Matt Simmonds is something of a legend in the Amiga/demoscene world. Under the pseudonym “4mat”  he composed hundreds of famous music tracks for cracktros, demos and games. You can find over 500 of them on the Amiga Music Preservation site. MobyGames also keeps a relatively accurate list of his commercial and freeware audio work.

Today he released his album “Decades”. All of the 14 tracks on the album were created using the same tools he had available “back in the day”, namely ProTracker and FastTracker 2. I just bought the album from Amazon after having a listen on-line, and I’m really pleased at the mix of styles and raw chip sound that shines through. Some tracks carry better than others, but my personal favourite has to be “Virginia”. You can listen to the tracks below:

Read more about its production on Matt’s blog: I Hear the Sound of Waves. There is also a great interview with him on IndieGames.com. And if like me, you really enjoy what you hear, then Amazon MP3 has the goods.

Fellow Photon Stormer Ilija was saying just the other day that Matt has been in contact with him quite a bit recently. Perhaps a graphic/audio collab is on the cards? We’ll keep you posted … and Matt, if you’re up for it, we certainly have a couple of games we’d love to have your audio input on

I’ve got nothing much more to say other than – it’s out! The Gravity Crash soundtrack by CoLD SToRAGE is available to buy online for immediate download. It costs £10 (which is probably £3 more than it ought to) but you get 16 tracks for your money, including some awesome remixes – most notable of which is a C64 SID rendition of the title track Scarface.

Track previews, downloadable PDF booklet, exclusive mixes and direct support of the composer are included in the price. Have just thrown it on my mp3 player ready for the drive into work tomorrow. Even if you’ve never played the game, still check this out – as the man himself says, it’s a “buffet of 80s electro”

Sorry if you already knew this, but out of pure chance I thought I would check to see if one of my favourite web sites – Nectarine Demoscene Radio – was back on-line today, and lo and behold, it was! Nectarine had been streaming classic and modern demo scene tunage across the tubes for years. Site admin Yes had built up an awesome collection (18,000+ mp3s!) and like lots of other people I had saved hundreds of favourite tunes on there, voted on thousands, and listened to probably weeks worth of tunes!

And then some script kiddie went and ruined it for us all. He found an exploit in a script, and wiped the whole database and back-up. The site died and the scene lost a little bit of its heart the same day.

Lots of people wanted to help bring it back. I offered my services (as did many others)  but the events obviously took their toll on the Admin, and the site was destined to be nothing more than a fond memory. I would check back every 4 months or so, just in case, and today I struck gold

So I putting a shout out – if you used to listen to Nectarine, or are just interested in 24-hour streaming demo scene coolness, then go over there, register and help to breathe life back into the site again.

http://www.scenemusic.eu

My lovely wife bought me the Video Games Live: Volume One CD around a year ago from Amazon, and they only just received stock of it and shipped it! But it arrived today and was waiting for me when I got home from work.

All I can say is WOW! It is incredible. I’ve never been to a Video Games Live concert, and there is one coming up soon in London at the end of October which I sadly can’t make, but I’ll be sure to get tickets to the next one as soon as they return! The CD is stunning. Think lots of game music as performed by a full-on orchestra, with wonderful vocals.

The CD opens with the Kingdom Hearts music, which blends nicely into the Warcraft Suite, and it doesn’t let-up from there. The Civilization IV Medley by Christopher Tin is nothing short of beautiful, with an incredible African theme. The operatic God of War montage sends chills down your spine, and I’ve not even mentioned the music from Advent Rising, Tron, Halo or Castlevania.

If you treat yourself to one CD this Christmas, consider this one! It’s truly stunning. Game music like you’ve never heard before (unless you’re lucky enough to have been to a VGL concert of course, in which case I’m extremely jealous of you )

There are over 2000 videos from VGL on Youtube here. Just watch this and tell me that’s not a great concert to be at?