I will pick one song which is meaning a lot to me on that week, or I happen to just be bumping a lot, or just really like in general. I likely won't have my songs picked by every Sunday, but you get the idea.
"Dreiton", part of his massive soundtrack for minecraft "Minecraft - Volume Beta" is easily one of C418's finest tracks in his whole discog. With an composer of so many iconic and memorable songs, that is saying a lot. Volume Alpha features most of the songs people are most nostalgic and fond of, while Alpha contains C418's best work on a more technical level, I think Dreiton, besides "Alpha" on the same album, is the closest balance between these two perceptions. It is so layered and complex, but packs so much emotion and nostalgia into it like tracks on Alpha, for this reason it is for me the quintessential Minecraft song.
Here is what C418 had to say about the song: "Like all the other “Creative Mode” songs, this one is also about the awe of the creativity to be found in Minecraft. At minute 7, the song abruptly builds up to nothing and fades away. Sometimes creativity doesn’t need to have a reason. Sometimes you just build." What he set out to do was to capture and inspire feelings of creation and wonder in creative mode players, and I think of all the creative mode songs, it does that the best. The handpan melodies at the second section gives it a real edge to it, as in it pushes players to focus on the creation, and the beginning section with the droning synths inspires the wonder, it's like sun gleaming after a dark day.
The song begins slow and small with drony fading synthesizer pads, adding choir and pulsating bleeps and later the handpan. This first section is slow and not instantly rewarding. In the same way, creativity takes effort to be realized. My impression of it is that C418 was embracing creative freedom and experimentation much like the other creative mode track, just how a minecraft builder experiments with many different blocks. It's that raw creativity and passion that make this beginning section so infectious for me. C418 periodically adds new random but fitting elements which seem to set up for a satisfying climax
but you don't get this climax.
Suddenly at 4 minutes on the dot, it crescendos into what feels like a new song, but is ultimately connected. People seem to forget the length of Dreiton and also Taswell which clock at a staggering 8 minutes. Taswell also has two distinct sections with a slow build up and then a sudden, more percussive and upbeat switch. When playing in game, it starts to feel like two different songs, which is likely why people don't really feel the otherwise pretty hefty length as far as Minecraft songs go (Well there is The End and Alpha but those are odd cases). My overall point is that the use of these two distinct sections keeps the track fresh while not completely abandoing previous ideas and switching to a new song.
It begins with a handpan melody which is likely ingrained in all of the brains of those who've heard it. C418's capacity to make really good melodies has always impressed me, they are so memorable, but don't feel Pop-py or cheap a lot of the catchy earworm melodies feel. It brings back the pads from the very start of the song, then adds stronger percussive elements giving it a lot of that energy which inspires creativity. The melancholic strings which get come in later is my favourite part of the whole song, it feels almost as generational and wonderous as the string climax in Alpha. I find C418 is always strong with his string parts. If the A-section of the song is formulation of creativity, this is the pay off, the fruits of these ideas melding into a whole.
Everytime I put this song on, I could not simply stop it. When you play this song, you know you're in for a wonderful 8 minutes of your life. I have great personal listening experiences with this song. While outside of my Nana's cabin, a trip I went to for my birthday (the 25th), I would sit outside in the beautiful shining sun playing this song. I watched rabbits eat seeds and pretty Blue Jays make brief stops at branches. The song inspired an awe to it all, an appreciation for nature I've honestly lacked, I wish I didn't live in the boring city man, out here was so much nicher. That is why this is song of the week.
"Since I Left You" is a title track off The Avalanche's debut album of the same name, releasing in 2000. It has a beachy tropical vibe to it, with use of flutes, strings, and carribean esque percussion and a sample of dialogue saying "Welcome to Paradise." It is one of the most brilliantly sampled tracks I've ever heard, although I would give the cake to their other classic Frontier Psychiatrist. There is not a single live instrument here, yet there's so many little textures that gives it the eclecticism of a fully live track. Each unrelated sample somehow fits together perfectly that it's shocking that they were not all taken from one song. They layer samples of flutes of acapella choirs of the duprees with a fitting vocal sample on top of it all.
One thing about many sample heavy tracks is that I find they often lack meaning. For example "Fatboy Slim is Fucking in Heaven" as much as I love that song, does not incite much emotional connection to me. Here though, the vocal sample ties together with the instrumentally so well, and is rife with potential interpretation. The sample itself says "Since I met you, I found the world so new" Instead of "Since I left you..." Some also report hearing "Since I left you, I found the world so blue." It's genius how they intentionally made us mishear the sample by changing the title of the song to essentially mess with our brains and misinterpret it. I see it as the second way; melancholic but comforting. You were bogging me down and now that I'm independant from you, I feel free, that's how I like to see it. It was comforting for me as I was experiencing a bit of loss during this time.
This song was a no brainer to pick given how much I was bumping it, and also I even cried to this song which I haven't done since "#20" by Aphex Twin. The story of this is that I decided to watch the music video, (I've avoided them for a long time, but I've been appreciating them more as I'm finding that they elevate the songs if executed correctly, I especially love The Avalanches music videos right now).
In the video, two miners who seem to be stuck, find a way out, and both enter this new colourful world (syncing up with the 'welcome to paradise' drop, which is exactly what that moment feels like everytime.)
The miners go out into this new world, and they are met with beautiful looking ladies. One of them go on, presented with this new world, and live in it with pride and carry themselves in the wind, dancing and having fun. The other stands in the background, simply watching. This thing continues, there's signs that the other guy wants to try and be more outgoing, but he simply can't, it is sad to watch as the fun-having miner does nothing to try and include his old friend.
Near the video's end, the miner is with the ladies, illuminated in the light, and he looks at his miner buddy one more time, who has turned black and white, the same colour pallete they were while in the mine, essentially stuck in their old world, while the fun miner has found a "new" one. A little bit before this moment is when I cried. That just fucked me up, nothing about the song is particularly sad to me, but the depictions of loneliness of the miner is such a pity.
At the end, we see the awkward miner as an older man, telling the story of the miner. He has a picture of them together, confirming their buddy buddy relationship more. "I never saw Arthur again, but I'll bet wherever he's gone, he's having a damn good time." It was a funny and bittersweet way to end the video, I was literally "crying laughing."
Since I Left You is one of the best sample-based songs ever. Its sampling has reached a height never before or since reached except by its artist, with careful layering and use of vocal samples in genius ways which inspire a lot of interpretation and mulling over. Its inspires such a wide array of emotions with its nostalgic upbeat beach vibe clashing with the comparatively tragic lyrics, which still maintain a tinge of hope. It is then elevated even more one of the most beautiful and touching music videos I've ever watched. The Avalanches are geniuses.