Tribute Album to Incomplete Skyscrapers

The winner of the 2012 Most IDM Tournament is incomplete skyscrapers, and I'll be organizing a tribute album to honour them as the most IDM thing.

The deadline for track submissions has passed. Stay tuned...

This deadline should give you plenty of time. A good track can be written in a week. Do not put this off until the last minute.

All tracks must be written for this album. They cannot appear anywhere else. Do not show them to other watmmers. We want the album to be fresh when it comes out.

You can submit as many tracks as you like. However, only 1 track by each person can be included in the final album, unless one of them is a collaboration, or two of them are collaborations with different people, in which case 2 tracks can be included by the same person.

Before the deadline I'll arrange a secret panel of judges and them and I will decide which tracks will make it on the album. I'll pick people who are not involved with watmm, in order to keep it objective.

Remember, we'll be selecting tracks based on how cohesive of an album they make. Past albums have shown that shorter, more beat-driven tracks tend to be favored. However, there's no reason why this shouldn't be a more laid back ambient album. If you're concerned about style, just think about incomplete skyscrapers, and write the music that the topic inspires.

Please send links to tracks in .wav .aif or .flac to cytoplantastic [at] gmail [dot] com. I'd prefer it if the files were hosted on dropbox or something like that with fewer advertisements.

After the track-list is complete, I'll put the album up on http://cytoplantastic.bandcamp.com/, where the Christmas Album is currently hosted. I'll also try to make the bandcamp page look nicer and more professional.

Now start twiddling those knobs!

I wonder if anyone has copies of some of the previous albums. I only have the LHC and Nikola Tesla ones. :(

  On 4/9/2012 at 6:47 AM, extherium said:

I wonder if anyone has copies of some of the previous albums. I only have the LHC and Nikola Tesla ones. :(

I'm sure that someone has all of the albums, or at least that between everyone on watmm, all the albums still exist. I don't know how far back it goes, but I would be curious to hear previous years' as I have only heard the Tesla collab. It would be really cool if WATMM pulled together and made somewhere where you could get all the albums from in one place...

anyway, will get my track started tomorrow

hello! Im in. Will spend a few days looking for inspiration, then will crack on with it. Please post photos, videos and links here!

http://youtu.be/F2ZWXeOTtPY

windows idm...obv only idm before the point it#s completed

Any limit on length? Last year I had to whittle my track down from 20 minutes to 9, then from 9 to 7. I don't see that happening this year because I've mostly been writing short tracks lately, but I figure it will be a concern for someone, at least.

Brilliant winner. This I ought to contribute to.

Do skyscrapers that were once complete but now decaying/abandoned count? that could inspire melancholic music.

  On 4/9/2012 at 12:43 PM, YO303 said:

Do skyscrapers that were once complete but now decaying/abandoned count? that could inspire melancholic music.

I don't really think anyone has the ability to crawl inside your head to find out what inspired you. I do. But I don't think anyone else does.

I'm very pleased with the positivity in this thread. I'm thinking we should have a competition for the album cover as well, to reflect that this is a product of the community. You can submit album covers to cytoplantastic [at] gmail [dot] com as well, and I'll either select a winner, or more likely select a couple possibilities and have a vote.

  On 4/9/2012 at 12:23 PM, Cryptowen said:

Any limit on length? Last year I had to whittle my track down from 20 minutes to 9, then from 9 to 7. I don't see that happening this year because I've mostly been writing short tracks lately, but I figure it will be a concern for someone, at least.

It would be harder for a 20 minute track to get in, because it would take up so much time. We don't want the release to be too long. That said, since this is a digital release, we have a bit more leeway. I'd say look to your heard for how long the track should be, but don't go much over 10 minutes. If it's too long then I'll ask you to whittle it down.

  On 4/9/2012 at 12:43 PM, YO303 said:

Do skyscrapers that were once complete but now decaying/abandoned count? that could inspire melancholic music.

No, but skyscrapers that were never complete and started decaying before they were ever completed do count. And that's even more melancholic.

Maybe you should have the judges do blind judging; don't let them know who made the tracks.

I'd like to do a track.

  On 4/9/2012 at 6:06 PM, gmanyo said:

Maybe you should have the judges do blind judging; don't let them know who made the tracks.

That's how we always do it.

  On 4/9/2012 at 6:23 PM, Squee said:

  On 4/9/2012 at 6:06 PM, gmanyo said:

Maybe you should have the judges do blind judging; don't let them know who made the tracks.

 

That's how we always do it.

Ah. Cool. His statement about including people not involved in the community threw me off.

I hope to submit a track, but I probably won't and if I do it probably won't make it to the album anyway.

I'm in.

Can we get this thread pinned?

The judging will be blind, except for me. I'll remember, for the most part, whose track is whose. But the other judges will not know who wrote which track.

maybe you shouldnt be a judge then?

  On 4/9/2012 at 6:36 PM, wahrk said:

I'm in.

 

Can we get this thread pinned?

Pinned threads have a tendency to get overlooked in the EKT, but if you guys think it should be pinned then let me now and I'll do it in a jiffy

  On 4/9/2012 at 7:03 PM, messiaen said:

maybe you shouldnt be a judge then?

The polls took a significant amount of my time. Especially the first 64, which I entered 3 times because the forum kept eating my posts (or my internet was spotty, one or the other). Like hell I'm not going to be a judge.

But don't worry. I'm enlisting a good number of other judges to balance it out. And I give my word that I will not include my own track, or favour the tracks of others, unless they belong on the compilation on the basis of their musical merit, cohesiveness with the other tracks, and representation of the theme.

Maybe we should have a computer judge them. That'd be pretty IDM.

  On 4/9/2012 at 8:18 PM, gmanyo said:

Maybe we should have a computer judge them.

Located in an incomplete skyscraper.

  On 4/9/2012 at 8:18 PM, gmanyo said:

Maybe we should have a computer judge them.

Somebody get in touch with Ulillillia

Good stuff but, seems like we'd have to submit several tracks to cover potential genres/sound/tempos since a track could be omitted simply because it doesn't fit the others, and that's kind of sucky. Maybe some further limitations could help.

the video tauboo posted got me psyched. i'll see what i can come up with!

  On 4/9/2012 at 8:51 PM, coax said:

Good stuff but, seems like we'd have to submit several tracks to cover potential genres/sound/tempos since a track could be omitted simply because it doesn't fit the others, and that's kind of sucky. Maybe some further limitations could help.

While I get what you're saying, I don't want to shape the album based on my own stylistic preferences. Also, this is the way it's always been done.

I'd recommend listening to past releases, to see what had success in the past. Last years can be found here: http://worldsmostrecords.bandcamp.com/album/va-tribute-to-nikola-tesla

Also, don't sweat the cohesivity thing too much. There should be some variety as well. We don't want a monotonous album. Just think about incomplete skyscrapers and make the best music you can.