Nick Marino

This has gotta be the laziest beat on Sunday Best! Like the previous track, Infinity Well was originally made for me and me only. But unlike most of the songs on this mixtape, I didn't feel the need to transform this sample into something else. I just wanted to extend the fantastic sound.

Why? Because the intro to Keep It Comin' by The Jones Girls is so fucking hot! Tight drums, funky bass, and smooth synth. If the song didn't come out in 1984, I would say that I must of made it in a previous life.

I first heard Keep It Comin' when I was researching songs produced by one of my favorite funk musicians and songwriters, Keni Burke. I tend to gravitate to songs written and produced by bass players, and Keni's production work with The Jones Girls is no exception.

The title of the song is a tribute to one of Jim Starlin's kickass cosmic concepts. The image above -- by Ron Lim, John Beatty, Tom Vincent, and Ken Bruzenak -- depicts Thanos as he stands before the Infinity Well in The Thanos Quest #1. It's a fascinating and philosophical scene from an amazing story.

When it came time to title this remix, the splashy and sparse nature of it instantly reminded me of the Infinity Well. The name was a no-brainer!

I Was Made to Remix goes back 15 years to 1998 when I was still in high school. That's when the Jimi Hendrix double disc album BBC Sessions was released, including a version of I Was Made to Love Her.

To explain the significance of the original recording requires a brief explanation of how BBC radio worked in the UK back then. They had certain rules about how much radio music had to be live and how much could be taken from commercial albums. This resulted in a lot of two-track recordings produced expressly for BBC radio featuring popular recording artists.

In October 1967, the Jimi Hendrix Experience was in the BBC studio recording a few songs. Stevie Wonder was next door. And when Mitch Mitchell stepped out to pee, Wonder sat in on drums and recorded a couple songs with Jimi.

Stevie has a really distinctive drum technique. I have a hard time describing its uniqueness because my drum vocabulary is a bit stunted. But I like what he does! And hearing his loose, funky style accompany Jimi and Noel Redding is fantastic.

Overall, their rendition of I Was Made to Love Her -- which was Wonder's hit song of 1967 -- is just okay. But it's the very end where they play a half-minute of magical music that really captures me. It's got this happy/sad/beautiful/raw combination that often happens while jamming but rarely gets recorded.

So when I was thinking of unconventional songs I'd like to experiment with and remix (sometime in 2008-2009), I Was Made to Love Her came to mind. I wanted to see if I could loop the magical moment and extend it into a full song. And so I did!

I Was Made to Remix was really just made for me personally so I could listen to an extended version of a musical moment that I love. However, when my friend Deniz was spotlighting "Perfect Moments" as the theme for her radio show, Modern Donkey, I gave her a copy of this song and she shared it on her blog.

Also, a listener of hers blogged about that Modern Donkey episode and linked to my song. Deniz responded to him in the comments with a Nik Furious shoutout. You can check out their exchange here.

I'm a huge Ray Parker Jr. fan and for years I longed to sample the classic "bustin makes me feel good" line from Ghostbusters.

But when I finally got around to it, the result was kinda lackluster because "bustin" sounds more like "fustin" when you loop it. OH WELL!!! I still think it's a fun beat despite the fact that the lyric gets distorted.

I recorded an Unlicensed Attorneys at Law rap song using this beat, but ended up scrapping the result because the rhymes weren't on point. I JUST CAN'T WIN WITH THIS TRACK!

P.S. But there's a sorta happy ending to this story. I solved the "fustin" problem by editing this beat for the 22 minute Sunday Best mix. The song is way shorter than the version in this blog post, but it's also punchier and full of bustin!

5 in 5 is an EP series created by my friend and record label owner, Brian John Mitchell. The concept is right there in the name -- five songs in five minutes. And we're talking exactly five minutes (which is a lot tougher to do than you might think).

My Nik Furious contribution to this Silber Records series is called Super Wet. It's 300 seconds of (mostly) synth-soaked instrumentals featuring the full and final versions of some music I've shared here on my blog over the past couple of years.

You can listen to Super Wet on the Silber website. It's only $1 to purchase the five-minute journey, which I've billed as the key to accessing the nexus of reality. Find out more by reading the album's press release.

Each one of these songs was salvaged from the wreckage. They were some of my favorite musical moments that had, for some reason or another, not been able to cut it in the past. But with some love and determination, I was able to transform the incomplete recordings into five short tunes that I can now rep with pride.

The first track, Unsung, is named after the documentary series by TVOne. It was previously recorded on a whim as the backing track for So Unusual, a mini-rap I released last year. This weird song is comprised of my voice and a beat I pounded out on my desk. No instruments.

The second song, Hayze, is named after a character from my friend Heather Nunnelly's webcomic, VACANT. This punchy tune was chopped from a lackluster recording that didn't hold up as a longer song. I named it Hayze because it was one of the options I gave Heather when she was picking her podcast theme song.

The next two tracks, Le Fever and Brave, were remixes that I created for my friend Kelly Thompson. Late last year, she asked me to come up with some music for her book trailer for The Girl Who Would Be King. I discussed the process more here and here. Basically, these tunes didn't work for Kelly. But I was determined to find a good home for them and Super Wet was the perfect opportunity!

Finally, there's Silber Funk pt 2. The original version of this track was created using a drum machine on Brian's website. While I enjoyed adding some slap bass to a digital drum loop, the song always felt unfulfilled to me. This album was a fantastic chance for me to revisit this beat and flesh it out some more.

So that's it! The story behind all five tracks on Super Wet. By now, I hope you've started unlocking reality. I poured a lot of passion and thought into these songs, and I hope that love transfers over to you as you jam out to them.

UPDATE: Check out my scrapped Super Wet album cover on deviantART.

A cover of the theme song from X-Men: The Animated Series. My version is electronic, synth-y, and slightly funky. I made a YouTube video of the song featuring some of my favorite stupid stills from the 90s cartoon:

Here's an audio version:

For 2.5 years, I've been watching X-Men and reviewing it on A Podcast with Ross and Nick as a part of something I call EXTREME. And today we've finally finished!!

In my opinion, X-Men is a terrible cartoon with a wonderful theme song. It's composed by Shuki Levy, who's got a pretty impressive list of credits.

Covering this theme was trickier than I'd expected. I thought I'd be able to teach myself the melody by ear, but I couldn't. Luckily, this video helped me nail the riff.

Still, it's a tough song to play on the keyboard, especially when you're working with a truncated set of keys on a microKORG.

Anyway, I hope you have as much fun listening to this cover tune as I had recording it. Watching all 76 sloppy episodes of that TV show sucked and I'm so glad to be done!! Recording this song was my victory celebration.