Archive for March 15th, 2006
Jason Cox’s career as one-man-band Xoc hit the big time in August last year when his debut – SMW, a cover of the entire Super Mario World soundtrack done using accordion, acoustic guitars, antique pickaxe, asscheeks, banjo, bike horn, cabasa, Canon Powershot, ceramic toilet mug, children’s drum set, claves, coconut thumb piano, cowbells, cuatro, doublespeed acoustic guitar, doublespeed banjo, doublespeed guitars, drum set, drum sticks, electric bass guitar (Yamaha RBX200), electric guitars, finger cymbals, gooseneck mic stand, handclaps, handmade maracas, jam block, jew’s harp, Korg MS2000B synth, lap steel guitar, maracas, matchbook, melodion, ocarina, pennywhistle, pump organ, PSS-270 keyboard, refrigerator door, ribbon crasher, Roland Groovebox, rototom brace, school bell, shakers, slide whistle, sportshorn, tacklebox, tambourines, triangle, turkey locator, Tyco Hot Lixx, ukelele, upright bass, violin, vocals, woodblock, wood flute, Wurlitzer electric piano, and xylophone – appeared in Edge magazine with the comment that “every track is both a pop gem and a testament to the lasting appeal of [Koji] Kondo’s compositions and XOC’s one-man-band prowess”.
Eight months later, the album -available for free on the Internet Archive – has clocked up in excess of 82,000 downloads, more than 60,000 more than any other open source audio.
Jason’s next project as Xoc was Videogame: The Movie: The Game: The Cover Album, an double album of covers and originals from a supposed pirate NES game, which, in turn was based upon a supposed movie from 1984 starring Jonathan Brandis, Jill Bennett and Ed Flanders. The concept features an 1,800 word summary, including the history of the movie, it’s producers, and reveals that “all three of the film’s stars would eventually go on to commit suicide”. It’s a mix of fact and fiction that goes into such depth it beggars the senses.
Again, Xoc was featured by Edge, this time on their website, where they called this work a ” twisted conceptual madness”, and Xoc’s “magnum opus”.
Over the period of just over a month, littlemathletics spoke to Jason about SMW, Videogame: The Movie: The Game: The Cover Album and a myriad of other topics, all through the magic of email.