× Comments for 02. Batman - Kaikuluotain

Eino Keskitalo

Showroom Dummy picked the title screen music from Game Boy Batman for People's Remix Compo round 259. It was completely nuts for me to take part in PRC in December 2013, since the Final Fantasy Crystal Clash tournament was ongoing at the same time and I basically had to skip sleep to participate in that already. The thing was, I was inspired by the source to pick up the guitar and learn the riffs, they were easy and fun to play. I offered to collab with my modest playing ability. Then it seemed there would be no entries otherwise, I thought screw it, I'll make a track.

I used my FFCC round 2 tune as a template to speed things up and ended up with a remarkably different sounding tune. I also tried to save time by recording the guitar directly to the mic jack of the laptop thinking "it'll be nice and lo-fi!" Garbage. I did feel I got some The Cure influence in there with all the chorus stuff going on.

Anyway, I got some good feedback from the compo, mainly about clarity in mixing & arrangement. Then I took the track to the workshop forum and got absolutely amazingly great feedback from TheReverend, which I can't thank for enough (just look at this: http://ocremix.org/forums/showthread.php?p=950191&postcount=2). The overall structure basically needed an additional part to be complete.

When the Game Boy 25th Anniversary project was re-started as a quick completion EP production, I thought "this is the opportunity to get that track finished!" I mean, deadlines are great: compo deadlines help me get started on arrangements, and album deadlines make me finish them. Why not combine the two? Genius. Ahem. I added the part TheReverend had suggested, with now much greater recording fidelity. As always, I can't really play the guitar - I only assemble guitar parts, and especially the solo at 1:45-2:19 is spliced up from the best bits of four different takes, making up new phrases from the combinations of what I actually played. Major cheating (at least would be in DoD), but I'm quite proud of it none the less. The old guitars also took a lot of editing for timing & EQ:ing for clarity.

I got great steering and feedback from the directors Mr. Strader & Mr. Mourey; Alex suggested asking Tuberz to come on board for some additional guitar: our third (or fourth, if you count Shell Shockers) collab has him delivering some absolutely searing superfuzz soloing at 1:11 & 3:08, plus some padding/doubling work at 1:28-1:44 & 2:19-2:52. Oh and the starting mooing noise is also his playing slowed way down. Big thanks once again to Callum for excellent contributions on a short notice!

Again thanks to Rondo and Pleiade for borrowing me recording & guitar equipment; also thanks once again to my fiancée Pirjo, ever my creative advisor, for the best insights and zero-sugared critique, for this and all other music I make. I'm glad I got pretty big thumbs up for this from her.

Tuberz McGee

Eino approached me to work on the track and given our excellent track record I happily accepted. I threw some leedle leeds and meedle meeds and it somehow worked out.