#i really need to get into sampling like naganuma

[7grandmel]

Todays rip: 02/03/2024

One-Winged DJ

Season 7 Featured on: The Year of Grand Dad Sound Selection [Side A]

Ripped by duuzu, digboye, COCONABE, l4ureleye, Netyasha Roozi, Jiko Music Performed by Chase Beck

You may have noticed that I try to keep an air of suspense when doing posts on the King for Another Day tournament such as Thank You, Everybody!. That is, of course, to not spoil the victor of Season 4 Episode 1's year-defining event - but at this point, it's a bit of a fruitless endeavor to try and uphold. Because DJ Professor K's victory celebrations haven't just been contained to his awarded day-long takeover during Season 4 Episode 2 - the takeover that gave us incredible rips like AIN'T NOTHIN' LIKE A CHUNKY BEAT, 88811, Ska Cha Cha (Rotten Mix) at an absolute breakneck pace during the SiIvaSummer All-Star Festival. Because during that takeover, a new flame was kindled - a flame by the name of Jet Set Radio Evolution.

Hideki Naganuma's style of sample-filled funk music is DJ Professor K's headlining ripping source, the one most closely associated with the game that the character originates from. Yet its a style that can be expressed in so many ways, not needing to be derivative of any prior existing songs from the two Jet Set Radio games - September, for instance, is able to sound authentically Naganuma-esque whilst being built off of a song as far away from his style as possible. Jet Set Radio Evolution, then, is an entirely made-up game - its name and logo deriving from a declined proof-of-concept, but its "soundtrack" completely made up by the SiIvaGunner team. This is far from the first fake game on the channel, and not the first one to be done without much of a shred of irony (Kirby Rip Attack is due for coverage on here) - but, notably, its a fake game born specifically to keep DJ Professor K's impact on the channel alive in the Seasons past his takeover. And, well, it took a few Seasons, but during Season 7, the team started going truly ham in utilizing its true potential.

There are a number of these Jet Set Radio Evolution rips I want to cover on here, both ones from DJ Professor K's takeover and from its revitalized usage during Season 7 - but to me, it was One-Winged DJ that really showed just how much flexibility rippers have with Naganuma's style of music. One-Winged Angel has long been seen as a sort of legendary track to rip due just how extensive of a song it is, a song that has a distinctly menacing feel to it that I can't imagine is easy to translate into a rip. Rips like One Winged PSYcho - V​.​S. Sepsyrop feel like absolutely herculean endeavors, and during Season 7 in particular we saw an absolute tidal wave of rips using it, as if it were just any other meme source in the channel's backlog and not this legendary 7-minute long work of art. Hen'yoku no Piraman was the first of these I covered, and while One-Winged DJ is likely far from the last, it still manages to feel like it sticks out from the crowd in just how dense of a sound it has - likely a result of how many people contributed to its creation.

There's the obvious highlight, of course: Chase Beck, the voice of DJ Professor K himself, returns to the role with new lines to supplement the original choir in latin of the original song, and it immediately gives the rip a charm to it, especially all these years after the original event and after Chase Beck's last "needed" performance as the character had long since passed. Before that even gets to kick in, though, its hard not to notice just how many different parts of Jet Set Radio's soundtracks are utilized right from the beginning: a bassline and voicelines echoing That's Enough, samples and pacing from Sneakman, the interlude's melody broken by the noise and chaos of The Concept of Love, and all throughout using small little sound effects and one-second samples from all over the games' soundscapes.

This is the kind of rip I could sit here and dissect for pages on end, yet I believe the point has been made abundantly clear already. In a Season already FILLED with celebration of every part of SiIvaGunner's life, One-Winged DJ is an absolute flex of a celebration, reminding us all of why DJ Professor K truly earned his win whilst showing just how much there is to still be done within the ever-appealing Naganuma style. I'm beyond proud of the rippers involved in how this rip turned out, and hope that the Jet Set Radio Evolution rips continue to impress into Season 8.

[zosonils]

hello 😱🤝🤷‍♀️🎵🐺 for rhythm man i want to kiss him so badly

RHYTHM MAN MY BELOVED

😱 [any fears?] - he absolutely hates white noise or similar sounds without any rhyme or reason to them. since his purpose is to analyse audio to find patterns or muffled sounds within it, he tends to panic if he's listening to something that he can't pick anything distinct out of because it makes him paranoid that he might not be working properly. there's also the fact that psychic cry [which he's weak to] is just a blast of white noise at a frequency strong enough to damage his internal components, which after everything is over and done with upgrades the discomfort and paranoia into actual fear

🤝 [approach to intimacy?] - as friendly as he is casually, he actually gets pretty nervous around legitimate emotional intimacy - he kinda puts up this front of hey it's ya boy rhythm i'm fine no undiagnosed adhd here just your cool pal rhythm man being totally cool and normal, and he struggles to be honest about his real feelings if they're anything less than cheerful and relaxed. he definitely appreciates getting the opportunity to be emotionally intimate! it's just quite a way out of his comfort zone and he doesn't really know how to approach it

as for physical intimacy, he's fine with it so long as it's on the casual side! it's worth noting that he's aroace and a little put off by the thought of romance in general, so anything with overtly romantic vibes is gonna freak him out a bit and lead to him shutting down the interaction fairly quickly, but he's super chill with physical affection between friends! he would accept your kiss if it is a strictly platonic one on the cheek

🤷‍♀️ [approach to strangers compared to friends?] - rhythm's default course of action is to be nice to everyone he meets, so he acts about the same way around strangers as he does around people he actually knows. once he's gotten to know someone more personally, though, he starts to pick up on what makes them laugh or feel comfortable around him and develop inside jokes, and adjusts his approach to specific people accordingly. he's also more likely to try and suppress his jokey attitude around strangers who intimidate him for whatever reason, but given time he'll either relax into how he normally acts or at least figure out where he can push the envelope and dare to be a little snarky

🎵 [songs associated with them?] - ain't nothing like a funky beat is my theme claim for him! by extension i think hideki naganuma's composition style fits rhythm man really well - i haven't actually listened to any jsr music yet, but i'm intimately familiar with the sonic rush and rush adventure soundtracks, and i think the combination of banging drum beats and basslines with crunchy vocal samples fits him so well

🐺 [thoughts on being alone?] - he likes being alone but hates being lonely, if that makes sense. rhythm definitely likes and needs to have time to himself sometimes; it gets tiring for him to maintain the high-energy cheerful personality at full blast all the time, and he's at his happiest when he's just chilling out by himself making music or playing video games and not worrying about his job or what people think of him. on the other hand, he really craves validation and wants to feel emotionally connected with people, so there's a delicate balance for him to maintain between having enough time alone to recharge his [metaphorical] social battery without getting isolated and sad. his success at maintaining said balance varies

[spitblaze]

What are the factors that lead to a song being quantified as Penis Music? Are there codifying Penis Songs used as baseline comparison?

okay so from what I can tell, THE Penis Song is Lapfox Trax’s Rubber Band. You may notice its tonal similarities to things like Crazy Bus but being distinctly easier to listen to. Functionally, ‘Penis Music’ just refers to a song that is chaotic in tone and content, but only past a certain threshold. Using Naganuma himself as an example, I feel like a lot of us could agree that something like Vendorpop could qualify as Penis Music, but something more along the lines of Humming The Baseline would just be funk.

If we want to get into the specifics of why, I’m not a music scholar but I’ll do my best to clarify my point- Humming The Bassline has a slower, more digestible tempo, samples that for the most part mesh together pretty well, and instrumental backing that fits everything together. It’s tonally very coherent, and makes no bones about what it is.

Vendorpop, on the other hand, is more upbeat and has a much higher energy to it. The samples are strange and chaotic, and the music’s appropriateness to all of this is questionable, especially when the saxophone kicks in towards the end. It’s ultimately much more chaotic, but still goes together in a way that tells you that this is all the same song.

One could argue that it’s not really penis music unless it’s so disparate that it sounds like two separate songs got mashed together, and while that’s true, I think it’s important not to underestimate the fact that there still needs to be some sort of tonal coherence, even if it’s just absurdity- like I pointed out in regards to Rubber Band vs the Crazy Bus theme, there is a difference between Dumb Shit and a Dumpster Fire.