Category: Music

I think I’ve forgotten to Kasatochi everybody at any point in the past seven days. To make up for it, here’s a larger-than-usual EP celebrating that most wildly uneven and frequently banal decade of music… even though I’d like to think I got that decade whittled down to its best or most bizarre examples. Downlaod it for free and you can be the judge of that. … Read more

I’ve been meaning to post this for a few days, and just kept forgetting. The latest Kasatochi EP is a classic – no, seriously, classical. For your lo-res, lo-fi solar-system-exploring enjoyment, Kasatochi proudly presents the entirety of Holst’s The Planets. As chiptunes.

There are two different mixes of Neptune, The Mystic because I couldn’t figure out which one I liked best. I think Neptune, The Mystic is the soul of The Planets, and is quite simply one of the best and most beautiful pieces of music ever written. It’s kind of like an aural religious experience. So surely it couldn’t hurt to have Neptune times two, right?

Go into orbit around the dedicated Kasatochi page and download it for free.

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This “full album cover” has been in the works for ages – almost since the beginning of the whole Kasatochi project. I’m terribly fond of the original album and wound up having to sequence some of it myself.

01 – Wouldn’t It Be Nice
02 – You Still Believe in Me
03 – That’s Not Me
04 – Don’t Talk (Put Your Head on My Shoulder)
05 – I’m Waiting for the Day
06 – Let’s Go Away for Awhile
07 – Sloop John B
08 – God Only Knows
09 – I Know There’s An Answer
10 – Here Today
11 – I Just Wasn’t Made for These Times
12 – Pet Sounds
13 – Caroline No

Gotta love that cover. No, seriously: you are required to love it.

True confession: I had momentary crazy thoughts about making this the first Kasatochi download with vocals, because who doesn’t want to take a swipe at “God Only Knows”? I love singing it in the shower, at any rate. Fortunately for your ears, dear listener, a lack of time and a decent recording space won the day.

Get ye to the dedicated Kasatochi page and download it for free.

… Read more

The way the world’s going these days, does anything, in fact, make more sense than ’80s music run through the filter of ’80s video game systems? I think not. Therefore, here is the best Kasatochi ’80s EP yet.

1 – Africa
2 – Don’t You (Forget About Me)
3 – Every Little Thing She Does Is Magic
4 – Too Late For Goodbyes
5 – Somebody’s Baby
6 – I Ran
7 – Holiday Road
8 – Venus

I hope you dig the “Africa” cover especially. Very hard to get that song sounding authentic, in terms of either percussion or reverb. I was really jazzed about the results.

Venture forth to the dedicated Kasatochi page and download it all for free.

Coming soon:

…yes, again, the entire album, wrapped in the best Kasatochi album cover ever.

… Read more

Ever since I did the first “full album” cover a while back, I was getting requests to make this the next one. It took a bit of work to find halfway decent MIDIs of everything, and a bit of finessing from there.

01 – 2112
02 – A Passage To Bangkok
03 – The Twilight Zone
04 – Lessons
05 – Tears
06 – Something For Nothing

But… you already know the track list for this album, right?

The 2112 suite is one solid track (an effort that really stretched the tolerance of the program I use to do this stuff, by the way – if you’re wondering what was up with the album-ending one-two-three punch of long-ass prog rock on the previous download, it was because I was figuring out how to get the program to… well… not crash). I know there are names and “in/out times” for various bits of it. I grew up knowing it as “side one”, which probably gives away my age right there. 😆

Some of the MIDIs were shorter than the album running times; I really didn’t find this that distracting when listening back to it all. Your mileage may vary.

Go now to the dedicated Kasatochi page and get something for nothing.

Coming soon:

…to be followed by another “full album” cover that I’ve been trying to get right for a long time, accompanied by the best Kasatochi album cover ever. (It’s actually been on display in the forum for some time, if you know where to find the Kasatochi thread.)

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What’s this? Another more-full-length-than-full-length Kasatochi download already? I was all excited about this one. This one may actually be my favorite so far. Everything that’s on this album was specially selected because these songs sounded great in the chiptune context. I’ll admit that this hasn’t always been the case (though I’ve frequently allowed my affection for particular songs to win the day, unless the song just sounded horrible in this context – see also the “drone effect“). Toward the end of the tracklist, the songs start getting ridiculously long and self-indulgent, simply because I like them – and because they sound really interesting in this format. If you were going to tell someone to check out Kasatochi and point them toward an album that really demonstrates clearly what the whole project’s about, this would be a really good starting point. … Read more

Another Kasatochi Expansion Pack is done; this one’s been in the works for quite some time, and you can thank a sleepless tornado-warning-filled night for the fact that it finally got finished.

01 – All Those Years Ago
02 – Wreck Of The Hesperus
03 – Blow Away
04 – Cockamamie Business
05 – Cheer Down
06 – Give Me Love (Give Me Peace On Earth)
07 – Crackerbox Palace

As with the previous Expansion Pack devoted to McCartney, this EP focuses entirely on my favorite Beatle’s storied post-Beatle career, though I admit to being sorely tempted to stick “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” on here. Maybe another time. For now I’m gonna go gently sleep.

You can go grab it from the dedicated Kasatochi page. There will be another release over the weekend, and another “cover album” – covering a particular entire album from beginning to end – next week. I’m sure everyone’ll be in a rush to get it. 😛

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Got a whole album-length thing for you this time around – what can I say, I was on a real Kasatochi tear a few weeks ago when I put this one together. There’s no real theme or specificity to it, though in listening back to it, I’m finding that there’s a large – one might almost say fishy – number of instances of “songs to which I was introduced by close friends or family members”. There are songs on here that I specifically relate to my brother, or my dad, or my mom… and yeah, a few I found all on my own, too. So what does the musical upbringing of Earl sound like when converted into NES-style chiptunes? … Read more