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Neil Cicierega

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Neil Stephen Cicierega (/ˌsɪsəˈriːɡə/ SISS-ə-REE-gə;[1] born August 23, 1986) is an American musician, filmmaker, YouTuber, and animator. He is known as the creator of Potter Puppet Pals, "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny", and various music albums under the name Lemon Demon, along with a series of mashup albums under his own name.[2]

Neil Cicierega
Cicierega in September 2016
Born
Neil Stephen Cicierega

(1986-08-23) August 23, 1986 (age 38)
Bridgewater, Massachusetts, U.S.
Other names
  • Lemon Demon
  • Deporitaz
  • Trapezoid
  • Trapezzoid
  • MEGO vs. SPAGO
  • Grapes and Sunshine
Occupations
  • Comedian
  • actor
  • filmmaker
  • singer
  • musician
  • songwriter
  • puppeteer
  • artist
  • game developer
  • animator
Years active1998–present
Spouse
Ming Doyle
​
(m. 2015)​
Children1
Musical career
Genres
Websiteneilcic.com

Personal life

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Neil Stephen Cicierega[3] was born in Bridgewater, Massachusetts, on August 23, 1986.[4] His father was a programmer, which meant he was surrounded by computers while growing up. He has a brother and two sisters. His sister, Emmy, went on to become a storyboard artist for animated series such as Gravity Falls,[5] The Owl House, and the reboot of DuckTales.[6] At a young age, Cicierega started using a simplistic game developing program named Klik & Play. Beginning in the fourth grade, his parents homeschooled him and his siblings. He continued making amateur games, and began creating digital music to feature in them; he soon shared his music online through MP3.com under the name Trapezoid, which was later renamed to the anagram "Deporitaz" at the behest of another band already named Trapezoid. He also began composing MIDI music fragments that were referenced in his later works.[1] On August 8, 2015, Cicierega married illustrator and comic artist Ming Doyle, with whom he lives in Somerville, Massachusetts.[citation needed] Their daughter was born in March 2018.[7]

Career

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Animutation

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Main article: Animutation

Cicierega was first known for a series of dadaist or surrealist Flash animations he termed "Animutation".[8] Animutations feature arbitrary, nonsensical scenes and pop culture imagery and are typically set to novelty or foreign music, often from the Japanese version of Pokémon.

Potter Puppet Pals

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Main article: Potter Puppet Pals

Cicierega's Potter Puppet Pals is a comedy series which parodies the book series Harry Potter. It originated as a pair of Flash animations on Newgrounds in 2003, and later resurfaced in the form of a series of live action puppet shows released onto YouTube and PotterPuppetPals.com, starting in 2006. The central characters of the Harry Potter series are portrayed simply by puppets. The most successful Potter Puppet Pals video, The Mysterious Ticking Noise, currently has over 205 million views as of August 2024 .[9] Cicierega has done puppetry live at Harry Potter-themed events.

Lemon Demon

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Main article: Lemon Demon
 
Lemon Demon performing in 2006

Since 2003, Cicierega has released 10 full-length albums under his musical project Lemon Demon.[10] In 2005, he and animator Shawn Vulliez released a Flash animated music video "The Ultimate Showdown of Ultimate Destiny" on Newgrounds. The song was later included in the 2006 album Dinosaurchestra. An updated recording of the song was released to the Rock Band Network in 2010.[11]

In April 2009, Cicierega released his first four albums as free downloads on his site "neilcic.com"; however, they are now currently hosted on "lemondemon.com".

In January 2016, Cicierega announced Spirit Phone, a full-length Lemon Demon album released on February 29, 2016.[12] On July 10, 2018, it was announced that copies of the album on CD, cassette tape and vinyl would be sold through Needlejuice Records, who would later distribute remastered versions of Lemon Demon's Christmas EP I Am Become Christmas, as well as Nature Tapes, View-Monster, Dinosaurchestra, Damn Skippy, and Hip to the Javabean.

The Mouth mashup albums

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Cicierega in 2010

Cicierega has also created mashup music under his own name. He released two mashup albums, Mouth Sounds[13] and Mouth Silence,[14] as free downloads in 2014, and a third, Mouth Moods, in 2017.[15] A fourth album, Mouth Dreams, was released on September 30, 2020. All four albums are linked by their usage of Smash Mouth's "All Star", which is repeated frequently throughout Sounds and Moods, and appears through Easter eggs and references in Silence. In Mouth Dreams, "All Star" only makes one appearance in the track "Mouth Dreams (Extro)", where a heavily distorted edit of the lyrics can be heard.

Guaranteed* Video

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Neil Cicierega, as well as his friends Ryan Murphy and Kevin James, form the sketch comedy group Guaranteed* Video. Their youtube channel features skits as well as live-streams[16]

Other works

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In October 2012, Cicierega created the darkly satirical "Windows 95 Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks" blog, located at windows95tips.com. In the blog's telling, Windows 95 is a brooding, evil presence bent on dominating humanity. Most of the posts are faked error messages, with messages like "Windows needs a lock of your hair to continue," but presented in the exact graphical style of Windows 95. The blog has received favorable press attention.[17][18][19] In February 2019, Cicierega created Endless Jeopardy, a Twitter account that automatically posts a bot-generated Jeopardy! prompt every hour and awards points to the most-liked responses within 15 minutes.[20] Cicierega was commissioned to make a number of songs for the TV series Gravity Falls; however, only one was used, this being "Goat and a Pig", which was used in the end credits of the episode "The Love God"[21]

Discography

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As Deporitaz/Trapezoid

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  • Outsmart (2000)
  • Microwave This CD (2001)
  • OC ReMix: Monkey Island 2: LeChuck's Revenge "Monkey Brain Soup for the Soul" (2002)[22][23]
  • Dimes (2002)
  • Circa 2000 (2007)
  • The Count Censored (2007)[24]

Lemon Demon

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  • Clown Circus (2003)
  • Live from the Haunted Candle Shop (2003)
  • Hip to the Javabean (2004)
  • Damn Skippy (2005)
  • Dinosaurchestra (2006)
  • View-Monster (2008)
  • Almanac 2009 (2009)
  • Live (Only Not) (2011)
  • I Am Become Christmas (2012)
  • Nature Tapes (2014)
  • Spirit Phone (2016)
  • Something Glowing (2020) [25]
  • Acrobat Unstable Record (2022) [26]
  • One Weird Tip/Funkytown (2023) [27]

Neil Cicierega

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References

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  1. ^ a b "Neil Cicierega, Internet Person – XOXO Festival (2016)". YouTube. XOXO Festival. November 17, 2016. Archived from the original on February 6, 2017. Retrieved January 27, 2017.
  2. ^ Romano, Aja (March 7, 2017). "This '90s kid turned his love of the decade into the internet's best mashup albums - Vox". Archived from the original on November 3, 2019. Retrieved March 24, 2020.
  3. ^ Jarboe, Greg (October 7, 2011). YouTube and Video Marketing: An Hour a Day. John Wiley & Sons. p. 139. ISBN 9781118203811. Archived from the original on June 27, 2014. Retrieved October 19, 2016.
  4. ^ Cicierega, Neil; trapezzoid. "oh a survey how fascinating". trapezzoid.livejournal.com. Retrieved January 9, 2024.
  5. ^ "Soos and the Real Girl marks my first episode storyboarding for Gravity Falls!". Gravi-Team Falls. tumblr. September 21, 2014. Archived from the original on May 29, 2017. Retrieved May 17, 2017.
  6. ^ "Emmy Cicierega (@EmmyCic)". Twitter. Archived from the original on May 24, 2019. Retrieved April 8, 2020.
  7. ^ Doyle, Ming [@mingdoyle] (December 31, 2018). "Meet Darcy, the best part of our 2018. We had her back in March and she's lit up our whole year. Wishing you all a 2019 filled with good things! 💛" (Tweet). Archived from the original on July 13, 2021. Retrieved July 13, 2021 – via Twitter.
  8. ^ Mieszkowski, Katharine; Standen, Amy (April 26, 2001). "All hail Neil Cicierega". Salon. Archived from the original on July 4, 2018. Retrieved March 3, 2019.
  9. ^ Cicierega, Neil (March 23, 2007). "Potter Puppet Pals: The Mysterious Ticking Noise". Archived from the original on January 10, 2019. Retrieved January 11, 2019 – via YouTube.
  10. ^ Sweeney, Emily (June 22, 2006). "He's a hit with Internet set". Boston Globe. Archived from the original on March 4, 2016. Retrieved July 21, 2006.
  11. ^ "Lemon Demon on Rock Band Network". Archived from the original on July 15, 2011. Retrieved May 12, 2011.
  12. ^ "New Lemon Demon Album "Spirit Phone"". Neil Cicierega Tumblr. January 20, 2016. Archived from the original on June 14, 2019. Retrieved January 21, 2016.
  13. ^ Rife, Katie (April 29, 2014). ""Mouth Sounds" is the punishing '90s nostalgia mixtape the world deserves". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on November 6, 2014. Retrieved November 5, 2014.
  14. ^ Rife, Katie (July 22, 2014). "The sequel to 'Mouth Sounds' is here, and it's laugh out loud horrifying". The A.V. Club. Archived from the original on February 2, 2017. Retrieved January 24, 2017.
  15. ^ Minor, Jordan (January 26, 2017). "Game of the Year: DJ Hero/Mouth Moods". Geek.com. Archived from the original on July 1, 2019. Retrieved March 24, 2020.
  16. ^ "Guaranteed* Video". YouTube. Retrieved November 23, 2024.
  17. ^ Trendacosta, Katharine (July 30, 2014). "Messages From Your Old Abandoned Computer, Which Has Achieved AI". Gizmodo. Archived from the original on January 6, 2019. Retrieved January 6, 2019.
  18. ^ Fletcher, Tony (November 14, 2012). "Windows 95 Tips, Tricks, and Tweaks – a lovely parody of system messages". wirefresh. Archived from the original on January 7, 2019. Retrieved January 6, 2019.
  19. ^ Varias, Lambert (November 19, 2012). "I Don't Remember Windows 95 Being This Terrifying". Technabob. Archived from the original on January 6, 2019. Retrieved January 6, 2019.
  20. ^ Carman, Ashley (February 18, 2019). "The best new Twitter bot is an endless game of Jeopardy where the winners are good at puns". The Verge. Retrieved August 24, 2020.
  21. ^ "[holding back tears] The final song I wrote for Gravity Falls. It didn't get used, but use your imagination!". Neil Cicierega Tumblr. April 17, 2016. Archived from the original on October 21, 2020. Retrieved October 20, 2020.
  22. ^ "OCR00799: Monkey Island 2 Monkey Brain Soup for the Soul OC ReMix". YouTube. OverClocked ReMix: Video Game Music Community. May 23, 2009. Archived from the original on March 7, 2020. Retrieved October 5, 2019.
  23. ^ "Artist: Trapezzoid". OverClocked ReMix. Archived from the original on January 29, 2019. Retrieved January 28, 2019.
  24. ^ "The Song of the Count". LiveJournal. November 18, 2007. Archived from the original on August 10, 2022. Retrieved August 10, 2022.
  25. ^ "Something Glowing, by Lemon Demon".
  26. ^ "Acrobat Unstable Record, by Lemon Demon".
  27. ^ "One Weird Tip/Funkytown, by Lemon Demon".
  28. ^ Not for Resale (2019) - IMDb
  29. ^ Amazon.com
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