DOWNLOAD: Akira The Don – Be Brave
DOWNLOAD: Akira The Don – Be Brave (Clean)
DOWNLOAD: Akira The Don – Be Brave (Acapella)
DOWNLOAD: Akira The Don – Be Brave (Instrumental)
DOWNLOAD the whole CDQ MP3 Bundle, including artwork!

Here you go then. A beautiful sleeve, and a full CD Quality MP3 bundle of Be Brave – The Hype Machine Number One Mega Smash from “the best gaming mixtape you’ll ever hear” (tm and c. Kotaku), ATD23: The Street Fighter Mixtape.

Be Brave was the first song I wrote for the mixtape. For about half an hour it was called Superted, until – as is the way with these things – I sort of dragged the song out of the air (or idea space, or whatver you like to call it), and held it down, thrashing and wiggling about, as they do, until I could make sense of it. Then, very quickly, it became Be Brave.

I knew it was righteous straight away, but Envy confirmed it: she said it was her favourite thing I’d done. Not everyone was as immediate – my girl didn’t get it until the day before yesterday! But, as IcyLiquid, a newcomer to this Don business, said on Twitter today: It’s “weird.” So no wonder.

It was based around a sample from the Blood On The Asphalt remix of Guile’s Ending Theme, from the Super Street Fighter 2 Turbo HD remix project, an ambitious and accomplished fan-created project made aware to me by numerous Google searches and forums during my quest to find the best Street Fighter music out there. Forsooth:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myym4CiT7-U

Pretty neat, huh? The moment the chorus became the right one was when I stopped listening to the main song and focused on the fade-out. That fade-out amazed me. It was also the fade-out that made me use Auto Tune. Dry vocals didn’t feel right on it. It’s space music – lush, alien, digi-tal. My apologies to the Jay-Z stans, but it was entirely necessary. I had no choice in the matter. I do what I am told by the Gods, that is all. I am a humble conduit.

A humble conduit who’s ace song called Be Brave go to number one!

NUMBER 1!

NUMBER 1!

NUMBER 1!

Actually, we just got knocked off by two Kanye Wests. TWO KANYE’S!

FIGHT!

So anyway! Two things. 1: I wanna get together some kind of visual for it, for Youtube posterity. It needn’t be complicated – in fact, the less complicated the better. Ideas?

And thing 2: I am gonna focus in on two more tracks from The Street Fighter Mixtape. What should they be?

Oh, and here’s an extra. It’s time for you to start getting really excited about The Life Equation. Cos all this stuff? This was the warm up.

— Saturday, May 29th, 2010

Akira The Don – Be Brave by Akira The Don

WE THE BEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEST!

— Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Ladies and Gs, we are doing it. Be Brave, from The Street Fighter Mixtape, is smashing up the Hype Machine charts like a cotdang PINYATA!

A few days ago people were telling me I’d be lucky to crack top 40. When we got to number 5, people were saying that was enough. Well done, but you better give it up. The competition’s too strong. But I knew different, brothers and sisters. I knew our quest was right, our appetite for glory was strong, and our thirst for victory could only be quenched by one thing… NUMBER ONE!

And right now, brothers and sisters, we are at NUMBER TWO, a massive 2040 points ahead of Andre 3000 at number 5, and a brazen 1261 points ahead of our nearest rival, Robyn, at number 3. WE ARE DOING IT!

This is our third day on the chart. Yesterday we added over 1000 points bringing us significantly closer to the number one spot, currently occupied by LCD Soundsystem, who’ve been on the chart for 6 days and are now just 927 points ahead! OH MY GOD!

It should be noted that a crazy 3801 of LCD’s points came from ONE person – Ana Marie Cox, who is being followed by 1,473,082 men, women, children and spam bots. In contrast, the majority of our points came from people with a handful of followers. Real-ass people who’s votes bought in 1, 2, 3, 4, 20-odd points each. We’ve had a few big hitters lend their mighty weight to our righteous cause – shout out Martin Carr, Example, Gonzales, Dan le Sac, Scroobius Pip, The Quietus, Lethal Bizzle et all – but most of this victory is down to the combined efforts of non-celebrities. And that is a beautiful thing.

So let us not falter, brother. Let us not waver, sister. Let us take inspiration from Mel Gibson in Braveheart, from Sigourney Weaver in Aliens, from Paul Gasgoine in world cup ’90… actually, scrub that, we LOST that thing… from Maradona and his Godly hand, from Pele and his no shoes, from Baldrick in Blackadder, from that angel in It’s A Wonderful Life, from EVERY TINY BABY THAT EVER FELL ON IT’S POO SMEARED-ASS AND GOT BACK UP… let us belkive in the power we have inside us and SMASH THAT CHART LIKE GREEK PLATES!

Are you with me?!

ARE YOU WITH ME?!

Alrighty! Then get your fine ass over here and CLICK THAT VOTE BUTTON! Then get your Mum to do the same! Then your Nan! Even if she hasn’t got a Twitter account! Get her to sign up! One point from your Nan could be the point that does it!

Be proud! Be strong! BE BRAVE!

HOOOO GRAAAAAAAAAAAAGH!

Oh man, what a feeling. And speaking of winning, we have some WINNERS from last week when I went away and asked you to do some emailing. Shout out

Kristine!

CM McRae!

Tony!

James!

Ellie!

You are all winners! expect an email this evening asking for your T shirt sizes, and prizes will follow! BLAP!

Caption Contest winners coming up.

OK go vote for that thing. If we win I’m gonna drop some free music. I might have to throw a party or some ish as well. Actually, here’s a thing. How best shall we celebrate this mighty victory which is our DESTINY?

EDIT: WOAH! WE DID IT! LCD Soundsystem got chased out of the building and we are NUMBER FLIPPING ONE!!!

— Thursday, May 27th, 2010

Yes, we are at NUMBER 2 in the Hype Machine Twitter charts, above Robyn and Andre 3000 and Radiohead and hot on the heels of LCD Soundsystem. HOOOO-GRAAAAAAAAH!

BIG UP EVERYBODY who’s been involved in this historic feat! And it’s not over. Number one is within our grasp. Multiple votes seem to count, perversely enough, so GET IN and LET’s GET THAT NUMBER ONE! For as Chilly Gonzales so wisely noted on Presidential Suite:

“It’s a popularity contest
You’ve just got to put it in context.”

Yes indeed.

Anyway. As I mentioned on twitter earlier, I awoke at the crack of dawn today with a terrible burning pain in my belly, and lo I did run to the bathroom heaving painfully, eventually spattering the bathtub with a foul red acid slop, reminiscent of the Martian Weed from Jeff Wayne’s War Of The Worlds...  the stuff stripped all the enamel off my teeth and has left me feeling pretty shit, to be honest, therefore I am cancelling today’s Doncast, as I don’t want to deliver anything subpar, and, as noted last week, the royal We are charging the format to something BIGGER and MORE AWESOME.

So sorry if you, like, took the day of work or anything crazy like that.

Anyway, last night’s meeting was fruitful, you’ll be glad to know. Momentum around this here Don seems to be picking up beautifully, which spells Good News for that long awaited Life Equation… I shall be letting you know very soon how you can get involved in the artwork. It’s gonna be a flipping masterpiece.

OH YEAH! I forgot to say – my little brother Zef was trying to fix the whole navigating past the first page issue last night, and somehow broke the comments section, and some other stuff. Hopefully that will be fixed soon, but in the meanwhile you can send messages via Twitter and Facebook.

EDIT: It’s fixed! Zef coached his girl Kelly through the process on the telephone. Amazing. Maybe they can do the new website that way. Win!

PAX!

— Wednesday, May 26th, 2010

Damn, that holiday seems a long time ago now! I have been working my lil’ buns off ever since I got back. Much to consider.

But, first off, today I am STORMING SOME CHARTS!

The Hype Machine charts, to be exact. Right now Be Brave, from The Street Fighter Mixtape is sitting pretty at number 16 8 9 7 5 3. AMAZING! It’s been climing all day, following its appearance on the site (and outside the chart) last night, via the perma-dope musiclikedirt.com. If you can spare the time, get your ass over there and hit the Tweet This Track link. Actually, this seems to work. I have never been on a big chart on my own before (I know, that’s weird). This is a big deal to me! Serious! I am hyped!

Haha. “Hyped”.

In other news, Because you demanded it, I’m reprinting The Omega Sanction Ts. ON THAT AMAZING CARBON NEUTRAL ORGANIC COTTON!

Yes. We’ve been out of those joints for a while. BUT IT IS A DESIGN CLASSIC. And needs to be on that super comfy cotton. And guess what?

I am not increasing the cost, even though they cost me a bunch more. They’re still just £12.99. WOW!

They’ll be in next week. Order yours now to guarantee satisfaction!

Lalalala. I’m looking forward to rocking that. I was rocking my old one in Malta. It felt good. Did I mention I fell asleep on a lido and woke up half way out to bloody sea? I was way past the buoys, and the people on the shore were mere dots. It was a pretty amazing feeling. Well, once I’d got all the salt water out of my lungs. I woke up because the wake of a jet boat knocked my snoozing ass off my 2 euro lido. I thought I was gonna drown to death for a second! I think I deserved it. I’d been grumping ‘cos the sun was lurking behind a thin later of cloud. I still manage to amaze myself with my own dickery sometimes.

Imagine, grumping because of a thin layer of cloudl. In Malta? On holiday with family?

Dick move Donovan!

My goal this week – well, one of them – is to get through a whole week without making a single dick move. Starting now. I am going to get my friends, my girl, and YOU, dear reader, to judge. If I make a dick move I will have to pay some kind of forfeit. If I don’t, I will WIN!

Speaking of which, you’ve got till tomorrow to get your CAPTION CONTEST entries in. We’ve got some string one’s so far, but there’s still room for someone to come in and steal the show.

PAX!

— Tuesday, May 25th, 2010

Oh my days! So, I just got back from a wonderful break in Malta with my girl and her step-dad and her Mam (who you can see taking a photo above), excited as heck to show off my tan, and the UK’s only in the in the midst of a bloody HEATWAVE of BIBLICAL proportions! Tarnation!

Anyway, I have returned not only to the aforementioned heatwave, but to an inbox so fearsome it makes my very blood curdle. Therefore I declare this a

CAPTION CONTEST!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

and hand the floor over to you. As usual, leave your hilarious/sad/mental/weird captions in the comments section. A minor celebrity shall assist with the judging and the prize. GO GO GO!

— Monday, May 24th, 2010