EXTRA - HYPER GAME MUSIC EVENT 2008 Announced

The show ended a couple hours ago -- these are my immediate impressions below. Wired will likely have some good coverage of the event.

EXTRA 2008 piles on the videogame music nostalgia

Jam it back in, in the dark.

There are currently two interview series taking shape on the EXTRA Hyper Game Music Event to cover the interim between the concert and the published album. Six articles have been posted on GameSetWatch and Siliconera.

Posted today, Takenobu Mitsuyoshi talks about the set performed by H., made up of members of the Sega sound team. The band performed rock renditions of classic Sega arcade titles, including Space Harrier and Fantasy Zone. Mitsuyoshi also gets into the meaning behind his pseudonym R.360, the making of Shenmue, and the Street Fighter Tribute Album.

The Korg DS Trio discusses the DS software in a talk with GameSetWatch. Yasunori Mitsuda, Nobuyoshi Sano and Michio Okamiya spoke on the songs they arranged for the performance, most of which is on the YouTube video. Other subjects covered included changing opinions regarding the soundtrack to Drakengard and the possibility of other approaches to music creation software.

Kuske and quad compare the vgm and chiptune scenes in a talk on the subject of their music for the 8Bit Idolm@ster series and Otomedius G. Both musicians appear as DJs and introduce 8-bit console sounds to their sets. Kuske, as a member of Kplecraft, has performed at the Blip Festival and contributed to the 8bitpeoples music collective.

Another Tokyo-based DJ who contributes to the Idolm@ster and Otomedius soundtracks, Uraken shares his enthusiasm for UK Hardcore. The musician organized a music series in Tokyo following his trip to England in 1996 to attend a rave called United Dance. He shared his experience writing songs for Beatmania and meeting Shinji Hosoe at EXTRA, whose songs from Dragon Spirit he remixed for the event.

Bassist Jeff Curry talks about the Outer Rim, the album he composed for the jazz band of the same name based in Japan. He performed at EXTRA in 2007 and also contributed two stripped-down metal remixes of the battle themes for the Etrian Odyssey II Super Arrange album.

Etrian Odyssey composer Yuzo Koshiro explains the centrality of the PC-88 in the sound design for the series. The musician performed selections from the series live at EXTRA. The use of the 1980's hardware in the sound design he says was for the purpose of "creating a nostalgic environment" which was "vital to the process of the music’s creation."

Those are the articles on the musicians of EXTRA for these series that are online at the moment. There are a few more to come.

There's nowhere I can't reach.