2005 has been another eventful year in the video game music arrangement community. Now that we’ve reached 2006, join us for an informal retrospective at some of the important goings-on in the scene last year.
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Royal Sefton III, frequently known as rs3 and a member of Hellven since its second incarnation, released Hellven’s first solo album since the netlabel’s return earlier this month. Featuring artwork by Kenji Bliss, st rotfest and the death monastic is a 10-track, nearly 25-minute techstep album whose darker mood reflects a departure from much of Sefton’s previous work.
Originally released as a part of Ubik’s Auld Lang Syne 2 album “competition,” Sefton fully remastered his entry before officially releasing the completed album at Hellven. The album’s ever-present harmonies and no-pause/continuous format are described by Sefton as one’s experience during the last half-hour before the impending end of days.
Popular netlabel Hellven relaunched yesterday, providing the first new material from the music collective in 2 years. With artwork and design handled by fellow artist Hans “hunz” van Vliet, label creator Xavier “mv” Dang announced Hellven’s return with the release of a group album entitled Debut.
The full-length album includes most of the artists comprising Hellven’s fifth incarnation, featuring virt, hunz, epoq, rs3, funkymuskrat, xerxes & mv.
Comments and feedback can be left at the site’s forums. Keep an eye on Hellven in the coming days for a full statement from mv on the return of Hellven, as well as what’s in store for the site and its artists in the near-future.
Two foundations of the Commodore arrangement scene received facelifts late last night as Remix.Kwed.Org creator Jan Lund “Kwed” Thomas and C64Audio.com creator Chris Abbott each revealed their respective sites’ new looks.
Following up AMIGAremix’s redesign earlier this year, Kwed collaborated with John Mirland to streamline R:K:O, featuring the addition of randomized SID downloads to encourage the remixing of broader material, as well as community links, donor thanks, and better integration of the C64 Take-away podcast.
C64Audio, noted vendor of professionally released Commodore community music from both C64 arrangers & composers, debuted its first major redesign in roughly 5 years, with emphasis placed on frontpage listings of its CD catalog. Soon-to-be-available releases there include Makke’s new album It’s Binary, Baby, as well as the Back in Time Live DVD/CD Set.
Discussion of the revamped sites is ongoing in the thread @ the Remix64 message boards.
I’m glad we got a nice bunch of entries for the Ormgas radio jingle contest. Myself, the other Ormgas staff, and some select others judged things up this week and the winner was Neskvartetten with a cool Legend of Zelda 2 mix. Check it out below for the info. Now let’s see if, for my own sanity, I can do some quick writeups for the week ending Saturday, July 17th:
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