Echo Bazaar

About the only thing Echo Bazaar lacks is a soundtrack--which, admittedly, would get really annoying after a while, so it's just as well that particular thing has been left up to the fans. I've been sort of working on a fanmix for it, if by "working on" you can include "tagging any artist or track that remotely sounds like it might work so I can come back to it later and be overwhelmed," which in this case I do. It's just stuff that feels right atmospherically, for the most part, or the lyrics sound very close to the sorts of things that happen in the game. And, uh, instead of making an iTunes playlist, so far I've just made an Echo Bazaar tag on last.fm, which...quickly became one of my, like, top 5 used tags. As in, I may have used it 50+ times. And that's without me even really working on the mix--mostly I just tagged artists I thought should go in there somewhere, but I wasn't sure which of their songs.

More importantly: an aspiring-musician friend of mine (prufrocke on Twitter/Echo Bazaar, faeriemaiden at LJ, not sure if she has a DW) has just released her very first actual album, which includes the rather creepy and fantastic "Nightmarket"--and in case it's not obvious enough from the title and lyrics, this particular song was heavily inspired by Echo Bazaar. And seriously, I'm not just being biased because I'm her friend when I say that this song is awesome. (So are the other ones on the album; "My Head Is Full of Hymns," "Orchard," and "Priya Song" are my other favorites, for what it's worth.) Since it's up on Bandcamp, you can stream it free and see what you think, and...maybe buy it if you like it? I mean, most of you probably supported a Struggling Artist in one way or another already, and this struggling artist is actually, you know, real and trying to go to college.

ALSO. Poking around on some forums introduced me to Radio Free Neath, which is possibly the most awesome thing ever. This guy's been regularly broadcasting on blip.fm since January, and the songs are fantastic and very Neath-like and it kind of makes me despair over ever making a decent fanmix because clearly there are SO MANY MORE good songs for Fallen London than I'd realized. Seriously, if you play Echo Bazaar at all, you want to be listening. (Also he made his own Starveling Cat rhyme, which is several more kinds of awesome.)