Groupees’ Chiptune + Charity Bundle returns for the 10th time this Summer to spread music and money to benefit the Children’s Cancer Association’s MyMusic Rx program. For a minimum of $2 you’ll get ten chiptune albums and soundtracks featuring Jake “virt” Kaufman, tiasu, ToyCompany, DJ Cutman, Jamatar, coda, bignic, Please Lose Battle, BigGiantCircles and Kubbi.
Highlights this time around are the entire Retro City Rampage soundtrack from “virt”, “Norrin Radd” and “Freaky DNA” and an exclusive EP album from DJ Cutman featuring original music. Mystery albums are added as donations hit $1,000 levels so there’s more bonus music to come, the first of which will be the ToyCompany album Playroom Vol.2.
All of the pieces that we’ve featured on Arrangement of the Week have been based on music from games on either consoles, handheld, or personal computers. However, we’ve yet to have any covers of music from mobile games. That changes today with an arrangement of Jimmy “Big Giant Circles” Hinson’s music from the mobile puzzle game Threes.
The artist for this arrangement is timaeus222 who has created an electronic remix of the Threes main theme, “Threes Is the Bees Knees,” titled “Threes ‘Reactive’.”
The remix keeps the light and upbeat tone of the original track and transforms it into a short but sweet electronic funk dance track. There’s plenty of great FM synth sounds, but there’s a nice dose of acoustic sounding guitar instruments to balance things out. The mix never sounds dense or overwhelming and it maintains a light feel even when the heavier synth elements come in.
The tone of the track shifts often thanks to the wide variety of synth instruments that take the spotlight throughout the piece’s duration. There’s plenty of synth lead instruments that get the melody, so you never find yourself getting board of hearing any particular instrument in the remix. All in all, it’s a great tribute to a soundtrack that doesn’t get enough of the attention that it deserves.
Have any favorite remixes, arrangements, or covers? Feel free to tell us about them in the comment section. You can check out “Threes ‘Reactive’” at OC ReMix.
C418, the German composer best known for creating the soundscapes of Minecraft, has stealth/surprise launched his first new album in nearly two years, titled 148. Included in the 19 tracks are original vocal works, Minecraft remixes that had only been heard at live shows and collaborations with some darlings of the indie game scene. In the works since 2011, C418 explains the surprise release as an effort to move ahead and to re-confirm that, yes, he’s still making music.
“It just has been plaguing me for too long. I think that you can’t be happy with anything if you’ve stared at it too close for too long. Which is why I decided to stealth release it without any announcement. I’ve had incredibly unproductive years recently, and a lot of it had to do with being burnt out and partly being somewhat depressed. This album didn’t really help my psyche either. By releasing this, right now, I hope I can get to a clean slate and start beginning work on new stuff. And, of course, maybe it stops making everyone worried that I stopped composing altogether.”
He goes on to describe the album as “highly energetic and full of house and Drum & Bass tunes”. Sampling it this morning I can say it’s definitely more upbeat than Minecraft and the collaborations between Disasterpeace, Baiyon, Big Giant Circles and Laura Shigihara add variety to the overall sound. 148 is available now from Bandcamp, iTunes, Spotify, Amazon, or Google Play.
During the month of October, we had a series of Halloween themed Arrangement of the Week entries. It was fun highlighting some pieces within a specific category, so I thought it would be nice to do something similar for the holiday season. So for the month of December, Arrangement of the Week will be featuring winter and holiday themed pieces from the game music remix community.
First up is an electronic remix of Sonic the Hedgehog 3’s “Ice Cap Zone” from Jimmy Hinson, aka Big Giant Circles, titled “Eastern Ice Field.”
The piece has a slow opening, starting off with some atmosphere effects and wind chimes. As the remix name implies, this arrangement has some eastern flavor to its sound. The first instruments to emerge are a plucked zither, a harp, and a flute-like lead. At around 0’53” the percussion comes in to give the track a more electronica focused vibe. These elements combine to create a wonderful hybrid sound of electronic and eastern instruments.
What makes this arrangement stand out for me are the transition and improv sections. Sections like 2’03” feature a handful of interesting shifts in tone. The mix quiets down and ramps back up all in a very short time span. The track is full of other fun changes and surprises, including a fake out ending at 3’10”. I also liked the choice by Big Giant Circles to focuses more on the chords and textures, rather than the bass line, which is more prominent in the source piece. Overall, it’s a great winter themed track to help start off the month of December.
Have any favorite winter or holiday themed remixes you’d like to share? Let us know in the comments below. You can check out Big Giant Circles’ “Eastern Ice Field” on OC ReMix.
Groupees is back with another new bundle, this one featuring nothing but original game soundtracks. The Attack of the OSTs!! bundle is available now through August 18th and features an eclectic mix of music and composers new, old, famous and unfamiliar. How eclectic? How about the soundtrack to an existential walking simulator, a handful of mobile games, an old PlayStation PC port of DOOM, and a chunk of Turrican? Take a look at everything up for grabs inside!
Back in February of this year, composer Jimmy “Big Giant Circles” Hinson released a Kickstarter funded album titled The Glory Days. A spiritual sequel to one of his earlier albums, Impostor Nostalgia, this new project featured original music written in the style of chiptunes and old-school videogame music. Part of the original Kickstarter stretch goals included the eventual release of a remix album, which the Kickstarter achieved.
The time has finally come for the release of this extra album. Each remix track comes from members of the game music community. Artists contributing on the album include Stemage, Chipzel, and C418. The Glory Days Remixed is set to launch on August 27th and you can pre-order it on the Big Giant Circles Bandcamp page.
With the help of Kickstarter, another chiptune album has been brought into existence. Most people probably know Jimmy Hinson (a.k.a Big Giant Circles) and his music from games like Mass Effect 2 and Call of Duty Black Ops 2. It might surprise some people that in addition to the game music he writes, he also composes chiptunes. This latest album, The Glory Days, is a new collection of original pieces written by Hinson. The Glory Days was funded through a very successful Kickstarter campaign that far exceeded its original goal. Not only did the Kickstarter hit the goal of $5,000, but every single stretch goal was met as well. The Kickstarter receiving over $60,000 in pledges, allowing Big Giant Circles to hire several remixers and fellow game composers to help construct an extra remix album for release at a later date.
The Glory Days is a sequel to Hinson’s first album of original music, Impostor Nostalgia. This original album was a collection of music written by Hinson and featured several music remixers and composers. The concept behind Impostor Nostalgia was that while the music mimicked the sound and energy of chiptunes from older videogames, the music itself was original work that was never featured in any game, past or present. It was a cool experiment and generated some excellent new tunes. This time around, Hinson is flying solo with this sequel album, The Glory Days. Like the first album, this one aims to celebrate the sound of older game tunes while enhancing it with modern synth and electronic sounds that weren’t available years ago. Does Big Giant Circles pull this off on this second solo album? Read more to find out. (more…)
