Introduction
Summer has come, and with it come things like more sunlight hours, better temperatures, and taking lots of days off to enjoy the short amount of time there isn’t snow on the ground. June was busy as I caught up with family and used my time off semi-productively.
Content
There’s nothing new to report here. It’s been business as usual with the weekly Sunday posts and the sporadic news drops whenever I get something in my inbox.
I felt there needed to be more reviews in June, but I was working on other things that put listening to the many summer releases on hold. I did have to catch up to write this article, so I have a few releases to explore more deeply for future reviews.
Events
I saw Purple Kiss in June at the Palace Theatre in Calgary. It was an early Festivus miracle that a girl group came to where I live. I willingly took the opportunity to do something local and finally see K-pop without crossing international borders. Check out my concert review here.
TV Shows/Web Series
I caught up to the current tripleS signal videos, and I now have a good idea of all the members who garner my attention the most when they are on screen. However, I must still be convinced to drop real money on Objekts. That feels like a massive Gacha cash grab, and I can spend my money elsewhere for a better return.
With the daily signal playlist done, I moved on to the Badge War episodes. This group is aggressive when it comes to competition. If they’re willing to claw, scratch and bleed for badges, I can’t imagine them in an organized sports competition. With that thought in mind, I hope they get invited to ISAC so they can wreak some havoc.
Video Games
I gave up on winning Chocobo races in Final Fantasy 7: Rebirth and have moved on to completing the story. I am on chapter 14, and the end game is nearing. I know how this part of the story ends, but I have intentionally avoided any spoilers about any changes in Rebirth. I want to remain surprised.
Music
Remixes
Wow, I was busy in June. I just realized I had worked on four remixes. Two were remastered, but I still had to make some arrangement changes to update them.
The first song I worked on was IVE’s Accendio. I gave it a more club-friendly instrumental with stomping four-on-the-floor drum patterns accented by an assorted group of dance music sound patches for the bass, chords, and melodic parts.
Next was a remaster of a remix I did in 2021 of WJSN THE BLACK’s Easy. It was one of my better early works, but the vocal rip brought the quality down significantly. With technology for creating stems improving significantly over the past three years, I could insert a much better-sounding vocal track and balance things out than when I initially took this song.
After that, it was another remaster of Lovelyz’s 2020 song Obliviate. Much like the WJSN THE BLACK track, my vocal rip for this song was subpar, but I eventually got a much better version to use four years later. This one required more work to get updated since I had to rewrite the introduction and fix the ending to accommodate the key change.
The final remix I worked on in June was for XG’s fifth single, Woke Up. This was the easiest to play around with among the tracks I worked on this month. The original version is so sparse that it leaves much room for interpretation.
I made my remix of Woke Up even more minimalistic. In constructing the beat, I used a mixture of Trap and Hip-Hop patches, focused on using an 808-driven drum pattern like the original, and added a sub to help beef up the low end.
Since the original version has little movement besides a few filter sweeps of the background effect, I strategically placed changes in the drum pattern. I added melodic elements as each member dropped their rhymes to build energy up to the “Woke up looking like this.” section, which would technically be the chorus.
Below are my favourites from June 2024.
Albums
- AKMU – Love Episode
- Candy Shop – Girls Don’t Cry
- Epik High – Pump
- H1-KEY – Love or Hate
- Kep1er – Kep1going On
- Nayeon – Na
- Red Velvet – Cosmic
- Sakurazaka46 – Jigoujitoku
Songs
AKB48 – Koi Tsunijatta
Ariana Grande – the boy is mine
Chanmina x Ash Island – 20
EVERGLOW – Zombie
Kwon Eunbi – Sabotage
NewJeans – Supernatural
RiE MORRiS – By Now feat. maco marets
tripleS GLOW – Inner Dance
