VG Frequency

Industry mover-and-shaker Tommy Tallarico follows up last month’s Electronic Musician spotlight on entering the video game audio production with his own appearance in the magazine describing the evolution and challenges of scoring games, as well as his own advice on the importance of networking in order to help the other important aspect of an artist, talent, shine through.

If you’re a composer interested in a very informative Reader’s Digest version of how to break into the business, as well as fun stuff about the premiere video game concert series Video Games Live, then check out the January edition of Electronic Musician this month!

After a lengthy search involving scores of law enforcement agents, BT’s daughter, 3 1/2-year-old Kaia Transeau has been found, allegedly abducted by her mother Ashley Duffy in December.

This past Tuesday, the BTmusic.com forums had this brief message notifying fans of the end of the alleged kidnapping incident (corrected for typos):

Thank you all for your prayers, well wishes, and support!

This evening Kaia was found!!

Ashley was arrested, and a warrant executed.

Karen Durrett [Editor’s note: Ashley’s mother] is also being interrogated by Federal Marshals.

Kaia right now is with CPS, being prepared to being reunited with BT.

In one of the very few times you’ll ever find me linking to TMZ, TMZ.com had the scoop on the rescue. However, Maryland news outlet The Gazette has since clarified that the legal aspects of the case, particularly custody, have been pretty murky, resulting in Duffy being cleared of her abduction charges. ABC News provided an even more in-depth breakdown of the case earlier today that’s a must read for a better grasp of the events.

With that said, who knows what the future will hold in this custody case, since there’s currently no organized agreement for shared custody of Kaia between BT and Duffy. When we hear more, we’ll keep you posted.

Our friends over at SquareSound are holding an arrangement competition in tribute to Final Fantasy musical legend Nobuo Uematsu. The winner will receive two VIP tickets to the upcoming Distant Worlds: Music from Final Fantasy concert in Chicago on March 1, 2008. The VIP tickets include prime seats at the concert, a free concert CD and program, and the ability to attend an exclusive meet-and-greet session with Mr. Uematsu himself following the performance.

OverClocked ReMix has donated copies of Final Fantasy VII: Voices of the Lifestream as prizes, and head submissions evaluator Larry “Liontamer” Oji will be assisting with submissions evaluations.

In order to qualify, entrants must submit their own unique arrangement of any of Mr. Uematsu’s compositions. Registration for this competition is open until Tuesday, January 22nd and the finished arrangement must be submitted by February 8th.

For more details and to get registered, please visit SquareSound’s Competition Page.

I can’t hope to encapsulate Edgen Animations‘ good fortunes at doing some audio work at George Lucas’s Skywalker Ranch. So I’m simply going to recommend that you check out Justin R. Durban’s MySpace blog for all the details, including thoughts on recording with the San Francisco Symphony Orchestra, as well as several photos on and around the ranch. Congratulations to Justin in fulfilling a career goal with his working visit to the Skywalker Ranch, definitely a unique achievement in his field. I suppose the next goal is making it a steady gig! Make sure to click through to read all about it, and enjoy!

Following up on news last month, BT issued a press release regarding his daughter Kaia, abducted by her mother and still missing. We at VG Frequency continue to wish BT well for his daughter’s hopefully safe return. You may need to right-click and view the image to read it properly:

After missing Day 2, I was definitely ready to get back on the horse for MAGFest. OC ReMix had its panel that day, so of course I represented my homebase. Along with djpretzel and myself, fellow judges zircon, pixietricks, Big Giant Circles and CHz were on board the panel presentation that day for an impressive show of staff power.

Rather than going through our traditional presentation for the uninitiated, we were in front of a crowd where the major majority of people were already familiar with OverClocked ReMix. This year, we highlighted all the important developments at OCR for 2007, including Voices of the Lifestream, attending Video Games Live, the debut of the Content Policy, revising the Submission Standards and Instructions and developing translations of our most important information for several languages. OCR’s latest album project, Radical Dreamers: Thieves of Fate, released during MAGFest itself, was given a preview to the audience by director Brad “the prophet of mephisto” Burr, to an excellent reception.

Highlighting upcoming developments for 2008, we’ve got some great stuff on the way. Our first live full orchestra arrangement from Wild ARMs is on the way, we’ve got our first mother-son ReMix collaboration as well from Kingdom Hearts: Chain of Memories. djp showed off his plans for swanky new composer pages that’ll show off a lot more information about the men and women who inspire the contributors to OCR, using Tim Follin to give the people a look at how composers are laid out with more information than ever; look for that to go live in the next few days. We also pimped some AMVs including clips of some of the Voices of the Lifestream AMV contest (soon to be judged so that we can get those swanky prizes out there) as well as the Spittin’ Narcissism fanvid by Psycosis91. Plenty of good stuff to promote, not even taking into account our bread and butter of posting creative, free ReMixes.

After a huge dinner with the OCR meetup group, it was time for the second and final night of concerts. Let’s go short and sweet: The moshing this year was definitely toned down a great deal compared to last year. Not that anyone was cracking down on it, there just wasn’t nearly as much this year as last. Let’s not also forget props to NO CARRIER and noteNdo for the NES-created visuals that adorned both nights of performances. You’ve got to see it to believe it, they were a nostalgic acid trip.

Powerglove was excellent. They always have an unbelievable amount of energy to their performances, including some badass costumes. I personally hate the Power Rangers theme, but when they played it for some brief non-VGM material, they definitely got the crowd going. I would have loved to have seen Chris Marchiel’s Guitar Hero synth in play, but was perfectly glad “settling” for some awesome material from Metal Kombat for the Mortal Man, including Sonic the Hedgehog 2’s “So Sexy Robotnik“!

I was legitimately worried that Select Start, in their first MAGFest performance, wouldn’t be as much of a draw with the crowd, who are used to rock and metal VG cover bands acts, but the masses turned out in a big way. We probably could have used some chairs during their set, since there was no reason to stand up for the whole thing. They put on a really classy performance. Frontman Austin Harley started off a little shaky with the opening solo on one track, but regrouped with a joke and was off to the races. The best part of the set had to be when the crowd exploded with whooping and applause to the end of the first track, which visibly took the entire sextet by surprise.

When I talked to violinist Elaine Li after the set along with Big Giant Circles, she confirmed that the group had never received that kind of reaction ever before in their history of live performances, and that it was great to be in an atmosphere where everyone already knows and respects game music, making it so much easier to get immersed in the performance. Indeed, hearing Metroid “Kraid’s Hideout”, Chrono Trigger “Theme of Frog’s” and Final Fantasy III “Eternal Wind” live was a big highlight. Along with Mustin and ktriton joining in for one song, the crew did a great job with their first MAGFest appearance, so hopefully they walked away already thinking about how to return next year.

This Place is Haunted played their final show with guitarist Michael Motorcycle, who’s leaving the band to begin medical school. Who would have pegged him for it? (We at VGF wish him the best of luck, to be sure.) The band’s set was a lot more of a balance between VGM and other retro material (The theme to Sanford and Son??? Let’s throw it on there!); I’ll admit I’m partial to VGM and would have appreciated more…exclusivity on that level. I mentioned to Shael Riley, who’s a big fan of the band, that This Place just has some impeccable chops. Both Michael Motorcycle and Epileptic Peat were playing some really involved runs and solos with just pro precision; it was quite a sight to behold being so close to the stage. Here’s hoping these bros regroup somehow so that they can keep putting out quality material, especially because they spotlight tons of otherwise obscure VGM to arrange.

Last but not least, the final band of the night was The Smash Bros. Running strong from their performance at the 2007 Final Fantasy XI Fan Festival, MAGFest’s house band took on a new flavor with ktriton replacing Shawn Phase on drums and doing an amazing job; there was definitely a great amout of synergy between him and the rest of the band. Before the set started, we were all instructed to listen to the noise playing over the speakers. A few of us thought it was rain SFX until a wonderful smell wafted across the concert hall. In between tracks, Pappy and Joe Cam were cooking bacon outside the hotel and feeding it to the crowd! Enhancing the experience was a microphone brought over to the pig meat so that the entire crowd could hear it sizzling. I was able to snag a full-sized strip of bacon in the first wave of free pork before the bros had to start cutting it up to offer it to everyone. Definitely a hilarious bonus, the crowd chanted “Bacon! Bacon!” with ferocity with every break. The eclectic VGM set of the Bros. (Ailsean, ktriton, Midee, norg, Prozax, Roy McClanahan & virt) included U.N. Squadron, Phoenix Wright, EarthBound and Contra 4 in easily the most diverse set of the festival. They need to record their shows via the mixing boards at MAG and sell, sell, sell.

Anyone who doubts whether or not they should attend MAGFest would become a believer if only to experience the greatness of even one night of the concerts, and that’s only one night out of four days. I’ll be back tomorrow to wrap up the rundown of my time at MAG.

Distant Worlds: music from FINAL FANTASY is a new concert tour celebrating the twentieth anniversary of Final Fantasy. The game was first released in Japan on December 18, 1987, and the concert premiered in Stockholm, Sweden on December 4, 2007. The inaugural event was attended by Nobuo Uematsu himself, who was interviewed before the concert started by Johan Köhn of Spelmusik.net.

How did you approach the challenge of composing an opera piece?

- It was very interesting, because I had never listened to opera music when I was asked. I didn’t have any knowledge on composing such a piece, so I did it in my own style. When Dragon Quest composer Koichi Sugiyama found out about the opera part in Final Fantasy VI he called and asked me why he hadn’t been told about this great idea earlier, so that we could have worked together on it (laughs)!

Ah, but who cares about that. Let’s get to the good stuff:

I know you’re always getting this question, but how is it going with the third Black Mages album?

- Yes, I get that question very often, but I would now like to promise to people that the album will be released in March 2008.

THE BLACK MAGES II The Skies Above, the last Final Fantasy series rock arrangement album by TBM, was released three years ago, so their third album has been a long time in the making. Hopefully it will be released on time.

Petroglyph Games recently handed out a free digital release of Frank Klepacki’s Universe at War OST. The soundtrack is definitely a welcome treat this time of year, with 3 discs worth of material clocking in at over 2 hours. At the risk of selling Klepacki short, which I hope I’m not, his work here is full of the militaristic rock and electronic themes you’re familiar with if you’re a fan, so be sure to check it out.

I’ve heard of plans for documentaries on the video game music scene in America, sure. But Europe, well…it’s a bit far away. Whatever educational fare may have already come out regarding the Commodore 64 music scene, only a real guru would know if stacks up any better than what German independent filmmakers Shining Movie Vision hope to achieve with their soon to be released doco, The 8Bit Philosophy: A Commodore64 Symphony.

John “Ziphoid” Carehag posted about the unveiling of the documentary’s trailer at C64 arrangement hub Remix64:

[T]he trailer for the upcoming documentary ‘The 8Bit Philosophy: A Commodore64 Symphony’ was released as a Christmas gift to you all.

Konstantin Stuerz and the others at Shining Movie Vision has been driving around Europe, interviewing a lot of known faces in the Commodore 64 community, past and present. Amongst the interviewees you will find Romeo Knight, Markus Holler, Chris Huelsbeck, Thomas Detert and many more…

Do have a look at the website and download the trailer.

The trailer [high-quality version] goes a little artsy-fartsy trying to convey the nostalgia, but it’s the SID, I can forgive that. The 8Bit Philosophy’s lineup of interviews potentially could be pretty comprehensive looking at the names mentioned above, as well as the other artists and personalities in the trailer. The Shining Movie Vision team looks to have a good cross-section of game composers, remixers and scene enthusiasts (including Ziphoid himself).

A good documentary about the Commodore 64 music scene is something that I’ve looked forward to for a long time. For those of you out there who aim to obtain the knowledge, your ship may be sailing in. If you have 2 minutes free, there’s no excuse for not getting taste of what’s in store.

Thanks to Mustin for passing along word. We sincerely hope BT recovers his daughter safe and sound, especially given how this has happened right in the middle of the holiday season. In the event that you cannot read the text in its entirely, please enlarge the image by viewing it via the right mouse click option.

Please contact me with any info. and please copy and paste this bulletin along.

lynne@binaryacoustics.com

Lynne
(bt’s assist)

In the fledgling realm of American video game concert series, things aren’t too small for drama as Jeremy Soule and Tommy Tallarico exchanged words via MySpace. Soule, attached to PLAY! A Video Game Symphony, criticized Video Games Live for allegedly cutting corners on orchestra size and not providing a complete orchestral experience, branding VGL as preferring “smoke and lasers.”

Quoted are excerpts of comments earlier this month by Soule and the rebuttal from Tallarico obtained from Jeremy Soule’s MySpace blog. Included are comments from VGL conductor Jack Wall and Jeron Moore of DirectSong.com, Soule’s online music label. An interesting read, without a doubt: (more…)

Just giving a quick Happy Birthday to game music composer, enthusiast and legend George “The Fat Man” Sanger, who celebrates his 50th birthday today. His wife, fellow game industry veteran Linda Law, detailed what Fat was up to this week via the “Fat Man 50″ webpage:

For the most part George will be working on his Rolls all week while listening to music and hanging out with friends who are either helping or watching. Come by to hang out, have a drink, have a meal, bust a nut (because some of them are frozen).

While Sanger himself said over at Facebook…:

I get to work on Good-Bad (1958 Rolls-Royce Silver Cloud SGE-302) all week!!!! This is a big deal because I love to do it, and because she needs it, being my daily driver. Come on by and help with the car, chat, share a beer, take me out for lunch, play us a song, or teach us welding.

Sounds like fun over in Austin, Texas this week. We at VGF wish The Fat Man well, as well as Rolls-Royces for the rest of us. We get tired of taking the Metro.

While “Producing Pro Podcasts” is more in line with my future aspirations, the December issue of Electronic Musician (Vol. 23, No. 13) has a great article from Activision’s Nick Peck on the ins-and-outs of providing audio in the games industry. “Fun and Games” covers all the basics, not just including how to get involved, but what to expect when you actually get your foot in the door, as well as how to build yourself up once inside the game audio industry.

For any of you burgeoning soon-to-be-legends out there, the piece is a good read from the perspective of a long-time pro, well worth checking out in full.

Manhattan art space The Tank and New York artist collective 8bitpeoples announce the Blip Festival 2007, a four-day music and multimedia event taking place in New York City November 29 - December 2, 2007. Focusing on the modern artistic exploration of primitive video game and home computer technology and featuring 40 musicians and visualists from around the world, the Blip Festival showcases artists adopting and repurposing familiar but forgotten hardware - such as the Commodore 64, the Nintendo Entertainment System, the Atari game console and home computer line, and the Nintendo Game Boy - exploring their untapped potential and unique aesthetic character.

Blip Festival 2007 has come and gone, but the legend shall live on. The event featured Nullsleep, Blasterhead, and other big names from the modern chiptune scene getting down and dirty in New York’s The Tank. On Friday, November 30, one of the performers was Jake “virt” Kaufman, riding the wave of his most recently released game work, Contra 4.

Today, virt posted the six songs he played during his set. The set included arrangements of past songs he wrote (including one from a game he scored, Shantae), an arrangement of Jamiroquai’s “Love Foolosophy,” and a few original pieces. Check the video below for a short snippet of his performance of “DnB Chip Mix 07″:

“DnB Chip Mix 07″ gets my vote for best track by being an epic nine and a half minutes of FM bliss, but also worth mentioning is “Loli Fishing Next 20,000 Leagues,” a chiptune arrangement of a Kwakfest piece. Really, though, you can’t go wrong with any piece.

Orchestral Commodore 64 arrangements aren’t new. Any fan of the yearly Symphonic Game Music Concerts would know that. But by no means are they old hat. In the same company as the Final Fantasy series or major Nintendo franchises, arrangements of soundtracks from the classic computer are comparatively hard to come by.

Last month, the European-based Commodore arrangement scene took its first steps toward physical media of an orchestral act exclusive to the SID chip with the C64 Orchestra’s release of their first album, Run 10 (which I’ve already added to VGMdb).

Legendary composer Rob Hubbard orchestrated the album, which features arrangements of both his work and fellow A-list C64 composer Jeroen Tel performed by the Ricciotti Ensemble, whose mission is to have fun bringing their music to crowds both large and small, no matter how atypical the audience may be. The concept of the C64 Orchestra was first launched in September 2006.

Published by productiehuis Oost-Nederland, the two-disc album rings up pretty pricey for any Stateside early adopters at €35, especially for arrangements of only ten games. But the set also includes copies of the original tunes as well as interviews with Hubbard and Tel among other features (including the tools needed to remix the Orchestra’s take on Monty on the Run). Keep in mind the album’s swanky box design as well.

The album’s European release supplements the group’s plans to continue touring with their concert series, while the official rollout of the album in the US is still ahead this coming January.

Appearance Marks National Television Debut of Video Games Live

Hollywood, CA - In yet another ground-breaking effort to show how artistic and cultural video games and their music have become, the world’s leading video game concert series Video Games Live will be making their national television debut at Spike TV’s 2007 “Video Game Awards” on Sunday, December 9 at 9:00 PM ET. Video Games Live will perform a select number of hits from their world touring event as well as brand new never before seen material.

Spike TV’s 2007 “Video Game Awards” pays tribute to the outstanding achievements of games, designers, animation, breakthrough technology, music and performances of the past year in the industry. The awards also provide a glimpse at the future of gaming – including exclusive sneak peeks and world premiere footage of some of the most anticipated games of 2007 and beyond. Taping in Las Vegas on Friday, December 7, the 5th anniversary celebration will gather some of the world’s hottest creators and designers as they honor the year’s greatest achievements gaming.

“It was quite an honor for us to be contacted about performing in the show,” said prolific video game composer and Video Games Live co-creator/host Tommy Tallarico. “Spike TV’s goal of celebrating video games and bringing them to the masses is exactly the reason we created Video Games Live in the first place.” Video game composer and co-creator/conductor Jack Wall added, “We’re really excited about this opportunity which gives us a platform to reach millions of people. We have a few new surprises in store for the audience that we’re really looking forward to performing live.”

The night will feature award presentations and appearances by magician Criss Angel, “TNA” wrestling stars Kurt and Karen Angle, actress Tia Carrere, “Chuck” stars Joshua Gomez and Zachary Levi, skateboarding legend Tony Hawk, former NFL star Rocket Ismail, UFC light heavyweight champion Quinton “Rampage” Jackson and “Ultimate Fighter 1” champ Forrest Griffin, legendary boxing promoter Don King, MTV reality couple Heidi Montag and Spencer Pratt, NFL quarterback and Heisman trophy winner Matt Leinart, rock star Dave Navarro, “Jackass” Steve-O, comedian Patton Oswalt, comedian and Comedy Central star Brian Posehn, MTV’s Tila Tequila, actor Anton Yelchin and many more will be announced shortly.

Spike TV’s 2007 “Video Game Awards” tapes Friday, December 7 at the Mandalay Bay Events Center in Las Vegas and will premiere Sunday, December 9 (9:00-11:00 PM, ET/PT). The official sponsors of Spike TV’s 2007 “Video Game Awards” are Burger King®, GameStop™, Mountain Dew, Stride™ Gum, Tag™, U.S. Air Force, and Verizon Wireless.

Spike TV is available in 96.1 million homes and is a division of MTV Networks. MTV Networks, a division of Viacom International Inc.

Pro composer Tim “CoLD SToRAGE” Wright celebrated the Amiga demo tracks that got him his start in the video game industry, “Puggs in Space,” with the recent release of “Puggsy Theme Tune 2007 Remix.” More info from Wright’s homepage:

It’s hard to believe that it’s nearly 20 years since Tim composed the tune that launched his career in computer games!

Working with Lee Carus and Alan McCarthy as part of DIONYSUS (seconded in under the Jester Brothers International banner) he created 4 pieces of music and a flurry of sound effects for a demo that would fire the imagination of Ian Hetherington, the then Director of Psygnosis Limited, to sign them up on the spot at a London Computer fair.

Heady days indeed! :O)

To commemorate the fact, he has created a full-on CD remix of “Puggs in Space” for you to download right here.

Tim says, “I hope you like the remix, and it brings back some nostalgic memories… ENJOY!”

Wright actually submitted this to OC ReMix, but we unfortunately had to turn it down due to the source material being from a demo rather than being originally created for a game soundtrack. That’s also part of the reason OC ReMix had to pass on Markus Schneider & Mahoney’s amazing SID demo arrangement of “Sweet.”

I suggested to Wright that he submit the 2007 Remix to AMIGAremix, since I know they’d love it and don’t have any restrictions on demo arrangements. AMIGAremix’s submission system seems down at the moment, but Wright was definitely enthusiastic on the idea, so hopefully we’ll see the remix there as well in the near future!

I encouraged Wright to potentially submit an arrangement from something from his official game discography (Awesome, Shadow of the Beast series, Wipeout series), and he was really nice in his correspondence, so hopefully this isn’t the last we’ve heard from CoLD SToRAGE around the fan arrangement community! For more on Wright’s professional services, visit Tantrumedia.

Terrible news today as confirmation came in from Singapore’s Straits Times that musician and arranger Reuben Kee, 23, was killed this past Friday along with four other Singaporean boaters in a boating accident in Phnom Penh, Cambodia. The bodies of Kee and the other boaters were recovered today by Cambodian police, nearly a day and a half after the men drowned in a freak accident after the conclusion of the Cambodia-ASEAN Traditional Boat Race.

Community-wide, our thoughts and prayers go out to Kee’s family and friends.

Reuben Kee:

Homepage
@OverClocked ReMix - Memorial message board thread
@Anime Remix
@Blogspot
@Facebook
@Friendster
@Last.fm
@MusicBrainz
@YouTube

Reprinted below are two articles from the Straits Times, published before (print) and after (web, previously linked) the recovery of the missing boaters. More thoughts on this tragedy, as well as Kee’s brief career, will be covered here in the coming days:

Five missing Singapore rowers feared dead

Judith Tan
In Phnom Penh
Liaw Wy-Cin
In Singapore

When the search for the five missing dragon boat racers in Cambodia resumes this morning, chances of finding them alive appear to be bleak.

It would have been about 40 hours since the boat carrying 22 Singapore dragon boat racers capsized in the river on Friday.

Singapore naval divers will be using sonar equipment to comb the Tonle Sap River near the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh, together with local rescue workers.

According to eyewitnesses, survivors and race officials, the Singapore team was making its way back to the starting point, after the race, when the tragedy occurred.

Instead of waiting for a boat to tow them back, the team had decided to row towards shore themselves.

When they were close to shore, a wave hit them, causing the boat to collide with a pontoon and overturn. Team members were sucked under the pontoon. Seventeen racers surfaced and five did not.

The missing racers are: Jeremy Goh, 24; Stephen Low, 31; Reuben Kee, 23; Poh Boon San, 27 and Chee Wei Cheng, 20.

It is believed that a combination of strong currents and fatigue after the race could play a part in the likely drowning of the five men. They could also have been knocked unconscious when the 500kg boat capsized in the 9m-deep water.

The racers were not wearing life jackets.

One survivor who declined to be named said the team panicked under water and the current was pushing them down, so they all kicked their way upwards. He was treated for bruises on his face.

Eyewitness Joey Paraiso said on television last night that the current was strong. “It happened so quickly. The Singaporean rowers, one by one, floated and saved themselves. There were some railings that they were able to hold on to.

“They were not able to swim normally, so they just looked for something to hang on to… The current was a bit strong,” he said.

The race was held to celebrate Cambodia’s Water Festival, which takes place each year at full moon to celebrate the changing of the Tonle Sap River course.

This year, more than 1 million people were expected to attend the three-day race, which is Cambodia’s biggest annual event. There were 432 participating boats.

Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong yesterday expressed his sadness at the accident.

“I share the deep concerns of the five Singaporeans. The Singapore Government will do all it can to provide the necessary assistance,” he said in a statement.

Speaking to reporters yesterday, Minister for Community Development, Youth and Sports Vivian Balakrishnan said: “Our priorities are to find the missing, to provide comfort to family members and then find out what happened.”

Relatives of the missing men flew to Phnom Penh yesterday afternoon. On arrival, they went to the site of the accident before going to a hotel to be briefed on rescue efforts.

A brother of missing racer Jeremy Goh, who declined to be named, said Jeremy left fro Cambodia on Thursday and was due back tomorrow.

He said at Changi Airport yesterday: “We’re just going there to see what’s going on and hoping for the best.”

Reprinted below is the Associated Press article, published on the Straits Times online, confirming the death of Kee and the four other missing men:

Five missing S’porean bodies found in Cambodian river

PHNOM PENH - POLICE pulled the bodies of five young Singaporean men out of a Cambodian river on Sunday after they went missing when their boat capsized after a holiday race, officials said.

The bodies were spotted floating downstream from the accident site in the Tonle Sap river in the capital, Phnom Penh, said police officer Mom Sitha, a member of the 150-strong party searching for the victims.

‘The bodies of the five missing have all been discovered,’ Mom Sitha said.

He said the bodies were located at four different sites downstream, from one kilometre to four kilometres south of where the five Singaporeans disappeared after their dragon boat capsized on Friday.

Their grieving relatives gathered on Sunday at Phnom Penh’s Calmette Hospital, where the bodies were being brought for autopsy.

There had been 22 Singaporeans on the boat, which had just competed in a traditional Cambodian boat race festival. As they were returning to shore, the Singaporeans decided to continue rowing for leisure, but their boat hit a swirl and capsized, according to Cambodian officials.

Police boats were able to rescue only 17 of them at the scene.

Relatives of the missing had visited the search area Saturday evening, sobbing and hugging each other. One woman fainted.

Naval team
Singapore’s navy sent a team of eight - a mission commander, six divers and a medic trained in underwater rescue - to assist the Cambodian authorities in their search and rescue efforts.

The commander, Major Rayson Lim, said they used sonar equipment to probe underwater.

Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen sent a message to his Singaporean counterpart, Lee Hsien Loong, ‘conveying his shock and sadness’ over the accident, Singapore’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Saturday.

The Singaporeans were among eight teams from neighbouring Southeast Asian countries that participated in the annual event. The accident occurred on the first of three days of racing.

Some 440 colourful dragon boats, mainly from across Cambodia, were racing to celebrate Cambodia’s annual water festival, which marks the start of the rice harvesting season and the time of the year when the Tonle Sap river reverses its flow from north to south. — AP

Last week, Lee “LeeBro” Brotherton announced his departure from the UK music collective the Remix Factory in order to pursue his solo career under the stage name Bentley Jones. While Brotherton will still be involved in Remix Factory releases and remains on good terms with the group, he is currently attempting to use his songwriting talents, genre diversity and multilingual fluency to break out in the UK pop scene.

Brotherton’s most notable work in professional video game music are the lyrics and vocals to Silver the Hedgehog’s theme, “Dreams of an Absolution”, from the soundtrack to 2006’s Sonic the Hedgehog, written while representing Remix Factory. LeeBro detailed the refocusing of his career in a MySpace bulletin earlier this month:

It is with deepest regret to announce that I am leaving the Remix Factory, however this change is so I can concentrate on my album as an artist so it’s not all bad. So where does this leave the Factory? Well, this departure isn’t permanent as I will continue to contribute to Remix Factory productions where possible and I’ll be keeping one eye on things to make sure operations continue as successfully as they have done thus far, if not more so.

I can assure you that the music will remain unaffected as all the other producers and remixers (including Phunkstar and K-Klub) will continue belting out their banging tunes. I have secured a management team for the Remix Factory who will now be working to expand the Factory’s range across various genres and mediums internationally.

And as for me… I’ve been working under my alter-ego ‘Bentley Jones’ and it’s now time to focus on getting my music out to you guys. I’ll be adding the finishing touches to my album, promotion and doing a gig here and there so keep your eyes peeled. I have already – and will be doing so again in the future – worked with the Remix Factory on several tracks, so you can be sure that I’ll never be too far away…

The most notable change is that I will no longer be available through the Remix Factory MySpace. However any messages can be sent to my new home – www.myspace.com/bentleyjonesmusic - which is also where I will be keeping a blog as well as exclusive behind-the-scenes videos so you can follow everything that goes on in excruciatingly intricate detail…

I want to offer my sincerest thanks to you all for supporting my work at the Remix Factory. In hopes that you’ll continue to support me as an artist I’ve uploaded some brand new tracks from the album on the BJ MySpace for you guys to check out. I’m really excited to hear what you think.

Looking forward to seeing you all on the other side!!

// Lx
Aka… Bentley Jones

Late last week, the newly-christened pop act used YouTube to roll out a new feature promoting his solo career, “Bentley Jones: All Access”:

Take a pop musician, give him a video camera and brace yourself for the resulting footage.

“Bentley Jones: All Access” offers an insight into the hectic world of a breaking new artist. After previously making a name for himself as a producer for the Remix Factory, join Bentley Jones as he embarks on a journey to become a solo artist, offering you a behind-the-scenes pass to promotion, gigs, rehearsals and exclusive footage of the making of his debut album.

Got a question? Suggestion? Drop a line to allaccess@bentleyjones.com and your e-mail might feature in the next episode!

Check back on the official Bentley Jones website, MySpace and YouTube Channel to keep up-to-date with this ongoing web series.

The 22-year-old LeeBro has come a long way from the Sonic arrangements he had featured on OC ReMix more than half a decade ago, raising his game substantially on all levels. One of few amateur musicians in the community to harness their fandom and successfully take it professional, Brotherton has rubbed elbows with several Sega heavy hitters, including Jen Senoue of Crush 40, whose work he frequently arranged. As Bentley Jones, Brotherton bears watching as he now attempts to take his music to the next level.

My boy TYKUN is back with another one of his composer chronology videos. Well, technically, he was back with this video in August, but I just checked up on his videos again now.

He’s still sticking with Namco, but instead of going with another old hand, he’s picked one of Namco’s relatively new composers. Starting with Tekken 3 in 1998, TYKUN’s latest chronology video profiles Yu Miyake, perhaps best known for his contributions to the soundtracks in the Katamari Damacy series.

Last week, classical video game arrangement sextet (dirty!) Select Start were profiled by the Gainesville Sun’s Kyle Mitchell alongside other acts in the Northeast Florida area performing last Wednesday at 1982.

Aside from the article (”The legend of Koji inspires”) flubbing a reference to “Axel F”, Mitchell does the band proud, underscoring how playing the classic, catchy melodies of Koji Kondo turns out to be anything but simplistic when adapted to a six-piece performance.A quick read from the Sun, but a good one, so give it a look. Be ready when the group takes MAGFest 6 by storm this coming January in Alexandria, VA.

On October 28, François Bezeau, better known as Rimo, finally launched VGM Rush, a site dedicated to Western VGM; that’s “Western” as in American, European, etc. as opposed to Asian, not “Western” as in Wild West cowboys and outlaws. The site features composer credits for a bunch of different games, associated soundtrack, arrangement, and original albums, and composer biographies and full works lists. VGM Rush is still less than a month old and obviously still growing, but it’s got some very good content for something so new and is definitely worth checking out.

One example of the burgeoning content is an interview posted on November 7 with Alexander Brandon, who composed for such games as Tyrian, Jazz Jackrabbit 2, and Deus Ex. The interview is excellent, covering Brandon’s game compositions, original work (including his latest original album, Era’s End), thoughts on the industry, and a whole slew of other good stuff. Brandon himself stated that the interview is “the most in depth interview [he’s] ever done.”

VGM Rush: Were you ever limited by a director when composing for a certain project or did you always write with complete freedom?

Alexander Brandon: I felt Deus Ex: Invisible War was more sparse than it should have been. The design lead really pushed “Thief” as a reference. Don’t get me wrong, I love that game series and all the audio in it, however DX I think has more depth to its gameplay choices and the music should have reflected that.

For just about all my other projects I provided solid reasoning into my decisions for either my writing or composers I would hire, and sometimes I’d get the usual “that sounds like a synthesizer” argument, to which I have a very powerful arsenal of responses now, but for the most part its complete freedom these days.

Just read the whole thing already. You won’t regret it.

I mentioned last month that Super Mario Galaxy’s soundtrack was going to feature some live orchestrated tracks. On November 8, Jayson Napolitano of Music 4 Games scored an interview with the two composers of SMG, Koji Kondo and Mahito Yokota.

M4G: Video footage has been released showing an orchestra recording session for Super Mario Galaxy. How much of the score is being orchestrated? The music itself sounds like it’s from a Zelda game given its epic approach. Was this your aim with the score for Super Mario Galaxy?

Mahito Yokota: 28 tunes have been orchestrated, including the ones performed by smaller sized orchestras. We were not especially conscious of Zelda, but we were making music in order to make them match well with game tempo of Mario Galaxy and image that people explore the magnificent universe. I think you will notice when you play the game that tempo is very much constant, although rhythm of the music may be epic, because we prepared orchestrated tunes that will well suit tempo of the game play. On the other hand, when we create synthesizer music, we were looking toward melodious music for the orchestrated score, while we were putting emphasis on the atmosphere.

Koji Kondo: We created an orchestra score this time, because we wanted to express magnificence of the universe and cool ambiance. We created game music that matches with the game universe, which brought about totally different taste compared with the tropical image of previous Mario music.

Early reports on the music are that it’s quite good. Read the full interview.

The ultimate new resource on video game music albums is growing like a weed. On November 3rd, VGMdb creator (and music curator of Slightly Dark) Ken “Secret Squirrel” Moore announced what he dubbed a milestone for the database. It’s hard to disagree:

I’m pleased to announce that, as of this morning, we’ve surpassed the 5000 album milestone. While not every one of those albums is a perfect entry, with fully researched tracklist/artist information, I think we’ve made some great progress towards that goal, and we’re now offering a significant amount of information that was previously not available anywhere.

In addition, earlier this week we exceeded 100,000 total album page views. I’ve been particularly pleased to notice that many of our pages have top billing in the Google search results for their catalog number.

So anyway, I’d like to thank all of you for everything that we’ve been able to achieve here. It’s made me very happy to see a lot of new names on the active members list, many of whom have already made significant contribution; keep up the great work.

I’ve personally added a number of albums onto VGMdb, and fellow VG Frequency writer ‘Ili “CHz” Butterfield is on staff there as well, so I’m definitely glad to see the concept take off and do a great job working with all of the VGM catalog sites out there to not only aggregate the information, but provide an even more comprehensive, interactive, more easily expandable destination to learn more about video game music. Any site with me in the database has to be good!

The most popular forums on the internet aren’t the Something Awful forums or the GameFAQs message boards. No, that distinction belongs to Gaia Online, an anime-themed message board where users create a virtual character as an avatar and, through performing activities on the site like posting and playing games, receive site currency that they can use to buy items like clothing for their avatar, furnishings for a virtual home, etc. You can make new friends, trade items, and do all sorts of other nifty stuff that amuse the thirteen year old Toonami-watching set.

Well, Gaia Online is creating a free web-based MMORPG called Gaia Battle, which will presumably tie in with forum accounts and everything else like that.

But the world is not composed of only combat-oriented challenges. There are many ways to play in this world, whether doing favors for characters in the world, playing games, meeting at dance halls or in towns, or just simply exploring the landscape.

“But wait, CHz,” you should be saying quite loudly to your computer monitor, “why should anyone who’s outgrown practice internets care? And even if we did, why are you mentioning it on VG Frequency of all places?”

Well, like most games nowadays, this one will have music. And on tap as one of the composers is Yasunori Mitsuda:

We are privileged to have contracted music from a well-known and extremely talented game music composer, Yasunori Mitsuda-san. (Mr. Mitsuda’s wikipedia entry is quite impressive : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yasunori_Mitsuda )

We are also very close to contracting with another brilliant composer with some incredible new ideas for music within an MMO. Details on that are forthcoming, but stay tuned!

That’s right, Yasunori “Chrono Trigger” Mitsuda.

You heard me. Yasunori “Xenogears” Mitsuda.

Yasunori “Bomberman 64: The Second Attack!“^* Mitsuda.

So, what exactly is Mitsuda doing composing music for a free MMORPG? Who knows. They must be loaded! Or maybe he works on the cheap. In either case, there’s one sample track embedded into the page confirming Mitsuda as a composer.

Something to look forward to?

*: Some day I’ll return to doing those cool columns.