Original SoundCAST: Episode #014 (feat. Andrew “zircon” Aversa)

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To us, Andrew Aversa is one of the few people who really represents what game music is all about. That’s because, even in the past year, Andrew has shown himself as a force to be reckoned with on all fronts: AAA game music, indie game music, and fan-made arrangements.

In this episode, Brenna Wilkes and I talk with Andrew for a solid hour about his work on Globulous (which Brenna recently reviewed ^[2]), on Soul Calibur V, and the super-funded Kickstarter campaign ^[3] for the OCRemix album under his direction: Final Fantasy VI: Balance and Ruin. This last topic takes up over half of the episode, and it should! At the time we recorded this (Saturday), the campaign was at $60,000, 400% of the $15,000 goal. As I’m writing this post, they’re now at $75,000. I also got *this* in a Kickstarter Backer’s email:

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What does that mean? Well, everyone who’s getting a physical copy of “Balance and Ruin” will also get a newly-printed, *all 4 disc* version of Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream as well. That’s good stuff.

Anyway, listen to the episode to learn about everything zircon’s up to. And if you want even more podcast-delivered info on the Balance and Ruin project, please check out this great Nitro Game Injection “after-show” recording with Larry “Liontamer” Oji ^[5], which was just recorded on Sunday.

Download: Original SoundCAST Episode #014 ^[6]

If you want to know what BGM we have behind all that talk-talk-talk, click the “more” button.

[0:00:00] “Antigravity” from zircon’s original album Antigravity (feat. Jillian Aversa on vocals)
[0:04:30] “Rain Node” from Globulous (zircon)
[0:09:40] “Cavern Omega” from Globulous (Jeff Ball)
[0:15:20] “The Breeze at Dawn” from Soul Calibur V (Cris Velasco and Jillian Aversa)
[0:16:18] “Sacred Dawn” from Soul Calibur V (zircon)
[0:20:10] “Flying Heaven (Fei Long Stage)” from Super Street Fighter II Turbo HD Remix (comp: Syun Nishigaki, arr: zircon)
[0:26:30] “Rhymes with Elixir (Chocobo Chocobo)” from Final Fantasy IV: Echoes of Betrayal, Light of Redemption (The Scuba Divers, feat. Liontamer)
[0:32:00] “Dancing Mad” from Piano Opera Final Fantasy IV/V/VI (comp: Nobuo Uematsu, arr: Hiroyuki Nakayama)
[0:46:25] “The Serpent Trench” from Final Fantasy VI (Nobuo Uematsu)
[0:59:00] “Spinach Rag” from Piano Collections Final Fantasy VI (comp: Nobuo Uematsu, arr: IT REMAINS A MYSTERY ^[7], perf: Reiko Nomura)
[1:07:45] “Desertion” from OCRemix ^[8], arranged by zircon (source: “Battle,” “Decisive Battle” from Final Fantasy VI)