DJ

Events, Game Music

Know Your MAG 2016: Chipzel

February 4, 2016 | Shawn Sackenheim | Comments Off on Know Your MAG 2016: Chipzel Share this Know Your MAG 2016: Chipzel

MAGFest has three days of chiptune performances lined up on the main stage this year. It all culminates with a CHIP RAVE that daringly, brazenly lasts “until we are done, baby!”. Amidst that chaos of square waves and laser lights will be Chipzel. So let’s get to Know Your MAG.

Born in Northern Ireland, Niamh Houston discovered the chiptune scene around 2006 and quickly set out to explore the space in her own way with Game Boys in hand. In the following years she released several original albums and performed at Blip Festival 2011 before being contacted by Terry Cavanagh about a game jam project called Hexagon.

<a href="http://chipzel.co.uk/album/interstellaria-ost">Interstellaria OST by chipzel</a>

Later in 2012 Cavanagh would set out to recreate his game jam entry in a super way and once again contacted Chipzel about her music. Creating an original track for Super Hexagon motivated her to get much more involved with game soundtracks. After nearly two years she released her first large scale project, the 55-track score to Interstellaria which you can read much more about in our review. It took so long that she released another soundtrack in between for the twitchy neon arcade racer, Spectra.

<a href="http://chipzel.co.uk/album/spectra">Spectra by chipzel</a>

And now she’s traveling far overseas from her home in London to perform amongst the chiptune artists on Saturday night at the MAGFest Chip Rave. Her portion of the show will be lit, animated and overscanned by the Visualist stylings of Pixelseed, aka Sean Smith from the local Baltimore area. Check her out!
Game Music, Japanese

Know Your MAG: DJ Yuu Miyake

January 21, 2015 | Brenna Wilkes | Comments Off on Know Your MAG: DJ Yuu Miyake Share this Know Your MAG: DJ Yuu Miyake

MAGFest 13 starts in just two days, and thus it’s time to bring Know Your MAG to it’s apex with one of the special guests of the event as well as performing DJ, Yuu Miyake!

Yuu Miyake, born in 1973, was interested in music at a young age. Listening to late-’70s anime themes and Yellow Magic Orchestra during his youth, he became acquainted with video games during a a childhood hospitalization and began visiting Japanese arcades shortly thereafter. When Yellow Magic Orchestra released the first album ever heard of video game music, Miyake knew that his love of games and music were something he wanted to pursue seriously. (source: VGMOnline)

Miyake joined Namco in the mid-’90s, gaining his first musical credit on Tekken 3. After working with Namco director Keita Takahashi on the video project “Texas 2000”, Miyake impressed the man so much that Takahashi assigned him full control as sound director over the game soundtrack for the puzzle-action game, Katamari Damacy. This is where Miyake gained critical acclaim for the creativity and unique style he blended together when composing the majority of the soundtrack for Katamari Damacy along with his team. (Which also included fellow MAGFest 13 guest, Yoshihito Yano) The catchy and quirky tunes that comprised Katamari Damacy‘s soundtrack gained several awards, including IGN’s and Gamespot’s “Soundtrack of the Year” for 2004 as well as a nomination for “Outstanding Achievement in Original Musical Composition” at the 8th annual Interactive Achievement Awards in early 2005. This lead to Miyake composing for future games in the series, such as We Love Katamari released in 2005 and Me & My Katamari later that same year. Between these, he also worked on compositions for Tekken 5 and Ridge Racer.

Yuu Miyake worked on several more games for Namco, including 3 more Katamari titles, until he left the company to go freelance in 2011. While traveling Japan to give lectures and working on personal projects, he also began performing live as “Acid Eutron” alongside Towa Tei, Shinichi Osawa, Takeshi Nakatsuka and Taiji Sato. He current DJ’s across Japan whilst working on freelance projects in association with Namco Bandai, as well as teaching.

You can check out the interview Jayson Napolitano had with Yuu Miyake in 2009 for more about his life and works. His DJ set will be Saturday night starting at 11:30pm, with autograph signing earlier that morning. Check out the full schedule of events for MAGFest 13 for more details, and see you at MAG!
Game Music

Know Your MAG: DJ Yuzo Koshiro

November 16, 2012 | Justin Pfeiffer | 3 Comments Share this Know Your MAG: DJ Yuzo Koshiro

We all know Yuzo Koshiro as the composer: PC-8801 wizard who gave us The Scheme and Misty Blue, early Falcom icon who contributed to Ys and Sorcerian, Sega legend who put Streets of Rage and Shinobi music on the map, the man who composed Enix’s Actraiser, Super Adventure Island, and more recently Etrian Odyssey, 7th Dragon, and Wangan Midnight. Everyone is excited about the appearance of game music legend Yuzo Koshiro at MAGFest this January. But what will Mr. Koshiro actually bring to the DJ table? Since his DJ debut at LEGEND Game Music Club Event in Tokyo of 2002, where he ripped a very lengthy, badass Streets of Rage arranged set (featured in full-length on the recently published Bare Knuckle Original Soundtrack WM-0691~4), he has made several appearances at game music DJ events in Tokyo, namely Linear. Some may be surprised, however, at his past set lists, which have been known to include extensive amounts of Wangan Midnight, sparing amounts of Streets of Rage, free trance, even 90’s pop and house music that inspired him in his early career (ie. C&C Music Factory’s “Everybody Dance Now”). In his most recent DJ appearance, held at Area PicoPico 88: 5th Anniversary Festival in Tokyo last August, he spun 50 straight minutes of Wangan Midnight, a move that is technically safe from a DJ perspective, considering most of Wangan‘s music hovers around 140 BPMs and lends itself well to one another. However I think attendees at MAGFest will want to hear not only Wangan, but all of his famous works, including Etrian Odyssey, 7th Dragon, Streets of Rage, Shinobi, Super Adventure Island, and Actraiser — preferably arranged in awesome fashion. I had the pleasure of speaking with Mr. Koshiro at Pico 88 last August, however he offered no information on his upcoming set at MAGFest. Will he resort to “Wangan only” again? Veteran composer-DJs Shinj Hosoe, Ayako Saso, Akitaka Tohyama, and k.h.d.n. all have a knack for bringing a good amount of variety to the table. Let’s hope Yuzo does the same for his Western fans. (Personally, I think he should play some Vatvla.) What would you like to hear from DJ Yuzo Koshiro? Post your comments below.