Underappreciated Composers Appreciation Thread

I know I've seen threads like this for soundtracks before, but I can't remember ever, or at least recently, seeing one for composers themselves.

This one goes out to all those fine musical virtuosos whose hard work goes unrecognized, slighted, glossed over, pushed by the wayside, ignored, overlooked, or otherwise not given its due time in the limelight by fans, reviewers, and any other involved parties.

For every Uematsu, Mitsuda, Koshiro, or Soule, how many other composers are there who get the shaft when it comes to recognition by the fans? Well, let's put a stop to that right here, right now.

This thread is for the acknowledgement and appreciation of those fine composers who fans always seem to forget about in IRC channels, game reviews, "best of" sites, forum threads, and the like. If there's a composer you feel is overdue for honourable mention, mention them honourably right here. Illuminate us as to what credits they have to their name. Maybe upload a sample of their work. And tell us why, dammit, they need to be known. Examples would be the case of OSTs like recent Final Fantasies or some of the Persona games, wherein multiple composers worked on the soundtrack but credit generally only goes to one (Masashi Hamauzu springs to mind in the case of FF). Worse still are cases like Shadow Hearts, whose OST was composed primarily by Yoshitaka Hirota, but somehow is too commonly credited in whole to Yasunori Mitsuda despite his only having written a handful of tracks for it.

One thing that's worth noting is that GFF isn't necessarily the best sample demographic due to its heavy slant toward VGM appreciation. The people here are probably more knowledgeable than any other forum I know, save for OCR and SlightlyDark. GameFAQs would be a better example of...okay, scratch that, GameFAQs isn't a good example of anything, ever. Still, you get the idea. Composers ignored by the unwashed masses.

So, to get the ball rolling, I'm going to nominate Noriyuki Iwadare. Well-known around these parts but I seldom hear his name mentioned elsewhere, and only 5 remixes of his work appear on OCR. This is a shame because while he doesn't go for the grandiose, operatic, or bombastic like some composers do, he writes consistently catchy, intricate, diverse music that's a lot of fun to actually listen to. I first discovered him through the Lunar remakes on PS1, and then really got into his work with Grandia 2 when a friend burned a copy of the bonus sampler CD for me.

A follow-up, and I admit this is straying a bit from my original intent but it might be another viable direction for the thread to take--Yuki Kajiura. Specifically where Xenosaga is concerned. I'm familiar with a lot of her other work, and I know she's pretty well established, but I've seen other forums and reviews wherein she takes a lot of flack over the XS2 and XS3 soundtracks for no good reason other than that they weren't composed by Mitsuda. This is just my opinion, and I have a lot of respect for both composers, but I found the XS2 and 3 soundtracks to be far more engaging and interesting than that of XS1. Mitsuda's work, while solid, sounded too stiff and stale, like he was trying actively to emulate John Williams rather than let his own style come through. It had far less personality than, say, Chrono Cross, and while it had its fair share of memorable tracks, Kajiura's work on parts 2 and 3 brought that missing element of "identity," for sleep-deprived and caffeine-crashing want of a better word, that let the soundtracks stand on their own as opposed to being "full of melodic references to the excellent Xenogears." 'Gears is great, its soundtrack was great, but I'd rather 'Saga had its own distinct sound than try to ride on nostalgia.

Alright, I'm shutting up and turning the floor over to whoever wants to give the next shout out to a deserving underdog.

Jam it back in, in the dark.