too much. Blue also is sometimes a little bit too just-so for black’s tastes, at which point black asks red for some chaotic goodness.
Red: Black is passionate like red, which makes them a good match most of the time. However, red’s passion, like blue’s academia, trips over itself constantly, and at that point black is like white, seeing no value in things pursued as an end unto themselves. Much as white tries to express the ethereal, black tries to express the evil, and red wastes a lot of energy along the way to that expression.
Green: Green normally likes things alive, while black prefers them dead. Like blue, black sees no reason for green to continue in its nature fantasy land, preferring like blue to mold things for its own benefit.

An example of a black artist: Massive Attack’s Mezzanine is a top-notch exploration of the color black, with the first track “Angel” being one of the ultimate anthems of the color. Leftfield’s Rhythm and Stealth is similarly helpful. As you might guess, a lot of trip-hop is black. Dark drum’n’bass and trance can be blue-black, as is deep house a lot of times. Metal and hard rock ordinarily are black-red. (Progressive metal ordinarily is black-red-white.)

RED

In Magic: The Unglued card Burning Cinder Fury of Crimson Chaos Fire sums it up right in the name.

In music: It’s all about passion and feeling. Jam sessions, loud beats, rawkin’ – all of the heart of red. This is the color that casual music fans understand the easiest, because so much popular music is dedicated to love songs and the visceral.

Writing: Red will bang on instruments for awhile and build a song off it. Red sees very little need for sheet music or forethought – you just have to catch the flow at the right moment. Like blue, red loves asymmetrical time signatures; but where blue loves them as academic exercises, red loves them because sometimes they just feel right. Did putting the jam in 7/8 speed up the song over 4/4? Then it was worth it. That said, red is suspicious of things getting too complex, preferring simple, direct statements at all times (hence its love of drums).

Arrangement: Loud is good. Sometimes the song can become subverted through loudness for its own sake; in this way it shares with blue a fascination of certain things for their own sake. Red is uncertain of modern instruments and technology, but will use them if someone can use them passionately.

Performance: It’s almost all about the performance; that’s where the pathos happens. In popular music culture, red music does the best job of promoting itself as a result. (If you’ve been to any coffeehouse live acoustic gigs, you’ve been attending a red-green performance.)

Why red isn’t the other colors:

White: One hides feelings; the other consists of feelings. That doesn’t bode well for a collaboration.
Blue: Red finds blue awfully chilly and detached. Why would anyone do that to themselves? With both enemy colors, red can’t stand that reserved sense it gets and moves on.
Black: Black has a definite passion, which red can get behind, but black’s passion is for darkness, and that can be expressed many ways, several of which red doesn’t like. As much as black loves showing its dominance externally (a very red way to do it), it also loves messing with the mind (a very blue way to do it), and red has to jump ship at that point.
Green: Simply, when nature is passionate and living large (large beasts and smashing things), red and green have a raucous jam. When nature is more reflective (small elves and growing things), red stands there puzzled why green would hang out with such fey partners as white.

An example of a red artist: Most items on the radio, any jam band, or percussion ensemble Stomp. Rock as a whole is red. Phish and its ilk are red-green. Nortec, the Mexican techno genre, surprisingly is red-green. It’s dance music, but the drum choices are usually organic, and most of the interesting elements are traditional Mexican instruments.

GREEN

In Magic: Nature and life in its many forms, be they small like Saprolings are large like Beasts. Green celebrates living and shuns the artifice that might hold that life back.

In music: Fairly well the same thing as in Magic. Not a whole lot of difference there.

Writing: Green’s style is straightforward – get outside, get inspired, and write. It’s a simple process. In contrast to black, green favors major keys, as they just sound happier.

Arrangement: The more natural the production sounds, the better. Acoustic instruments are preferred strongly, though green is appreciative of field recording and nature sampling. This also gets into red’s territory of liking drums, as drums can be played just about anywhere; tribal rhythms and percussion are always green. (If they’re fast, they’re also red.)

Performance: Get outside, get inspired, and play. Campfire sing-alongs are green. Also straightforward.

Why green isn’t the other colors:

White: White tends to hide itself every once and again, and its love of order sometimes makes its world too civilized and advanced for green’s simple, heartfelt tastes. If White could just get back to basics, it and green could hang out more often.
Blue: Blue’s love of knowledge and progress usually does so at the expense of green’s world. To green, blue appreciates nothing of the real world. How can it improve on the already beautiful?
Black: Like blue, black is too concerned with itself to appreciate anything good in life. Nature is meant to be loved and lived, not holed up for ambition. Black’s motivations are all wrong.
Red: The circle of life type of outlook gives green balance and harmony – traits that red abandons at the drop of a hat. Green and red get along well, but the chaos unnerves green severely.

An example of a green artist: Susumu Yokota allies freely with the other colors, but his core is green; the Love or Die album is green in every song. As you’d guess off Yokota, the organic side of ambient music is green; folk music is often green. The Canterbury progressive scene of the early ‘70s was green-white, much like the slower short pieces on Steve Hackett’s Voyage of the Acolyte. Yes drummer’s Bill Bruford’s distaste for the “twinkly bits” of prog would be the green-white sections. (He had tons of red in him, obviously.)

Hopefully, the foregoing has been clear enough to do the music color pie justice. In the next segment, I’ll cover a specific album, one entry at a time, until all 20 are done.

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