I was lucky enough to get a listen to An Endless Sporadic’s new self-titled CD.  We don’t talk about it a lot on GA, but I’ll be the first to say that aside from video games, music is a gigantic part of my life.  When I got this CD, I promptly put it in my car since there’s where I do a good deal of my music listening.  Tiny tangent about listening to music in cars – I’m listening to music pretty much every moment I’m not watching TV or sleeping.  But for some reason, listening in the car has a much more dramatic effect on how I hear and interpret music.  I know not everyone feels that way, but for me I feel like I sometimes get more out of a CD that way.

An Endless Sporadic is Zach Kamins and Andy Gentile, two guys from Texas that met in High School and started a band.   Andy, moved to LA after high school and now works for a company that might sound familiar to most of us: Neversoft.  Zach is currently at the Berklee School of Music.  The songs from their EP: Ameliorate will sound familiar to fans of Tony Hawk’s American Wasteland (“Sun of Pearl”) or Guitar Hero (“Impulse”) and GH: World Tour (“Anything”).

So now that I got that out of my system, lets talk about this CD.  The whole thing is Prog Rock, beginning to end.  However, it might take more than one listen for the progressive rock-ness of it all to sink in.  I think it’s got a great feel to it, especially if you can listen to the whole CD beginning to end in one sitting.   I really got the impression listening through the CD that it was very connected: there’s a very clear beginning and end to the track progression, and each time I’d listen to the first track again I felt like I was watching the beginning of a movie.

In talking about this CD, especially since it’s Prog Rock which tends to lend itself to a lot of musical influences, I feel like I need to talk about some of the musical impressions I got when listening.  It’s won’t be a surprise to hear me mention bands like Pink Floyd or Dream Theater, but I also got a strong impression of a band some gamers are familiar with: Metroid Metal.  Also, there’s a lot of great jazz influence to the CD, and there’s several songs I sort of referred to in my head as “jazz interludes”, which felt a little lighter than the rest of the CD.  If you’re a fan of video game music, especially from the 80s, even though this CD has nothing to do with them, you should definitely give An Endless Sporadic a listen to.  And for any Prog. Rock fans (Porcupine Tree, Rush, Opeth, Riverside, Yes, Kings X or Dream Theater fans specifically) this CD will be a great addition to your collection.

I also have a short  Q&A with Zach and Andy to share more about their gaming and musical influences:

Are either of you video gamers? Specifically some old school video games like Metroid and Castlevania…
Zach: I have always enjoyed playing video games but don’t consider myself a hardcore gamer. I love adventure games like Zelda Ocarina of Time, Mario 64, Sky Odyssey, Pilot Wings, Halo and various racing games.

Andy: I wouldn’t deny the fact that video game music has influenced my drumming at all. It’s hard to not learn anything when you listen to music.

I love how there are certain games like the Mario series, Braid, Final Fantasy, the Sonic series, and older Zelda games that have music that sound like they belong in a video game, and aren’t like a full-blown orchestral score, or a soundtrack full of radio hits. I especially love how Left 4 Dead’s music/sound design ties into game play.

I consider myself a hardcore gamer for a few games (Team Fortress 2, Left 4 Dead, Half Life, Portal, Counterstrike), and casual for many many other games (recently Shadow Complex, Call of Duty, Brutal Legend). I still own and play my SNES, NES, N64, Dreamcast and etc.

I’d like to hear what musical influences were positives for any of you, or if there were any specific influences/musicians you had in mind when putting this CD together.

Zach:  I wanted to write music that was very thematic and cohesive. I have always admired how “The Flower King’s,” pulled together large form arrangements and made them interesting all the way through. This is why we contacted Roine Stolt from The Flower Kings to produce the album. I think that because we wanted the album to scream PROG, Pink Floyed and ELP were a great influence on the sound. Andy and I both have history playing heavier music and both love the sounds of Dillinger Escape Plan, Opeth, Porcupine Tree and Sikth.

Andy: Some top influences from me: Foo Fighters, Hiromi, Incubus, Sikth, Dillinger Escape Plan, Porcupine Tree, Opeth, Mae, Tool, Tower of Power, Evaline.

Does this self-titled CD have a specific theme to it?  Is there a story behind the songs that ties them together?

Zach: There isn’t a specific story behind the music. At least not a story that can be described with words. I tried to string the themes together in a way that it would feel like a story. Once I get started writing something, I feel like the music that I just wrote tells me where the music needs to go next. I believe that in certain musical situations, the melodies and textures that you hear are the story and that most people will generally feel the same emotion towards a particular musical idea.