Secret of Mana composer Hiroki Kikuta has released two original albums to fans in the form of ANGELICFORTRESS and ANGELICFORTRESS DOUBLE HELIX. ANGELICFORTRESS is an album series created to combine Kikuta’s love for progressive rock, jazz fusion, and game music as well as to say thank you to patrons of music in general.
“I was exposed to an endless catalog of awesome progressive rock and jazz fusion albums throughout high school. It had the biggest impact on the formulation of my view of the musical world. Now I want to mix up these genres with modern day videogame music.” – Hiroki Kikuta
The chiptune-rock duo of Marshall Art are celebrating their 5th anniversary of their band formation, and passing the awesome onto you!
On July 1st, the compilation album Gallery will be released on digital retailers and will feature music from Marshall Art’s entire 2011-2016 discography, which includes covers of game music such as Undertale, Chrono Trigger, Donkey Kong Country 3 and a whole lot more including more obscure game covers from Shura no Mon and non-vgm compositions. If you’re not familiar with Marshall Art, their work of NES-style chiptunes layer with guitar rock has included collaborations with several other artists and inclusion on tribute albums such as Danse Macabre and Chronicles of Time. They’ve also been a staple within the chiptune community and performed at several MAGFests as well as 8static Fest to high praise.
“Battle Theme 1” – Shura no Mon (Marshall Art)
The new release will also have 25 limited edition, hand-painted cassettes available to the most eager of fans to purchase for their collection.
“We wanted to give these songs a proper physical release. I’m a huge fan of unique, hand-crafted merch items. This compilation made for a good opportunity to make an album that is an art piece on its own.” – Jeffrey Roberts, Marshall Art
The 13-track Gallery album spans 60 minutes worth of game music covers and other works, and can be purchased digitally tomorrow July 1st on Loudr and Amazon MP3, while the limited edition cassette tapes will go on sale the same day at noon on Marshall Art’s music website.
While you might expect the soundtrack to a game about building an intergalactic empire out of soup to be whimsical and playful, Nom Nom Galaxy goes an entirely different direction with its music. It was created by progressive rock band, The Electric Bends, which is made up of Q-Games President, Dylan Cuthbert, and several other members of the studio that made the game.
Unlike its contemporaries — Terraria and Minecraft that score the wonder of exploring huge worlds with minimal, even emotionally stirring soundtracks — Nom Nom Galaxy’s sound goes much harder. While scavenging alien landscapes for new soup ingredients you’ll be accompanied by wafting guitars and dissonant bass riffs that seem to wander along with you. Yawning outer space distortion and tinny, punchy drums accentuate most of the album. Some fantastic distorted organ-like sounds make ‘Smoking the Couch’ a unique standout while later pieces lean more towards ambient electronic. The 17 tracks live up to the promise of an “aural journey” with many songs meandering to 9, 12, even 16 minutes in length that incorporate and expand on the shorter loops heard in the game itself.
The album has been available on Bandcamp, iTunes and Amazon since last November but it made its debut on Steam just last week. It can be purchased alone for $9.99 or bundled with the game for $17.99. Nom Nom Galaxy is currently a free game for PlayStation Plus members through the month of February as well. Coincidentally, I just started playing the PlayStation 4 version last night. What about you? Have you been following the game since its Early Access days or waiting for this soundtrack release? Let us know in the comments.
coda, one half of the retro-glorious unit yogurtbox, is ready to take on the world by himself with his new album, Tracer. The album promises over half an hour’s worth of chiptune prog-rock fusion, a familiar sound to those who follow the Ubiktune universe of releases. The artist has had previous success along with surasshu with their yogurtbox label, releasing the highly acclaimed Tree of Knowledge, an imaginary soundtrack based on the PC-98 era of erotic visual novel games. Tracer will however, be coda’s debut album, making it very interesting indeed to hear the results.
The release will be broadcasted on a live listening party over at Noise Channel Radio at 10PM Eastern, May 3rd. Be sure to sign up to their Facebook event and join in on the festivities as coda unveils his debut effort to the world.
With the release of Around Past in 2010, C-jeff along with Megus illustrated a fully realized vision of his blend using chiptune music combined with live instruments, a combination that has been done before, but not with the rather unique way in order to seemlessly craft a very expressive and organic soundscape that stands out among the many great releases of Ubiktune. Around Past was something of a defining moment in terms of C-jeff’s stylistic approach to the chiptune genre, and with the promise of a solo album using many of the same elements as found in the Around Past album, excitement couldn’t have been higher for the young Russian’s brave new album.
Finally, in January 2012, the album saw light, and Prechstale set out to truly define C-jeff’s sound and style. With suprise guest performers and a story to tell, Prechstale hopes to be one of the true musical experiences you have in 2012.
Click the jump to enter the world of Preschtale! (more…)
It should come as no surprise by now that most of us here at OSV are huge fans of Vince DiCola. From his work on Rocky IV and The Transformers (the animated film), to some of the recent YouTube postings he’s been involved with, he’s extremely talented and generous with his time. I conducted an interview with him while at Music4Games back in March 2008 after learning that he was involved with an arrangement of popular “Moon Over The Castle” theme from Gran Turismo 5: Prologue. It’s shocking to think that it was nearly 3 years ago that Prologue was released, huh?
In any case, this is one of my favorite interviews that I ever conducted. Vince DiCola is not only very detailed in his responses, but also very genuine and open about his career, the challenges he’s faced in the music business, and his hopes for the future. Interestly, the project he alludes to at the end of the interview is still in the works, and trust me when I tell you that it’s going to blow you all away when it’s finally out there. Hopefully we can provide a preview on that soon, but in the meantime, take a trip back with us to enjoy this Blast from the Past entry with Vince DiCola.