New Sensations

Tuesday’s JHC got off to a positive start as the “Mystery Island” theme was well received by entrants. I began the automated listening party with spoken word, my first such entry at SolidComposer. Jacob presented his synth-laden track that gradually fills with strings and tribal percussion. Swelling alpenhorn sets the mood for OverCoat’s entry “Isla”, a spaced out tune that gains steady percussion at its midpoint. MandraSigma’s “scary island” description belied his cheery combination of steel drums, organ and voice singing “palm tree…” b-type provided another rap freestyle during his radio show, preceded by a mildly concerned “I hope JH Sounds is recording this” and proceeded by the start of a Yakko Warner song.

mistermv’s “Outlander” is awash with delayed plucking and upright bass, eventually joined by woodwinds, bongos and shakers with a degraded breakdown. chunter put out bossa nova surrounded by otherworldly synth sounds and mellotron-esque flute. irrelevnt ventured to the mysterious island of Cuba, bringing along a hand-driven beat, acoustic guitar and a bit of cussing in the native tongue before tossing in an electro ending. sci made his JHCompo debut with an array of chips spanning generations as well as an apparent cameo by K.K. Slider. ShrackAttack submitted a somber piano entry punctuated by glissandos and high end plinkiness. coda’s synth groove drew comparison to the Sonic CD soundtrack during the listening party. Finally newcomer Clockwerk brought in a nearly 6-minute dance track with wobbly electronic bass.

A Trippycompo round occurred on Wednesday, and entrants were restricted to using a sample pack. The pack consisted of a varied assortment of sounds, including a song fragment, lopped metallic tones, a sonar-like bell and a synth burble. chunter ran down “A Road to Triplet Hell” by using extreme stereo panning along with the titular triplet rhythm. coda served up “cannoli sigma”, a chilled track revolving around a vocal from the pack. MandraSigma’s “Enter Charlie Sheen” alternates between loop-propelled electro and quiet ambiance. delt created his first compo entry in a decade with a stomping song under the file name “delt”, unwittingly breaking the rule of anonymity for submissions. Under the name “Barrack Obama”, mad popped in with the steel drum-centric “Popd” featuring a tripped out beat. At the end qualo ran the gamut of samples with “roboter” and submitted his track as an MP3 rather than a module file.

Thursday’s OHC featured a theme without a description, "The New Sensation". With little to read aloud for my entry, I looked up the word sensation in the dictionary and used the definitions for my vocal narration. Obtuse displayed a collection of synthesizers and shakers along with koto, flute and bongos. Arcana put on his elbow-padded smoking jacket for an initially orchestra-backed reading of fan fiction. Tomapella sent along a bouncing song with gargly bass and a vocal that appears to duet with a helium-infused version of itself. DDRKirby(ISQ)'s "Shifting Sensations" carried a drone-like atmosphere interspersed with drum elements before switching gears to lo-bit arpeggios.

coda appeared to acknowledge the site hosting the compo with his track "the Sauce", a brief swingy bit of electro. Usabell had a technical issue finishing his entry, but nevertheless delivered a full sounding dance journey to "The Fifth Dimension". sci's composition includes growling synth and human beatboxing that gives way to conventional percussion. mv's tune consists of pitched sighs and a trip-hop backing followed by a jazzed up interlude complete with Rhodes keyboard. CJthemusicdude provided new sensations via heavy delay, pads, violins and vocoder. InvisibleObserver returned from OHC hiatus with glitched out breakbeat. Shadix put up a patchwork of song clips while jarski showed off a thumping psybreaks-inspired piece to finish things off.

At one point during the week I discovered that an arrangement I submitted to OverClocked ReMix was placed under the to-be-posted list. After a moment of stunned disbelief, I thought of how cosmic this judges' decision was. I first visited OCR and compos from the outside looking in, and now things seemed to have spun around.