What are amiga musicians doing today

Have you ever wondered or followed what some of your favourite amiga composers (those you don't know closer) are doing these days?

I just was listening to some mods and the question popped up and so i surfed around a bit, it's quite interesting and rewarding.

What i'm still confused about is the fact that whilst some did awesome mods, their normal music is quite the opposite. I don't know but i would rather pay for great mod music instead of listening to them playing guitar with totally unconvincing synthesizers in the background.

Time for a nostalgia injection!

It was amazing what composers/programmers pushed out of the SID chip on the Commodore 64, the theme tune to Rambo was a real ear opener ^^ to me and got me interested in using a computer to generate music.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3I5GxGlSCOw

For those of us who were around then people like Tony Crowther and Andrew Braybrook were inspirational.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antony_Crowther

http://www.mobygames.com/developer/sheet/view/developerId,10379/

C64 wise i would say Parallax was the best i've ever heard. That was just awesome and still is.

It's funny if you're listening to newer music then depending on the person you can still hear out their style. Hey, who's this one? ;O)

http://spielwiese.marune.de/_tmp/dra.mp3

Jesper Kid did the exceptionally wonderful Freedom Fighters soundtrack, and works (as freelance I suppose) for most giant game companies.

Chris Hulsbeck (Rainbow Arts' composer) instead works with Lucasarts since Rogue Squadron.

I don't know about the others though.



I still listen to sid tunes or remixes/remasters from time to time... they produced some of the best electronic pieces out there even though these composers are not among with the most successfull ones such as Jean Michel Jarre or Vangelis (Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard, and David Whittaker come to mind, but the list would be longer). Some remixes are made by very talented composers too.


Too bad Andrew Braybrook is now a database developer though. :)

<useless fact>

I worked at Gremlin/Infogrames at the same time as Crowther. I did a lot of the motion capture for [the god-awful] Soulbringer. Affectionately known in the QA department as "Souldestroyer", it was a good idea implemented in the worst imaginable way.

> they produced some of the best electronic pieces out there even though these composers are not among with the most successfull ones such as Jean Michel Jarre or Vangelis (Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard, and David Whittaker come to mind, but the list would be longer)

Absolutely. Hubbard, Galway et al produced some amazing music for the C64
"Monty on the run" anyone?


> Some remixes are made by very talented composers too

Yep. Do a search on Reyn Ouwehand - A guy from Holland who performs brilliant live C64 remixes by looping different intruments together culminating in a full and captivating rendition

Prime Example == Reyn Ouwehand - Plays Green Beret

heh, I liked it at the time, but I'm glad it's gone and wish all the crummy modern dance music would go with it. Still better than rap though :)

I always liked the guys behind the reflections games like shadow of the beast. That music was awesome.

He's been doing ok for himself. Since FF, Jesper Kyd won a Bafta for his soundtrack for Hitman:Contracts, and has written the music for Assassins Creed, Unreal Tournament 3, Splinter Cell:Chaos Theory and several films. It's one of the rare occasions where you could honestly say "it couldn't happen to a nicer guy" because - as anyone who's ever been in touch with him will tell you - he is one of the nicest guys around.

The only other one I know about is Romeo Knight from Red Sector. He still writes music for "the scene", and does a few live gigs too. I did hear a while back that he was possibly going to be doing some work for games again ( he did some way, way back ) but I never heard anything else about it.

The music for Agony is one of my all time favourite soundtracks to any Amiga game. Nice graphics, too. Pity the game sucked, but, I guess that's Psygnosis for you.

Bjorn Lynne (Dr Awesome of Crusaders) has his own website. He sells his own music online and has his own recording studio.

Dr. Awesome is a perfect example. He did one of the best amiga mods like his "Now What" series but a lot of his after amiga music i listened to, has those screaming guitars with not so well suiting synths in the background. It seems that quite some went this way or they are going the orchestral remix direction. The newer compositions often are overcrowded and miss a typical amiga sound. I don't know they aren't just as enjoyful as the mods.

For instance if you compared, the mp3 medley of nowwhat with a nowwhat mod (nowwhat2 in this case), i don't think that things have improved.

mp3: http://www.lynnemusic.com/previews/Dreamstate/12-now_what_medley.mp3
mod: http://modarchive.org/index.php?request=view_by_moduleid&query=51800

Of course he has also done some good new music but there are similarities with other composers i've been listening too. I had a feeling that the music is less after my taste compared to some pc demo music, which kind of confused me first.

Thanks for this thread. This brings back memories ^^

I'll need to search and archive these gems.

I got some Jeroen Tel mods a while back but preferred his C64 stuff for some reason. Of course I have a wadge of C64 tunes in my media library (plus the whole HVSC to fall back on). There was some great Amiga music too of course...