As you might already know I released a 5-track [PREVIEW EDITION] of my upcoming Armored Core arrange album at comiket. Well, demand was high so I decided to release it digitally for free too! You can get it from my new Bandcamp page in cozy mp3 or glorious FLAC. Just follow this link:
http://anosou.bandcamp.com/album/the-answer-armored-core-tribute-album-preview-edition
…did I mention it was free? It totally is!
I uploaded a two-part video walkthrough of my latest Armored Core remix. Check it out for some inside info on what I do and how I do it!
THE ANSWER ~ Armored Core Tribute Album ~ [PREVIEW EDITION] was released at Comiket and here’s some brief information on how it went down! The lovely people at AFFT (Aspina Formation Flight Team, the doujin circle helping me publish) printed 60 copies. This is still a lot considering they only had two days notice after they got the .wavs and made the artwork. These 60 copies were gone BEFORE 12AM!
IT TOOK TWO HOURS!
To me this is amazing news. Demand for the CD was so high it ran out that quickly, that means the final album will probably see a lot of attention too! The downside is that many came around the booth asking for the CD (according to my friend and booth keeper Wasabikarashi) and were sad to hear it was already gone. Luckily the people who did get it seemed very happy. For example here’s a picture of composer Hiroyuki Iwatsuki with his copy he tweeted shortly after he got it: http://www.flickr.com/photos/iwadon/4893211446/
It was an amazing effort by AFFT to get the CD out on such short notice and we hope to release the full album at the next Comiket. The details haven’t really been worked out yet but I can promise the stock will be much bigger this time. 
To finish things off, here are some pictures Wasabi-san took:
Thanks to the doujin circle GEOmetalics a 5-track [PREVIEW EDITION] of my upcoming Armored Core arrange album will be available at Comiket, Japan’s biggest gathering of otakus, doujin groups and all kinds of nerds! It will be a physical CD-R with cover art by the GEOmetalics artists and it will be COMPLETELY FREE! Only limited stock carried, a real rarity.
If you happen to be at Comiket78 it’s available on August 15th, West hall, booth “え” -45b.
As you may or may not know I’ve been working on an Armored Core arrange album. I’ll be arranging music from throughout the series, re-interpreting the fantastic music by Kota Hoshino, Tsukasa Saitoh and their team. To get some hype going, here’s a video preview of some tracks I’ve done so far:
Armored Core Tribute Album preview from Mattias Häggström Gerdt on Vimeo.
I’m still trying to figure out how I’ll release this… I’d love to print physical copies but that involves some legality issues if sold. Maybe only physical copies that I give away for free as gifts/in contests? I’ve been thinking about contacting a doujin circle too and see if they want to help release it on comiket. My biggest dream is From Software helping publish it though…! 
I hope you enjoy the music! You can post any questions/comments here or e-mail me at mattias [a] anosou [dot] com
I’m not spectacular at updating this blog thingy but I’ve been terribly busy! Here’s what’s new:
• Me and my lovely girlfriend Johanna just bought our own place. We now live in a cozy (read: not that big) flat with way too many video games and CDs. The heat sure takes some of the joy out of moving and fixing stuff but everything’s looking really good but not 100% set up!
• I got a job at Oxeye Game Studio scoring their upcoming to-be masterpiece codename “Project B”. I assure you the game and soundtrack will both be brilliant and work perfectly together. This is definitely my biggest job yet and I’m incredibly excited about the project and all aspects of it.
• I’m still working on the Armored Core tribute album. I’ve got roughly four finished tracks and I’m planning to bring the total up to around 10 before I’m done. Since this is a project I’m doing in my free time it has taken the back seat a bit but I hope to get everything done before christmas depending on my workload!
• I’m going back to Stockholm University to study EVEN MORE musicology, specializing in game music. This semester I’m writing what we in Sweden call a “kandidatuppsats”, basically the equivalent of a Bachelor’s Essay. As it stands right now the subject will most likely be ‘The Sound of a Break — Music for Towns and Cities in Japanese Role-Playing Games on the Fifth and Sixth Generation of Video Game Consoles’. Quite a mouthful, eh? I’ll most likely be calling out for some help listing most RPGs and what music is what I’ll call “town music” from this era so I can go through most of them and hand-pick the ones relevant to the paper. It’ll be a blast I assure you!
• Since I just got a flat I’m dead broke, if anyone wants to send me money so I can keep funding my research (read: buy more game music albums) feel free to drop me an e-mail! 
Long time no see, eh? Let’s go through what I’ve been up to. Stay a while and listen!
• I’ve been doing some demo tracks for OxEye Games and if things go through I might score a game for them! Definitely something I hope I get and that I’m looking forward to doing.
• I’ve been importing tons of game music in the last few months. I’m now the proud owner of quite the big collection! To see what I like and, by extension, you should like just visit my VGMdb collection page: http://vgmdb.net/db/collection.php?do=view&userid=186
• Armored Core is one of the better series of games in my opinion and the music is quite magical. Because of that I thought it might be a good idea to do a tribute album, arranging music solely from the Armored Core-series! I’m doing this myself and I already have some tracks finished, believe it or not. I can also proudly say that Kota Hoshino and the From Software sound team thought the tracks I showed were great! Since I’ve already tweeted one of the tracks I thought I might as well post it here as a teaser. Beware as I’m actually playing guitar!
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And I think that’s about it really. I didn’t get in to the Royal College of Music (got 18.5 on the instrument test, 20 was the limit. Everything else went awesome) but instead I’ll stay at the University of Stockholm and study game music in the field of Musicology. Apparently it’s THE up and coming Musicology research subject. Ought to be lots of fun
I know, I know.. I really like the works of Kimitaka Matsumae and even though I just wrote a bit about Jade Cocoon I feel that this soundtrack, Kileak, the Blood Sound Tracks & Remix desperately needs the attention. So without further stalling, here’s my take on it.
Kileak, the Blood Sound Tracks & Remix, released in March 1996 by Sony Records, compiles the music from two lesser known titles for the PlayStation by Genki; Kileak The Blood and Kileak The Blood 2: Reason in Madness. Now I don’t know much about these games, actually I heard they’re really bad, but something must’ve gone just right because the music is in a league of it’s own. Be wary, I get wordy. Review after the jump! Read the rest of this entry »
An interview I did with Jeriaska for IndieGames.com JUST WENT LIVE!
I talk a bit about my work with Morsel, some of my upcoming work, indie game’s music, my work on OCR, IWADON and how I go about making music. Be sure to give it a read and leave a comment, it’s interesting stuff if you’re the least bit interested in what I do!
I’ll also take this opportunity to tell you about n.anosou, my new side-project. It’s basically a tiny little netlabel that will be mainly for me and friends/colleagues to release original music you can’t find elsewhere. The thought is releasing miniature albums with 5-7 original tracks every now and then. Keep a look out in the coming weeks for snippets from the first release and DEFINITELY look forward to the first release itself!
