Blaster Master Theme – Electro Rock Version

To be more precise this would be the title or prologue theme to Blaster Master. This game was an awesome… [more]

Blaster Master Theme – Electro Rock Version Blaster Master Theme – Electro Rock Version

New Living Illusion Website Has Arrived!

Finally, after months of procrastination and weeks of hard work, it has arrived! The new LivingIllusion.com.… [more]

New Living Illusion Website Has Arrived! New Living Illusion Website Has Arrived!

Christmas Fail – Carol of the Bells Rock Cover

With the holiday season starting to come to an end I figured its best to post this sooner rather than… [more]

Christmas Fail – Carol of the Bells Rock Cover Christmas Fail – Carol of the Bells Rock Cover

Metroid Theme Rock Cover

Another week down and another rock cover to share. This week I did the introduction theme to Nintendo… [more]

Metroid Theme Rock Cover Metroid Theme Rock Cover

X-Men Cartoon Theme Rock Cover

This song I recorded over a year ago and have just never gotten around to making a blog post about it.… [more]

X-Men Cartoon Theme Rock Cover X-Men Cartoon Theme Rock Cover

To be more precise this would be the title or prologue theme to Blaster Master. This game was an awesome one from the Nintendo Entertainment System. I wasn’t actually introduced to it until last year by Classy Man over at The Game Heroes, I know it’s crazy… both that I’ve never played it, and that I still play NES games. This is a little different than the other covers, this time around there was a lot of electronic instrumentation to keep the eerie and haunting feel from the original version of the song. There is some guitar and drums but it is mostly just sounds, effects, synths, and various other good stuff.

Here’s the direct link to the video:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1vn-6fvtcTY

:)

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

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Finally, after months of procrastination and weeks of hard work, it has arrived! The new LivingIllusion.com. With the music and entertainment industry going in the direction they are I figured it best to ensure that our new site be built around easy access for visitors to find new content from the band. I wanted this new site to reflect the constant stream of updates and content that we plan on posting while keeping the site dynamic and  giving people a reason to come back. Not to get into too much tech speak, but I used a blogging/content management system called wordpress to build the site.

So big things are in the plans for us these days. We’re going to be releasing our new album at our CD Release Party which is booked at the Starlite Room in Edmonton on April 9th 2010. We’re going to be playing with not only our friends, but one of our favorite bands, PORTAL! We’re going to be pushing to get our record on the radio with our good friends over at Oddball Productions, plus more things that I don’t want to mention quite yet. :) I will have a proper announcement for the cd release party in the coming weeks once we have tickets, posters and all that stuff pulled together. It’s going to be a wicked show, not to mention that we’re finally releasing our album!

Alright, well I’m off to bed, it has been a long day, but it’s great to finally have the new site finished (for the most part). There still will be lots of updates and changing pages in the coming weeks as I fill out and update old content pages plus pulling new merch together and posting songs!

:)

Feel free to check out the site and post a comment to let me know what you think about the new site and if you think I should make any changes!! I’m always open to creative criticism and want to make the site as awesome as possible:
http://www.livingillusion.com

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

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With the holiday season starting to come to an end I figured its best to post this sooner rather than later. That being said, here’s our rendition of the song Carol of the Bells aka Ukrainian Bell.  This song always reminds me of the movie Home Alone. I used pictures from Fail Blog and Epic Fail to make the video for the song and it turned out quite hilarious. Guitar, bass and drums are used for the instrumentation as per usual.

With out further ado, here’s our Carol of the Bells Rock Cover:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RRpme5mZ0Zg

More Rock Covers to come when I get back from Mexico.

:)

Shane Lamotte

http://www.livingillusion.com

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Another week down and another rock cover to share. This week I did the introduction theme to Nintendo game Metroid. It’s a great tune and has a very cool time signature change in the middle. I think that the production on this one turned out really good as well.  Although, it’s still no where near the production quality of our new album that’s coming out soon.

Check out the Metroid Theme – Hard Rock Version here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4T3V9ffBciY

:)

Shane Lamotte

shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com/

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This song I recorded over a year ago and have just never gotten around to making a blog post about it. I actually learned how to play this song back when the TV show was still on the air in the 90’s, back around the same time I was learning how to play guitar. The X-Men Cartoon that ran on Fox Kids every Saturday morning was my favorite cartoon by far. Since I posted the song to YouTube, it has received over 66,000 views!

A special note needs to be written about this song because it was used by the Nostalgia Critic in one of the videos on ThatGuyWithTheGlasses.com. It was used in the TGWTG Team Brawl video which can be viewed here. Special thanks to Doug Walker (aka That Guy with the Glasses) for putting this in the video. If you wait til the end credits of the video you can see the band name! When I saw the video I literally freaked. I have been following TGWTG since his YouTube days and was so amazed to see that he used our cover in one of his videos.

Alright well that’s enough talk about the song, you can check it out below.

X-Men Original Theme – Hard Rock Version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MipmvhX9X2I

That’s all folks!

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

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It has been a busy week so here is another update, this time for a hard rock version of the theme from the Mega Man 3 Snake Man Level! I chose this song because of all the levels in Mega Man 3 (which is by far my favorite Mega Man game) this one was the stage I always beat first whenever I played. In the end I think the song came together quite well and sounds pretty wicked. The track is complete with drums, bass and guitar.

Mega Man 3 Snake Man – Hard Rock Version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IsqywghcM_w

Next up will be some more well known songs covers, not such unknowns like Desert Bus!

Suggestions are more than welcome!

:)

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

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Alright so if you’ve never heard of the Desert Bus for Hope Charity here’s the run down. The comedy sketch group Loading Ready Run (http://www.loadingreadyrun.com) from Vancouver Island (Victoria) get together once a year to play the most boring game ever “Desert Bus” in order to raise money for Child’s Play. Child’s Play is a charity organization that brings toys and games into hospitals for children to play with while there recovering

Desert Bus was a mini game on an unreleased Sega CD Game called Penn & Teller’s Smoke and Mirrors. In the game you have to drive a bus in real time from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas, Nevada. The bus always veers slowly to the right, you can’t go above a maximum speed of 45mph and it takes 8 hours (can’t pause) to get your 1 Point for the drive. Once you’ve made it all the way to Vegas you can decide if you want to drive back to Tucson to get another point. And no, the scenery doesn’t change for your 8 hour stint for the most part. It’s a horrible game that was more of a joke than anything else. Sidenote: If you crash a tow truck takes you all the way back to either Tuscon or Vegas in real time.

Currently the team at http://www.desertbus.org have a total of 13 points and over 110 hours of non stop driving day and night with no crashes. They have raised over $85,000 (even I contributed)! Wanting to go above and beyond with my support I took the honor of tracking a hard rock cover of the Desert Bus Theme from the game. It’s the intro song and the only time you get to hear music, like I said it’s extremely boring.

Desert Bus Theme – Hard Rock Version:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q9ESzI_NuF0

Now go to http://www.desertbus.org and donate!

:)

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

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Back at it again. Yay for video game covers, haha. So if everything goes as planned, we’re gonna start doing this weekly. Basically we’re going to be taking songs from our childhood and recording hard rock versions of them with our own arrangements. Right now we’re mostly going to be focusing on video games and tv shows although we have plans to start doing other songs as well. This is something we’re doing just for fun and don’t want to take it seriously. Now that that is out of the way…

Here’s a our take on the Mega Man 3 Stage Select Theme:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NucJrfsgKiU

:)

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

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While most people are out drinking and having fun on their weekends we’re busy being giant nerds and recording hard rock versions of random things from our childhood. We decided to dive in to the world of the Nintendo this weekend and recorded the Jogging theme from Mike Tyson’s Punch Out. It’s too bad we didn’t have a pink jumpsuit because we could have made a sweet live action video to go along with this theme, haha.

Check out our video for Mike Tyson’s Punch Out Jogging Theme:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kt_WuMV_PcE

Feel free to suggest more songs we should cover!

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

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Alright internet, I just finished the new MySpace page for the band and figured I would let ya know. After two weeks with a designer and an awesome photo shoot with our photographer this was the end result.

You can check it out at http://www.myspace.com/livingillusion.

Special thanks to Mike Ofstedahl our photographer he did an awesome job. The picture we used as the header for the MySpace page was taken at the studio and was definitely one of the best. Sidenote: Rick our graphic designer for the MySpace page is freaking amazing.

So what do you think of the MySpace page? Does it look classy enough for ya?

Now I just have to finish the new Living Illusion website.
:)

Shane Lamotte
shane@livingillusion.com
http://www.livingillusion.com

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