Reachground

When I worked as a salesman in New Zealand, my boss used to stress how important it was to be surrounded by successful people. Luckily I have close friends who are just that. I usually get along best with creative minds and during the recent days, the brilliance of these minds have been awarded.

 

Fabian Lenhard

The other day Fabian told me that he hated working with me because I was too straight up. “If you think it’s crap you’ll say it’s crap”. I think that’s the only way to go. That smile in your face and knife in the back is just not my style. Ask me about your work and I’m going to be honest. If you just want a pat on the back don’t ask me, I won’t give it to you unless you truly deserv it.

A few weeks ago Fabian played me a new song he’d been working on. I loved it at first listen. When it was close to the end he invited me to help with the mixing. We sat for many hours tweaking the song and I added some ideas which worked really well.

There’s a swedish magazine called Studio. They have a forum which sends out a newsletter every second week. The editorial staff chose Fabian’s song as one of the top 5. “Brilliant song that resembles Queen of the Stone Age and other Californian 90s bands.” If you haven’t thrown yourself at Google to find his song yet I recommend you check out Fabian at Reverbnation. Download “Through the Night” and enjoy!

 

Kian Bashiri

If you haven’t heard of You Have to Burn the Rope already you’ve probably been locked in a cave somewhere. If you think Kian is a one-hit-wonder, think again. This guy’s just started. His latest game Swarm won the Mobile Games with Netbeans 6.0 & Java ME section at the Swedish Game Awards 2008.

The event starts at 03:00 and they announce Kian as a winner at 04:30:

Gameplay:

 

Henrik NÃ¥mark

Since I’m also a good friend of mine I have to promote some events of myself. The widget I’m using from Reverbnation has now been shown 100.000 times. That has to be worth something!

Another thing that happened was that the instrumental of Now you’re a hero made the frontpage of Newgrounds Audio Portal.

The Joystiq competition is still going on. If you live in the USA or Canada you can download the instrumental of “Now You’re a Hero”, record yourself singing about your favorite game, and if you’re lucky – win a DS Lite and a game!

I just checked out Joystiq’s site and was a bit dissapointed that they’ve encoded the music in 64kbit. I sent them the original high-quality wavefile. To make up for it I added it to Newgrounds in 256kbit.

If you’re not living in Canada or the USA and still want to create something, please inform me. I’d be happy to hear what you make of it.

Download Warcraft Blues. Guitar and additional vocals by The Incredible Haze.

Tom Fulp over at Newgrounds made a forum post about the top submissions for april. You Have to Burn the Rope made third place. Now I get a t-shirt. YAY!

Joystiq Podcast launched a contest today where you can win a Nintendo DS Lite and a DS game. You have to download the instrumental of “Now you’re a hero” and record yourself singing about your favorite game moment. You can only participate if you live in the USA or Canada and are over 18 years old. Sorry, I didn’t choose that. Damn AOL!

Good luck!