Friday, 31 July 2020

Jesper Kyd – The Adventures Of Batman And Robin (1995)


Composer: Jesper Kyd

Tracklist
1. Introduction - Arkham Asylum Breakout 09:14
2. Level 1 - Happy Birthday To Me 07:02
3. Boss Theme 1 - Harley Quinn 04:09
4. On The Road 02:58
5. Boss Theme 2 - Joker 02:35
6. Level 2 - A Two Sided Story 03:53
7. Boss Theme 3 - Two Face's Airship 03:43
8. Flying Over Gotham City 03:59
9. Into The Clouds 03:05
10. Boss Theme 4 - Searchlight Airship 04:02
11. Level 3 - Tea Time 07:00
12. Boss Theme 5 - Cheshire Cat 03:35
13. Jetpack Ride - Chess Board 05:28
14. Boss Theme 6 - The Mad Hatter 04:25
15. Level 4 - Snow In July 06:08
16. Jetpack Ride 2 02:37
17. Boss Theme 7 - Mr. Freeze 02:21
18. Ending 01:59
19. Game Over 00:03

The Adventures Of Batman & Robin is a series of video game adaptations released between 1994 and 1995
featuring the DC Comics characters Batman and Robin based on Batman: The Animated Series.
The games were released for numerous platforms, with the Genesis, Game Gear and Sega CD versions published by Sega while the Super NES version was published by Konami.
The Genesis version (released on August 2, 1995), developed by Clockwork Tortoise,
is a run 'n' gun game where Batman and Robin must stop Mr. Freeze and features a soundtrack composed by Jesper Kyd.
Jesper Kyd Jakobson (born 3 February 1972) is a Danish composer and sound designer,
who has worked on various video game, television, and film projects.
His scores use orchestra, choir, acoustic manipulations and electronic soundscapes.
Kyd started playing the piano at an early age and later, he took several years of training in classical guitar,
note reading, choir singing and classical composition for piano but he is mostly self-taught.
He started using computers for composing on a Commodore 64 at age 14 and later an Amiga.
Kyd and Mikael Balle became members of the demogroup Silents DK and collaborated with the coders group Crionics.
They eventually made the Amiga demoscene production Hardwired.
He also created and scored the first demo, Global Trash 2, together with Mikael Balle.
Kyd then left the demoscene and started to work as a game musician.
He and others created the computer game developer Zyrinx and a game called Sub-Terrania for the Sega Genesis.
Kyd composed music for two additional Zyrinx titles, Red Zone and Scorcher 
and the music for two externally developed games, Amok and The Adventures Of Batman And Robin for the Sega Genesis.
Zyrinx dissolved when their game publisher Scavenger went bankrupt.
Many former Zyrinx members returned to Denmark to start IO Interactive,
but Kyd moved to New York City and set up his own sound studio in Manhattan called "Nano Studios".
He then worked as a freelance video game musician.
He worked on BioWare's MDK2, Shiny's Messiah and IO's Hitman: Codename 47.
The soundtrack to Codename 47 was based on urban soundscapes and ethnic instrumentation.
He then recorded the soundtrack of Hitman 2: Silent Assassin
 with 110 musicians of the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and Hungarian Radio Choir.
He recorded the score for the action/adventure Freedom Fighters with the Hungarian Radio Choir 
that was described by Film Score Monthly Magazine as "Vangelis on steroids"
He used modern electronica and symphonic and choral music in Hitman: Contracts
while the Budapest Symphony Orchestra and Hungarian Radio Choir were used once more in Hitman: Blood Money.
Jesper then provided scores for the games like Assassin's Creed, Assassin's Creed II, Assassin's Creed: Brotherhood,
Assassin's Creed: Revelations (co-composed with Lorne Balfe), Borderlands, Borderlands 2, State Of Decay, Darksiders II, Borderlands: The Pre-Sequel, Warhammer: End Times - Vermintide, State Of Decay 2, Warhammer: Vermintide 2
and Borderlands 3 (with Michael McCann, Finishing Move Inc. and Raison Varner).
In 2015, he scored the Chinese fantasy film Chronicles Of The Ghostly Tribe followed by the Indian fantasy film Tumbbad.
The music for the upcoming game Assassin's Creed Valhalla was also composed by Jesper Kyd and Sarah Schachner,
both whom have worked on past Assassin's Creed games.
Einar Selvik (aka Kvitrafn), who had written original songs for the History Channel show Vikings
will also work with Kyd and Schachner for new songs for Valhalla.
Jesper Kyd's influences include composers such as Ottorino Respighi, Igor Stravinsky, Jean-Michel Jarre, Vangelis,
Mike Oldfield, John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith and bands such as Röyksopp, The Knife, Pink Floyd, and Underworld.

Saturday, 25 July 2020

Desire – There Where Candles Fade (1998)


Country: Fimland

Tracklist
1. Insane 06:34
2. Stab In The Back 05:04
3. Let Me Come Inside 04:43
4. Beyond Gehennah 04:41
5. Senseless Eternity 03:47
6. Distance 05:22
7. The Awakening 04:12
8. Factory Second 05:08
9. There Where Candles Fade 07:16

Desire was a gothic metal band that was created in Sweden around 1991 and featured mostly Finns living in Sweden.
After several changes of composition, the group began to look like this:
Juha Vall - bass, vocals, keys, Timo Översti - drums, vocals, Arto Peteri - guitars, vocals, Jarmo Nummi - guitars
and additional female vocal by Karin Johansson.
After the release of their demo "No Light In The Dark" in 1995, they entered the Abyss Studio of Peter Tagtgren in June 1996 and recorded their debut album, “Assembled Forever", which was released the following year on Noxious Records.
In 1998 in the same studio their second album "There Where Candles Fade" was created.
Peter Tagtgren himself (Abyss Studio, Hypocrisy, Pain, The Abyss, etc.) is not only produced and mixed the album,
but also performed as a backing vocalist on the track "Insane".

Friday, 17 July 2020

Amon – El Khela (1997)


Country: Italy

Tracklist
1. Rise Of Thermutis 08:02
2. Khore 10:27
3. Dark Side Return 08:51
4. El Khela 11:19
5. She Touched The Stone 04:10
6. Wasted 08:56
7. Ank Sen Amon 18:46

Andrea Marutti was born in 1970 in Savona and currently lives in Milan, Italy.
He began his experiments with music in the early ’90s using mainly tapes and objects.
A few years later he also started to use synthesizers, samplers and other electronic devices
 and founded the Lips Vago Digital Studio.
His most well-known projects are Amon and Never Known.
During the late ’90s/early ’00s several of his releases in the field of Ambient/Dark Ambient music
were published by labels such as Eibon Records, Nextera, Amplexus, Silentes, Drone Records, Taâlem, etc.
For some time he was also responsible of other projects dealing with different styles of electronic music
ranging from Lo-Fi/Weird/Cheap Electronica to IDM (Wolkspurz & Ramirez, Lips Vago) and Dada/Noise/Nonsense (Spiral).
With the turn of the century he started recording and releasing Experimental/Ambient tracks under his own name,
in duo with Giuseppe Verticchio/Nimh as Hall Of Mirrors,
with Davide Del Col (Ornament, Echran) as Molnija Aura and again in duo with Andrea “Ics” Ferraris as Sil Muir.
Later on he was also involved in two collective projects: Maribor
with Giuseppe Verticchio, Maurizio Bianchi, Stefano Gentile, Pierpaolo Zoppo and Gianluca Favaron,
and Meerkat with Andrea Ferraris, Davide Valecchi/aal, Fabio Selvafiorita, Luca Bergero/Fhievel,
Logoplasm, Luca Sigurtà, Matteo Uggeri/Hue and Adriano Zanni/Punck.
Between 1995 and 2013 he also ran a small label called Afe.
Among the musicians that he hosted were Maurizio Bianchi, Bad Sector, Maeror Tri, Telepherique, De Fabriek,
Aidan Baker, Ovum, Steve Brand, Logoplasm, Ellende, Bestia Centauri, True Colour Of Blood and many more.
After a few years of hiatus, in late 2017 he re-builted his studio in a new location and began to work on new projects.
In 2016 Eibon Records with Silentes Minimal Editions re-released a remastered digisleeve edition of "El Khela",
under the title "El Khela Al'Akhdar", featuring a graphically renewed version
and a second CD with rare, unreleased and reworked tracks.
23 years after its initial release, "El Khela" still shines out like a pillar in the dark ambient field.
Mysterious, trascending, catacombal, bleak, cryptic ambience, the sound of forgotten realms in its purest form.