Derek Yu

• Game Music, Reviews

  Exploring Unseen Treasures – Spelunky (Review)

  August 11, 2012 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Exploring Unseen Treasures – Spelunky (Review) Share this Exploring Unseen Treasures – Spelunky (Review)

  

  You might remember last month when our own Audun interviewed artist Eirik Suhrke about his involvement with the OST of the Xbox Live Arcade version of the indie game Spelunky. Also rocking the world of the chiptune scene under the name Phlogiston, Suhrke has been around longer than most would believe.

  He certainly shows his years of experience with his work on Derek Yu’s Spelunky, showcasing not only his expertise with chiptune beats, but also a cacophony of differing yet intriguing sounds, all compressed within a myriad of short-but-sweet tunes. It’s a pixelated Indiana Jones-meets-Terraria environment, and Suhrke brings an extra layer of complexity with his melodic methods.

  Click under the break for the (pretty literal) underground sounds of Spelunky!

  (more…)

• Featured, Game Music, Indie Music

  Eternal Child: David Saulesco Interview

  April 30, 2012 | Audun Sorlie | Comments Off on Eternal Child: David Saulesco Interview Share this Eternal Child: David Saulesco Interview

  

  Since the summer of 2002, David Saulesco has climbed the ladder of success slowly but surely in his lifelong dream to work with video games and music. It was in that year that the then 16 year old composer was launched to indy fame and recognition with Derek Yu’s freeware masterpiece Eternal Daughter. Since then the young man has thrown himself into nearly all ends of both the music and video game industry, producing, arranging, contracting, he even rode on a horse once.

  Now, Saulesco is returning to his proving grounds, and will be releasing the Eternal Daughter 10th Anniversary Original Soundtrack on May 1st. With so many projects behind him and in store in the near future, it seemed only natural to have a chat with the man and speak about his views on composing, video games, symphonic shows and everything in between. Saulesco is never short of his trademark charm, and is of no loss of words on any subject.

  Click the jump to read our interview with David Saulesco (more…)

• Game Music, Reviews

  Unsung Prodigy: David Saulesco’s Eternal Daughter (Review)

  October 18, 2011 | Patrick Gann | 5 Comments Share this Unsung Prodigy: David Saulesco’s Eternal Daughter (Review)

  

  I recently played through a fantastic indie PC game. Perhaps you’ve heard of it. It’s called Aquaria. The whole game was put together by two people: Derek Yu (art and design) and Alec Holowka (sound and programming).

  But I’m not here to tell you about Aquaria or its soundtrack. I think many of us already know just how good that soundtrack is (though I’m a little late to the game). Rather, I’d like to go much farther back in Derek Yu’s career, to his indie platform-adventure game Eternal Daughter, which he created with Jon Perry.

  When Yu put this game together, he had a few wet-behind-the-ears composers help him out. This was roughly one decade ago. As things panned out, the majority of the music was written by then-sixteen-year-old David Saulesco.

  I met Saulesco earlier this year at MAGFest. Fellow young-and-prodigious composer Josh Whelchel introduced him to me, citing his work on Eternal Daughter as the big claim to fame. I’d heard of the game, and dabbled with it in college, but never really caught onto the soundtrack.

  That, too, changed after Saulesco released the Eternal Daughter Original Soundtrack for free via, you guessed it, Bandcamp.

  After the jump, my short take on the soundtrack that will hopefully convince you to take the time to click some links and download the soundtrack. And while you’re at it, you can hit up Saulesco via Twitter (@withaknife) and beg him to do another full soundtrack! (more…)

• Chip Music, Game Music

  Phlogiston Announced as Composer for Spelunky’s XBLA Release

  May 11, 2010 | Joshua Kopstein | 1 Comment Share this Phlogiston Announced as Composer for Spelunky’s XBLA Release

  

  Long-time chiptune composer Phlogiston has been confirmed as the composer for the Xbox Live Arcade release of Derek Yu’s procedurally-generated platformer, Spelunky. The Norwegian composer has been making quality chipmusic on his own for quite some time now, joining Disasterpeace and Norrin Radd as a member of the distinguished chiptune netlabel Pause in 2007.

  Phlogiston says the soundtrack will sound like “a mix of retro-sounding videogame music and more modern-sounding music utilizing actual instruments,” with elements of 90’s FM synth (think Arcade, Sega Genesis/MegaDrive) and 70’s/80’s/90’s pop rock mixed in. He’s also offering an MP3 teaser of the soundtrack for free, so go and grab it. And if for some reason you haven’t experienced the insanely addictive, rope-climbing, snake-whipping majesty of Spelunky, go play it for free right now, and then buy it when it comes to XBLA later this year.

  Download: Spelunky (XBLA) MP3 Teaser

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