Jimmy “BGC” Hinson & Jake “virt” Kaufman Double Album Release

Yesterday community Powerhouses Jake “virt” Kaufman & Jimmy “BGC” Hinson both released albums of epic proportions.

 

Imposter Nostalgia by Jimmy “BigGiantCircles” Hinson

Jimmy, a staple of OverClocked ReMix, but most recently known for his work on the Mass Effect 2 soundtrack,  has released his long awaited original album “Imposter Nostalgia” which, at the time of writing this, is the #1 album on Bandcamp. The music is retro, 8-bit, indie inspired and includes other video game music community artists like zircon (OverClocked ReMix, Return All Robots), Alexander Brandon (Deus Ex, Unreal Tournament), and C418 (Minecraft). The base price of the album is set at $3.99 and it’s well worth every penny of it.

 

Bloodrayne: Betrayal Original Soundtrack by Jake “virt” Kaufman



Next up is Jake “virt” Kaufman with the original soundtrack to Bloodrayne: Betrayal. If you like Castlevania style music with a lot of guitar shred, this album is for you. Additionally the album also includes an entire 8-bit version as well!

A proud, exhausted (per usual) sounding, Jake explains the story of how it came to be:

“During development, the programmers were using Nightwish tracks and Castlevania: Symphony of the Night tracks as temp music. So, I said to them, “I can do better than that.. just kidding, I can’t actually, but I’ll do my best!” and cried softly to myself. After 3 months of writing, shredding, recording and mixing, I had finished our soundtrack. The guys in New Jersey (the publishers) said “Whoa, this is the real music from the game?” and we said “Yeah.” and they said “YEAHHH!!” and did jump-kicks.

Then, I came up with the completely idiotic idea to include an unlockable NES soundtrack, to replace the regular one. The director, Sean Velasco, yelled “DO IT!!” before I was even finished pitching the idea. The programmers said “that would kick ass!” and promptly forgot about it until the end of the project, whereupon they said “Sorry, no time left!” (there actually was no time left, they were already living at the office 24/7 and surviving on a diet of Moon Pies).

So I begged and pleaded and used my Jewish guilt powers; eventually the lead programmer said “Oh, all right” like that time Dad finally let you get a Cowboys-and-Indians BB gun. They wrote the functionality to enable “8 Fingers, 8 Bits” mode, as I frantically tried to learn FamiTracker and cover each song note-for-note. I imagine most working composers would just have run MIDI files through a “chiptune-o-matic” converter like GXSCC, rather than creating machine-code-compatible, authentic VRC6 versions. But most working composers probably don’t have a death wish, and actually value their time.

This album is dedicated to Pablo Bert, a.k.a. DJ Mike Haggar — a truly amazing human being who, among other heroic feats, helped my wife avoid failing Calculus last semester. He was also in the Guinness Book of Records for his world-record Battletoads speedrun.

The NES portion (available in FTM source format for your amusement) is further dedicated tojsr, the creator of FamiTracker, who has worked very hard to make one the finest chiptune hobbyist tools in history.” — Jake Kaufman.

The Bloodrayne: Betrayal soundtrack, as well as it’s 8-bit counter part, have their base price set at an astonishing $0.

I thoroughly recommend that everyone go out and at least give the 2 albums a listen. If you’re not dropping at least $20 after listening to both of these, I suggest you make a doctor’s appointment to gear your ears checked immediately. This has truly been an early Christmas for any VGM enthusiast.

Imposter Nostalgia by Jimmy “BigGiantCircles” Hinson: http://biggiantcircles.bandcamp.com/album/impostor-nostalgia

Bloodrayne: Betrayal Original Soundtrack by Jake “virt” Kaufman: http://virt.bandcamp.com/album/bloodrayne-betrayal-official-soundtrack