VGM Rush interviews Alexander Brandon
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.