Justin Lassen

Doujin, Game Music

Get Your Holidays Started with a Composer-Collaborative Album!

December 1, 2016 | Brenna Wilkes | 2 Comments Share this

It is now officially the holiday season, and we can no longer deny the onslaught of questionably festive music that started well before December graced 2016. The good news is that there tend to be a good handful of arrangement albums and collaborative efforts each year towards building fun and interesting holiday music albums, both video game related and not, to keep us all mostly sane. The fine people of Scarlet Moon Records have kicked off the season with one of our first offerings of such sanity-saving musical projects with their Scarlet Moon Christmas Album 2016.

Featuring joint contributions from both video game and film composers, including Hiroki Kikuta (Secret of Mana), Dale North (Silent Horror), Vince DiCola (Transformers, Rocky IV), Robyn Miller (Myst, Riven) and more over nine tracks, Scarlet Moon Christmas Album 2016 is a charming and subtle way of easing yourself into more festive feelings.

“Dale North and I are both massive fans of Christmas music. After releasing the Scarlet Moon Christmas EP in 2014, we wanted to rekindle that passion by creating even more Christmas-themed tracks to get music fans of all ages and genres in the spirit of the season. And as it would turn out, most of the artists on the roster love Christmas music just as much as we do!” – Jayson Napolitano, Producer

The track listing gives you an idea of what to expect to hear, including both video game music arrangements and arrangements of classic Christmas tunes.

01. “Jingle Bells” by Vince DiCola
02. “Christmas Garden (Yoshi’s Island)” by Mustin
03. “Peaceful Christmas (Chrono Trigger)” by Dale North
04. “Some Small Hope (Cherubic Hymn by A. Kastorsky)” by Osamu Kubota
05. “Angels We Have Heard on High” by Hiroki Kikuta
06. “Christmas Comes to Myst (Myst)” by Robyn Miller
07. “Rainbow Road (Mario Kart 64)” by Justin Lassen
08. “Melodies of Life (Final Fantasy IX)” by Goomin “Nauts” Nam
09. “Aspertia City – Winter (Pokémon Black & White 2)” by Materia

“Jingle Bells” (sample) – Vince DiCola

Even if you’re not a huge Christmas person, the album is worth checking out. I myself have a hard time getting into any festive mood around the holidays, but when Vince DiCola’s rendition of “Jingle Bells” makes me envision a Transformers Christmas Special (Complete with transforming reindeer, because why not?), it’s hard not to get a little into the holiday spirit.

Scarlet Moon Christmas Album 2016 is available now for purchase on LOUDr, and soon on iTunes and Spotify.
Game Music, Music Production

Scarlet Moon Artists – Bringing the Composer to YOU!

June 4, 2014 | Brenna Wilkes | 1 Comment Share this

Have you ever wanted a place where you could go and pick from a pool of video game composers to find someone to create your game’s soundtrack? Well, that’s what our friends over at Scarlet Moon Productions decided to make available.

Scarlet Moon Artists is a group of talented game and media composers from around the globe who have come together to offer their services to game developers of any caliber in order to broaden their musical reach. And it’s a fantastic lineup of composers to be sure, spanning decades of experience. The group currently consists of:

Vince DiCola & Kenny Meriedeth (Rocky IV, Saturday Morning RPG, Transformers: The Movie)
Shinji Hosoe (Mega Man Network Transmission, Ridge Racer series, Tekken Tag Tournament 2)
Hiroki Kikuta (Koudelka, Secret of Mana, Soul Calibur V)
Osamu Kubota (Beatmania, Granado Espada)
Justin Lassen (Herbert the Misanthropic Fly, Otomedius Excllent, Synaethesia)
Goomin Nam (Bar Oasis series, Monarch: Heroes of a New Age, TalesWeaver)
Dale North (Dragon Fantasy Book II, OverClocked ReMix contributions, Silent Horror)
Jinbae Park (PangYa Portable, Ragnarok Online, Ridge Racer 7)
Hitoshi Sakimoto (Final Fantasy XII, Gradius V, Valkyria Chronicles series)

So if you’re looking for a splash of musical excellence in a game you’re working on, why not check out Scarlet Moon Artists and see what they can do for you!
Game Music

Infatuation with Justin Lassen: Herbert Soundtrack, for Free

October 14, 2011 | Jayson Napolitano | 18 Comments Share this

We’re huge fans of Justin Lassen’s work, and it just so happens that he recently was tasked with scoring the iOS title, Herbert. As the colorful artwork above would suggest, the game is pretty strange, and Lassen does a perfect job capturing the vibrant and playful essence of the title and its visuals with his soundtrack.

While the 12-track album is electronic in nature, it’s pretty eclectic in terms of the territory it covers with quirky yet bubbly pieces flanking either end and heavier electronica found within the album’s middle. I was immediately drawn to “Good Things Fly By” with its playful belltone backing paired with rhythmic bongos and exotic sitar melody, the steel drums in “Infatuation With Cheese,” and the dark and gurgling “A Bad Night” with its overdriven synth lines and punchy percussion. “Pervert Intelligence” also has a sort of alternative rock vibe going for it with some guitar work.

In all, it’s some wonderfully produced music and it’s available for a free download, so head over to Justin Lassen’s blog entry on Herbert and give it a listen.
Featured, Game Music

OSV Exclusive: Otomedius X Artist List Revealed

February 24, 2011 | Jayson Napolitano | 2 Comments Share this

Otomedius X (Excellent) has been delayed numerous times, but I think game music fans will find the wait worth it once they see who’s involved with the soundtrack. The series is known for taking the classic side-scrolling shooter formula and combining that with many of Konami’s most beloved franchises, and with so many franchises to cover, there’s a lot of music that needs to be composed and arranged. How much music, you ask? Around 120 tracks, with 28 different artists from all around the globe contributing to that tally.

As it turns out, our friends over at GEM Impact have been responsible for coordinating the talent for this project. With Norihiko Hibino at the helm, the 28 artists from around the world have gathered to create a true international collaboration. To name a few, GEM Impact, Unique Note, SuperSweep, and members of Basiscape appear from Japan, with Roc Chen from China, Bently Jones from the UK, and Jake Kaufman, Justin Lassen, and Jeremy Soule from the USA.

With both the Otomedius X for the Xbox 360 and the first game’s soundtrack due out on March 24, 2011, here’s hoping that Otomedius X also gets an official soundtrack release. Looking at the roster alone, I know it will be worthy of one.

Hit the jump for the full artist list. (more…)
Software

Sound Spooky Like Justin Lassen: White Rabbit Asylum Released

June 25, 2010 | Jayson Napolitano | Comments Off on Sound Spooky Like Justin Lassen: White Rabbit Asylum Released Share this

We’re huge fans of Justin Lassen’s work in games and film. From his work on Midnight Meat Train with Jason Hayes and Gerard Marino to his disturbing Out of Hell soundtrack and Synaesthesia solo album, his dark cinematic compositions have kept us at the edge of our seats on more than one occasion. Well, for musicians and composers out there who are looking to explore this dark orchestral style for themselves, it just got a lot easier to venture into these haunted soundscapes with White Rabbit Asylum, a new loop and sample library overseen by Lassen himself.

The library contains everything from field recordings taken in abandoned and dilapidated spaces to performances recorded on decaying instruments. As a bit of a hobbyist composer myself, I think this collection looks like a great place to start if you’re wanting to get into that survival horror kind of sound, and there really aren’t a whole lot of options in terms of sample libraries that explore this niche.

White Rabbit Asylum was released as a part of the Sony Sound Series catalog just this week, and retails for $59.95. A pretty reasonable price if you’re interested in delving into this style of music and have no idea where to start. Samples can be heard on the collection’s official website.
Indie Music, Reviews

A Blending of the Senses: Justin Lassen’s Synaesthesia (Review)

January 6, 2010 | Patrick Gann | 1 Comment Share this

One of my favorite pop-rock bands out there is Mae. Their name exists as an acronym, “Multisensory Aesthetic Experience.” They wanted the art and the music of their albums to combine and be something special together. Hence, the prevalence of “music videos” in our generation. For most of us, this is a lovely blending of sensory experiences. But the two things (visual and aural stimuli) aren’t inherently linked.

I knew a girl in college (Belmont University, Nashville Tennessee) who told me she had a condition called synaesthesia. She was even having tests run on her by researchers at Vanderbilt University, just down street from Belmont. She explained to me another way to break down that word: “synthesis of aesthetics.” Aesthetic isn’t just visual or aural. It refers to our five senses that all humans naturally carry: sight, sound, smell, taste, and touch. For this young lady, there were certain colors and flavors associated with the twelve tones on a scale. They essentially followed a rainbow pattern, though I distinctly recall Bb being a “chocolate brown” and B a “silver” for her. As fate would have it, she was also a virtuoso when it came to piano performance.

Some people, through nature or nurture, seem to develop links in the brain that are not common to the majority of the population. These links are the basis for the “synaesthesia” condition. They are involuntary connections that one experiences innately. Some of us, and we music reviewers are especially guilty of this, will use metaphorical language to connect sensory experience. But that’s not synaesthesia, that’s just clever use of language. These synaesthetics actually have definite, consistent experiences that tie one sensory stimulus to another.

Justin Lassen’s two-disc, five-years-in-the-making collection of music are, he claims, the result of composing music as a synaesthetic, with visuals being contributed by many members of various online communities to feed the compositional process.

Lassen has been featured before on the site for his work on a horror film and, more recently, a soundtrack for the game mod Out Of Hell. Now we take a look at his brain child, his personal project that’s taken him around the world more than once to create: Justin Lassen’s own Synaesthesia. (more…)
Game Music

Creepy As Hell: Interview With Out Of Hell Creator Long Nguyen And Composer Justin Lassen

December 8, 2009 | Patrick Gann | 1 Comment Share this

We recently got a chance to listen to the Out Of Hell Original Soundtrack in its entirety, thanks to a digital release from composer Justin Lassen. Now, it’s time to learn more about the game that helped inspire such creepy, haunting bits of audio.

Out Of Hell is a total conversion mod based on Unreal Tournament 2004. It’s been “in the making” for many years now, but it’s finally out. And as far as game mods go, this one looks to be of extremely high quality.

In the following interview, we learn how Lassen and Nguyen met up, and how the work all came together. Check it out after the jump. (more…)