Ronald Jenkees released his third album Days Away today, so I suppose it’s a good time to mention him here.

Jenkees first became famous-on-the-Internet when he began posting videos of himself playing his synthesizer on Youtube. He began each video with the greeting “Hello, Youtubes!”

He’s certainly talented, and I’ve listened to his previous two albums many times. And his latest seems to be at least as good as the previous two.

From a 2008 interview:

Days Away seems to be his first instrumental-only album, the others each featuring two rap songs (their titles helpfully including “rap” in parentheses). Whatever your opinion on rap, I’d recommend listening to 56K (rap) and Let’s Ride (rap) at least once–but try some of his other songs first.

• His Web site
• His Youtube channel
• His Bandcamp page

In the early 1990s, I liked to collect and listen to MOD music files. Some the best ones I came across were by 4-mat of Anarchy.

About twenty years later, I discovered that 4mat (now without the hyphen) was once again releasing new music. His 2010 album Decades was excellent, and has since been followed by several more. His latest, Sans Titre, was released just yesterday. Simmonds is prolific, but manages to maintain a high level of quality.

Although his music falls within the chiptune genre, there is more variety to his work than that label might suggest. There is a consistent “warm” sound to many of his songs that, in addition to their catchiness, distinguishes them from a lot of other chiptunes out there.

To sample his work, I’d recommend starting with Decades and just moving forward through the releases. As for individual standout tracks, these are a few of my favorites from the first two albums:

• “Affectation“
• “Chipmusic Is Dead“
• “Paper Dolls“
• “Surrender“

Simmonds also does sound design for video games. I was interested to learn that he worked on Silent Hill: Origins and Silent Hill: Shattered Memories (both of which I enjoyed, especially Shattered Memories).

You can find an interview with him here, in which he talks about his music and his work on games (including a game that he created himself).

Winsor McCay was an influential artist who worked in comics and animation in the early 1900s.

I first came across Little Nemo in Slumberland in “The Smithsonian Collection of Newspaper Comics,” a book that my grandmother gave me when I was young. It was some years later that I discovered Dream of the Rarebit Fiend. Both are creative comics involving dreams.

Here is a quote from McCay:

I would embed a few of my favorite Little Nemo comics here, but as they were intended for full newspaper pages, you really need to see them as large images. Fortunately, you can find nice collections on sites such as this one:

 
Little Nemo: The Dream Master, which was based on McCay’s comic (or, more accurately, based on a Japanese animated film that was based on his comic) was one of my favorite games on the Nintendo Entertainment System. I couldn’t beat the final boss, though.

 
Here is an example of Dream of the Rarebit Fiend:

Unfortunately, collections of Little Nemo in Slumberland comics in book form tend to be expensive and to go out of print quickly. I own “Little Nemo: 1905-1914,” which was published in 2000 at a reasonable price–but it doesn’t seem to be so reasonable anymore. Dream of the Rarebit Fiend books are much cheaper and easier to find.

McCay’s comics entered the public domain a few years ago, so they should remain easy enough to find in some form.

There is also a nice book about his life and his art.