If you’re anything like us, you grew up listening to a lot of videogame music. While limited by primitive hardware, catchy compositions by the likes of Hitoshi Sakimoto, Takenobu Mitsuyoshi and Yuzo Koshiro showed real mastery of music and stuck in our heads for years. However, gaming musicians rarely get to tell their tales and this is particularly true of Japanese musicians, where language barriers can sometimes get in the way. Brilliantly though, an unusual source is now making a lot more material available free of charge.
The Red Bull Music Academy website is currently hosting a six-part documentary series called Diggin’ In The Carts, which features the musicians above and many more besides. The series consists of six 15-minute episodes, with a new part being released each Thursday – episode 1 is already out, and episode 2 will hit tomorrow. You can see a trailer for the full series above.
If you want to read more about the composers of classic gaming music, why not check out our feature on The Music Men with a digital copy of issue 110?