New World Notes

Listen: Keiko Takamura's Long-Awaited Fablewave Deluxe Drops -- Full-Length Album Inspired by Video Games, Fairy Tales, and Pop Culture

At long last here is Fablewave Deluxe from Keiko Takamura, the Bay Area-based popstar who (as longtime NWN readers know) first launched her singing career over a decade ago by performing in Second Life. And as you would expect, it's sharp and smart, dazzling pop music for geeks -- inspired by games The Path, Alice: Madness Returns, and speed-running platformers, plus The Little Mermaid and Batman: The Animated Series.

"Fablewave Deluxe is my attempt to connect listeners to my experiences through video games, fairy tales, and pop culture," as she puts it. "You don't know me, but you probably vaguely know the story of The Little Mermaid. So you can connect to 'She's Got Legs, You Idiot' when I say, 'This world is so new and/ I almost feel human'. You don't know me, but you probably know what happens to Batman's parents. So when I write a love song called 'Martha Wayne', you can guess that it's bittersweet.  Musically, I wanted each song to be its own vignette. Each song exists in a separate environment where the song has the best chance to tell its story, uninhibited by genre. My biggest influences going into this were Shiina Ringo, Kyary Pamyu Pamyu, and the SF Bay Area chiptune scene."

And yes, her SL fans will connect with one song on the album in particular:

Behold: Baby Metal Avatar Cosplay Tribute Group Performing in Second Life

Today is Tuesday: Time to rock your face off with Baby Metal cosplay (from the SL-based group's 1 year anniversary live show last week). The rapid-fire choreography is even more impressive when you realize how this coordination between several avatars separated by thousands of miles is made possible:

Listen: "Martha Wayne", A Love Song from Batman's Mom -- Written & Performed by Keiko Takamura & Alice Knows Karate

Perfect listening for Valentine's Day, this is "Martha Wayne" from Alice Knows Karate, the new project from legendary geek pop artist Keiko Takamura. (Stream above, buy a copy from Keiko and crew from many platforms here.) Keiko launched her career as a live singer in Second Life (featured on MTV), and has been creating and performing insanely catchy songs ever since, much of them devoted to characters and stories from beloved games and comics. This one is a sexy, smart, torch songy take on Batman's origin story, as told by an often unacknowledged character: Batman's mom Martha Wayne.

"I wanted to write a song that was like if Lana Del Rey wrote a love ballad for Batman: The Animated Series," Keiko explains.
The show's composer, Shirley Walker, used music to really cement the iconic goth-deco aesthetic -- I wanted to capture a little bit of that as an homage. I also wanted to write a love song that acknowledged the impermanence of life, the inevitability of death (wow, Herzog much?) Choosing to relish that fact rather than avoid it."

And yes, Martha Wayne doesn't exactly have a happy ending, but Keiko insists this is still a song for Valentine's Day:

Fortnite Follows Second Life's Footsteps Further Hosting "Live" In-Game Concert of RL Popstar Marshmello

First came in-game dance clubs, then came private, user-customizable islands, now right on schedule, Fortnite is following Second Life's footsteps yet again with Marshmello, a rising EDM star, who's reportedly performing live in-game this weekend:

Info is continuously coming out about the event as we speak, but here’s what we know so far. The event will begin at 2 PM ET on Saturday, though it’s not clear how long it will run for. It takes place in Pleasant Park, though you may see the lights/hear the music from anywhere on the map... There’s apparently a cosmetic bundle for the event which will include a Marshmello skin, pickaxe and spray. No word on pricing. There are some leaked animations that show “DJ dancing” for lack of a better term which would appear to be how Marshmello himself will act on stage.

Since Fortnite Battle Royale is run on thousands of separate servers, it's debatable how "live" Marshmello is actually going to be, beyond the lucky 100 (or so) players who get to be in his actual server. The chatter in Reddit's Fortnite board strongly suggests his music files are already embedded in the game client; if that's right, there may be hundreds or even thousands of automated copies of Marshmello's performing avatars synced to canned audio files of his show, to serve such a huge audience. (Fortnite peak user concurrency is a seriously insane 8 million+.)

Hat tip Forbe's Paul Tassi, who says this "has the potential to be a very cool, very unique moment in gaming, a live concert embedded in a game where millions attend in real-time." Millions of audience members are unique, and it's definitely cool, but far as real-time concerts by real world music stars in online games, we need to go back to ancient times (by which I mean 2006) and Suzanne Vega in Second Life:

Watch: Machine Learning Music Composed from Re-synthesized Fragments from 100s of Terabytes of LA Phil Recordings

Here's a new high def version of the dazzling 3D video/AI-driven performance displayed on the Walt Disney Concert Hall last year. Refik Anadol created the projected visuals, and the music was co-created by adaptive music/sound artist Robert Thomas, who as longtime New World Notes readers know, once experimented with voice-activated installations and location-reactive soundtracks in Second Life. (Disclosure: Also a pal.) Here's how Robert and his collaborators created the music for this event -- and by "collaborators", I'm including the machine learning algorithms they created to assist them, which searched through the LA Phil's massive archive of performances, merging disparate fragments of music together in new and novel ways: 

Watch Thomas Dolby Performing in High Fidelity and Decide if Social VR is the Future of Live Online Music

Notwithstanding some technical difficulties here and there, and occasional herky-jerky movement from his avatar, this is pretty impressive and mind-bending: Coming in live from his studio at Johns Hopkins in Maryland to High Fidelity's servers in San Francisco, in front of an audience of 200 or so avatars, here's pop star Thomas Dolby rigged to a full body VR rig, performing live in the virtual world last weekend. While he does his hit "Hyperactive" in this long clip (toward the end), he doesn't do "She Blinded Me With Science". However, High Fidelity's Ryan Downe does get the entire audience to shout "SCIENCE!" at the same time -- which in itself demonstrates how real time and low latency High Fidelity's technical performance is. (You can even hear a lot of audience chatter in the background, just as you would if you saw Dolby at a real world club venue.)

Back in 2006 when Suzanne Vega performed live in Second life in front of some 80 people, many people (i.e. me) were prompted to wonder if virtual world performances were the future of live music online. Clearly it was too early to ask that question back then -- during Vega's show, the system groaned to handle that many audience members -- but now, finally, is a good time to raise that topic again:

Star is Reborn: Rising EDM Vocalist Briefly Returns to Second Life to Test Out New Material Through His Avatar, Skye Galaxy

In case you missed it over the last few months, Skye Galaxy briefly returned to Second Life for a series of live performances. Touted across SL a decade ago as the virtual world's first breakout pop star for his great vocal stylings and songwriting, he went on to become just that with a viral live video performance, later flying to Europe to perform with a top DJ, among other milestones. (I'm intentionally not mentioning his real life name in case he wants to keep his avatar and real world brands separate.)  

"I came back for a bit, wanted to stretch the vocal cords and try out some new tunes," Skye's owner tells me over e-mail. If you missed his latest in-world shows (like the one above), there's a chance you might get another chance soon:

Now in LA: Experience Awesome 3D Video & Machine Learning-Based Music Projected on the Walt Disney Concert Hall -- Adaptive Sound Artist Robert Thomas on How the Soundtrack Was Created

Video shot during last night's WDCH preview by Brooke Erdmann

If you're anywhere near downtown Los Angeles between tonight and October 6, you absolutely have to experience WDCH DREAMS. I was lucky enough to attend a preview with my wife last night (almost bumping into the Mayor, who was also there) and we were utterly dazzled by this flood of images and music echoing off Frank Gehry's famed concert hall:

The Los Angeles Philharmonic has commissioned award-winning media artist Refik Anadol to create unprecedented, breathtaking, three-dimensional projections onto the steel exterior of Walt Disney Concert Hall to signal the commencement of the LA Phil’s 100-year anniversary celebrations. Free and open to the public, nightly performances are scheduled to occur every half hour, with the first performance at 7:30 p.m., and the last at 11:30 p.m., September 28 to October 6... WDCH Dreams’ accompanying soundtrack was created from hand-picked audio from the LA Phil’s archival recordings. Sound designers Robert Thomas, and Kerim Karaoglu augmented these selections by using machine-learning algorithms to find similar performances recorded throughout the LA Phil’s history, creating a unique exploration of historic audio recordings. 

Adaptive music/sound artist Robert Thomas, as longtime New World Notes readers know, has been creating ambitious audio experiences across many mediums and technologies over the years. (Full disclosure: Also a pal.) I first met him when he was creating voice-activated installations and location-reactive soundtracks in the virtual world of Second Life. After SL he went on to co-create projects with luminaries like Massive Attack, Imogen Heap, Ben Burtt (sound designer for the Star Wars movies), and Hans Zimmer. (Robert and Zimmer worked with director Chris Nolan to create an interactive audio app for his movie Inception.)

Based in London, Robert tells me how he and his collaborators used machine learning to take and shape disparate performances and composers from the LA Phil's massive archive of recordings, and sculpt them into a completely new soundtrack:

Watch: Xara Fiasco, Spectacular Singer Who Performs Originals Live in SL

Xara Fiasco is an Australia-based singer who performs original songs live from Second Life, and when I started watching this video above, I was somewhat skeptical until about 2:13 minutes in when she started belting out an original that pretty much blew me away. There's vocal range, there's emotional depth, there's some Tori Amos-eseque piano virtuosity, there's some Regina Spector-ish whispery inflections, there's some thrilling crescendos which light up the room.

Three minutes in, I knew I needed to blog this, but I have to conclude with a mystery:

Kickstart This: Keiko Takamura's Latest Album Project Inspired by Fables & Fable-Inspired Games "The Path” by Tale of Tales & "American McGee’s Alice"

Alice Knows Karate is the name of the latest Kickstarter-driven music project from Keiko Takamura, the Bay Area-based popstar who (as longtime NWN readers know), first launched her singing career over a decade ago by performing in Second Life, which went on to be featured in an MTV documentary.  A sharp and funny songwriter, she's remained true to her geek roots, performing at a couple SLCC conventions, creating this fantastic song inspired by Bioshock and using SL machinima for the music video, and co-funding a previous album with Linden Dollars.

If successfully Kickstarted, her Fablewave EP will also feature music inspired by games: