Musical Spotlight: Cicada
We at the Castle have been influenced by video games for countless years. At this point, our collective experience playing and writing about games must predate the Paleozoic Era. Games influence our writing, our creativity, our spare time. Some relate their gaming experience through language, be it C++ or English, and others through their music. Judson Cowan boldly steps into the later category. He is a wonderfully creative musician who has used his life experiences with video games and electronic music to inform his musical expression.
Creating under the moniker Cicada, Cowan has amassed a varied and sizable discography since his early recordings in 1999. Armed with a Mac and a MIDI controller, he bounces between genres from ambient to industrial, vocal to synth. Currently there are 7 albums under his belt, with his latest acapella release Choralseptic which dropped on April 16th.
The first example of his interest in gaming music began with The Metroid Project, where he remixed 4 tracks from Super Metroid on the SNES including the Super Metroid Theme, Norfair, the item room, and Brinstar. Two albums later came his gaming masterpiece, Technology Crisis.
For the rest of the feature, make the jump.
Technology Crisis began at the climax with the track entitled Earth’s Assault on the Central AI. Judson recorded the singular track, then expanded on the idea to create a narrative. Essentially the album is a sonic journey through a sci-fi landscape that is inspired by many interstellar games from the 8-bit and 16-bit era. Once he came up with the notion to expand the one song into a full album, he knew that Earth’s Assault would be the climax and began to plot out what happened before and after. As you listen to the album you can hear the progression from one area to the next, from one conflict to another. It’s just fascinating. Imagine listening to a radio play without dialog, but with clearly defined action through musical cues that are inspired by some of your favorite childhood games.
Cicada's latest album is quite different from the sound of Technology Crisis. Instead of clean 16-bit synthesized tones, he recorded the entire album of 80's and 90's pop covers acapella and remixed his vocals to create the varied tracks. Choralseptic is off the charts, he covers everyone from the Industrial sound of Nine Inch Nails, to the Swedish pop of Ace of Base and even Coolio's hip hop anthem Gangsta's Paradise. Mixed in with these pop tracks, he made acapella renditions of the Megaman 3 - Intro, Chrono Trigger - Magus’s Theme, and Mario Paint - Pushups.
Fortunately all of Cicada's music is posted on Cicadacom.com for download. If you like what you hear, add Cicada as a friend on MySpace. Recently I got a chance to sit down and chat with him, which will appear on the next podcast. So stay tuned for the next installment, meanwhile head over to his site and check out his tunes. There's something over there any gamer will enjoy, guaranteed.
Toots
Posted to Hot Stuff, Music, Video Games on 13 June 2007
· Comments (6)
Other stuff like this: cicada, judson cowan
wow I had never listened to this guy before but this stuff was awesome! Thanks for showing this off to us Toots (the really cute picture of said artist was nice too :D)
Thanks Toots! Cicada's stuff is fantastic. Much better than anything you'd find on OCRemixed!
the more I listened to his stuff the more I realized why I liked it, he reminds me Ben Folds vocally.
OMFG, after I stopped laughing at these hilarious(but great!) covers, I was amazed at the musicality.
And as Essex said, the cute pic helped!
Thanks T for putting a spotlight on Cicada! I love his music and I'm getting tired of people thinking that I misspelled Cascada when I talk about him.
Edit: This is totally not the Cicada that I thought of. Still neat though!