There is going to be a live streamed Square Enix Music Event on 29 September at 22:00 Tokyo time. Mind you, that is 4AM PST or 7AM EST, so the choices are stay up late, get up early, or set a recording for the SQ Party LEVEL 1 concert. There are no actual live musicians, but rather remixers working from a library of audio captures from the Square Enix sound library.
Browncoats unite! Love this tune…
If you have been playing games for a while, you have no doubt run across the classic platform shooter Metroid, which has been around since 1986. According to the folks a Crunchyroll, in honor of the games 25th anniversary there has been an album recorded of the themes from various versions of it called Harmony of a Hunter, and released as a free download from ShineSparkers. A lot of the music is in what I think of as the 8 Bit Boogie format but some is in Metal, Chiptune, and Dubstep. Thee is currently no physical media you can buy, but if they get enough response on the download they are considering releasing it on disc. Considering how key to the franchise the game music has been since the beginning, I think this is an excellent tribute. Be aware, if you download the whole side files (which shows just how old school the creators are: each “whole side” disk is the normal 16 or so minutes long of the traditional vynal record album), the songs slide from one into the next with a cross fade between them. If you want the songs as stand alone so you need only add the ones you like to your playlist, you will want to download the individual tracks.
The finalists have been announced for the 2011 Parsec Awards. These awards are given out to honor the best in speculative fiction podcasting in each of a number of categories. Part of the requirements to be eligible include being available for free through an RSS feed, so if you are the ind of person who likes a good audio book or radio drama, this is a great source of new programming to add to your mobile player and personal collections. And for each representative program linked on the list you can subscribe to the feeds and get a ton of additional programs. The awards themselves will be handed out in about a month.
Starz ran episode 1 of the new season of Torchwood: Miracle Day last night, and it was good. But we have still more Torchwood goodness before they run episode 2 next Friday in the form of three radio plays they recorded right after filming ended on the new season. On Monday the 11th we get episode 1 of The Lost Files when Rhys and Gwen go to the Ivyday Nursing Home to close out his elderly uncles affairs, something isn’t quite right. In episode 2 Captain Jack and company use a submarine to try to rescue a stranded alien in the Mariana Trench on Tuesday the 12th, and it finished up on Wednesday the 13th with episode 3 at The House of the Dead, the most haunted pub in Wales. These are all run in BBC4’s Afternoon Play time slot at 14:15 GMT, but they should also be available to listen to online for six more days after each one airs. While neither Torchwood or Doctor Who, I should also mention Best Interests, Thursday at 14:15. It features a confused young man with no I.D. and a Dr. Who fixation, so I am going to have to check it out as well. Also Starz has uploaded episode 1 0f Torchwood: Web of Lies to YouTube.
Beginning today, BBC4 Extra is running Bradbury 13, a series of 13 short stories from author Ray Bradbury adapted for radio. These are new productions never previously broadcast, starting out with his story The Ravine, and it looks like some of his Martian Chronicles tales are included in the collection. Warren Ellis announced that you could stop by Brian Wood’s site and download the Entire Public Domain 2 PDF, which represents around a decade worth of sketches and artwork from his collected works. It is 132 pages and fairly high rez of some really nice graphic novel level creations (although no actual graphic novels… it is way too random for that), and looks good on your Android or iDevice as well. If you like it, you can support his work by picking up the signed and numbered limited edition print version from the link on his page, until they run out.