Years ago I had a music podcast called the Beatcast and I couldn't have stopped posting episodes at a worse time.

Remix Da Bass by Nik Furious [ 3:20 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

See, I was in the middle of something called Building Da Beat. The idea was to construct an instrumental song from the ground up and share each step of the process with the listeners. 

First I posted the drums. Then I added bass. Then I added some guitar. Then I changed the guitar. Then I stopped posting new Beatcasts. 

I didn't quit making the Beatcast because of Building Da Beat. If anything, it was a last gasp effort to rekindle my excitement for the Beatcast. Obviously, it didn't work.

Here's a close up of the Cort bass that I played on this track.

But something odd happened after I lost interest in Building Da Beat... I fell in love with a remixed version of Da Bass!!! Still unhappy with Da Guitar, I'd produced a stripped-down version that only featured electric guitar at the end of the track. This was the version I planned to use for Building Da Synth.

But the synth performance never happened in a timely manner. And so the unused version of the track sat around, waiting for some melody. But even without strong melodic components, I found myself listening to Da Bass all of the time.

Eventually Remix Da Bass became the foundation of Da Bounce, a synth-packed song included on my forthcoming album, 7 Star Sky Flash Kick. But to me, Remix Da Bass still stands on its own as a raw rhythmic jam with a lot of punch and progression.

Phoenix Bay is a prototype. Recorded in the mid 00s and mixed in 2008, it's a 100% original Nik Furious track. But due to its unfinished nature, I feel it makes a better mixtape beat than a final album cut.

Phoenix Bay by Nik Furious [ 2:56 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

When I first created this song, I thought it was complete. But upon spending some time with it, I decided that it needed more components. And that's how it evolved into Remix the Phoenix, a song from my album Brilliant Shower.

The name Phoenix Bay is inspired by Jean Grey's rebirth. A character from Marvel's X-Men comics, Jean connects with a cosmic entity known as the Phoenix Force in X-Men #100-101. When it happens, the team's Blackbird jet crashes into Jamaica Bay, an inlet of water touching the edge of New York City.

Following a turn as Dark Phoenix, Jean Grey died in X-Men #137 and that was that. Or was it??? A few years later, she was revived in a storyline involving the Avengers and the Fantastic Four. It's been collected in the Phoenix Rising graphic novel.

Turns out that Jean was never dead -- the Phoenix Force took her place while it left her cocooned in Jamaica Bay until some other superheroes came around and pulled her up from the depths.

Ironically, I've never read this storyline. I just know about the events from years of reading other superhero comic books. The basic plot has been recapped over and over so many times that it was pretty damn easy for me to piece things together without reading the original material.

So why'd I tell you all that? Because there isn't much to say about Phoenix Bay. I already detailed its creation in my spotlight on Remix the Phoenix. While I like this track, I think it's more of a blueprint than a fully developed instrumental song.

Though the forceful vocal runs of Bobby Kimball dominate this beat, I think the drums are the true star of the song. The percussion here is a stew of Jeff Porcaro's punchy drum kit and the knock of my digital drums.

Ooo Ahh by Nik Furious [ 2:38 ] Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This track is culled from Hold the Line by Toto, which is a fun late 70s rock song performed by fantastic musicians. I was drawn to the song by its chord progression and I had a great time breaking it down into the loops that form Ooo Ahh.

This beat was made in late 2005, which was an odd time for me as a solo musician. I'd been in constant, obsessive beat creation mode from late 2004 to early 2005. But when I moved back to Pittsburgh in the summer of 2005, I all but stopped creating new instrumentals. Instead, I played music with my friends and tried to find rappers to rhyme over the beats I'd already produced.

Ooo Ahh was one of the rare new beats I produced during that time. Personally, when I listen to it I can hear passionate repression bundled up into this one track, as if I took enough energy to produce five beats but funneled it into a single song.