Sephfire interviewed re: Shadow of the Colossus by Tales of Shadows

After I read Alex Rowe's interview with SGX over at Tales of Shadows, I let him know that he should talk with other OC ReMixer fans of Fumito Ueda's games, including Sephfire and Binster. But before Alex ever heard from me, he already had his plans in motion to interview Daniel "Sephfire" Floyd.

Released yesterday, the interview discusses Sephfire's plans to arrange material from Sony's recent blockbuster hit Shadow of the Colossus. Floyd's arrangement, entitled "Snowfall on Forbidden Lands," was also his first released collaboration with his wife Carrie "ceili" Floyd, which made for an excellent pairing, resulting in a whole that, in my opinion, was greater than the sum of its parts.

Floyd also provided background on how he got into video game music arrangement as well as his own take on the artistic merits of the Fumito Udea series of games. It's a quick but interesting read for fans of all types that you should check out. Let's hope Alex goes for the OCR trifecta down the line!

Netlabel pimps (Reunion & II)

I loves me some netlabels. As a big proponent of free music (not ideologically, don't worry), some of the most creative music you'll find doesn't cost you more than the time it takes to download.

Obviously, I spend a lot of time involved in the video game music rearrangement community, but netlabels feature great collectives of talent doing original music as well.

Like any hobbyist initiative, productivity can sometimes be intermittent. My favorite netlabel Hellven, run by Xavier "mv" Dang, has stopped and started on several occasions. This makes it difficult to find a really steady source of content to satisfy your fix.

On the chiptune side, Audun "AkumuHau" Sorlie, keeper of the most comprehensive NSF collection out there (and the only other guy I know who's listed his hobbies as "VG, Wrestling, Comics" in that order), has been pimping the latest chiptune netlabel, II (i.e. Pause). Norrin Radd and Shawn Phase are there. I'll be checking out their other material in the near future, but check out this cover art hotness for Radd's album, Melodia di Infinità.

That art's good enough to hang on your wall.

One of the other latest netlabels with strong ties toward the game music arrangement community that I've been made aware of has been Jonas "Platonist" Loman's effort, Reunion, which announced last month that its site had gone out of beta stage into a final release. They have a lot of good artists I'm aware of from OC ReMix including FFmusic Dj, GaMeBoX, Saiko, SGX, Siamey, The Joker, and even guest releases by Binster and OverCoat. They've hit a pretty good stride, just announcing their 45th single release (courtesy of GaMeBoX), so give 'em a look and bask in the free.