Dale North just covered Takada's panel at GDC over at Destructoid.

Things one can conclude from this:

- Takada is The Man.
- There will be a No More Heroes remix album "soon".
- Previous statement gets me excited in places I should not type out.
- Shinji Mikami sounds like an excellent soundtrack.

I'm pretty fired up that Takada is getting the cred he deserves. There is a very good chance that he is my favorite composer right now. Hmm. Yep. He is. <3333

Bleh.

Awesome.

*Laughs*

Sweet jeebus, give it to me now.

he looks young.

oh well.

number one composer of the 2000s for sure.

I dunno who I like better, Takada or Fukuda.  Would help if I could differentiate between the two.  Wasn't Killer 7 OST's 2 discs split by composer? 

EDIT - I just ran and checked and there's no indication of the above...  I dunno where I got that from.

wikipedia says something like that.
and i refuse to believe it.
i dont even know who j. fukuda is.

AFAIK, "GHM Sound Team" is Takada and Fukuda, but for the most part Takada focuses on the music and Fukuda works on the SFX and overall sound for the game in question, plays guitar and occasionally composes a few songs. Here's what I have on file specifically for Fukuda:

Samurai Champloo: "Empty Universe", "All Out Effort"
killer7: "Back to the Light", "Oh My Julia", "Tecks Mecks", "Corridor", "Santo Domingo", "Margarita"
Silver 02+ PARADE: "SUPER MIKUMO BROS. FUKUDA REMIX"

So other than those songs and the Umbrella Chronicles OST (credited to "GHM Sound Team"), I don't know what else Fukuda has composed, but I can guarantee that it's not too much.

Y'know, I listened Takada's Michigan soundtrack (and I think I sold it to you after awhile, Zane), and it was kind of novel at first; you had some classical compositions, ambient horror music, some decent melodies, but it didn't really catch on with me.

I was looking for new stuff at the time, stuff I'd never tried before, and "Michigan" was a buzz word for me, since it's the state in which I was born, raised, and still live today.

So, Zane, I'd have to ask you, which of Takada's work inspire your praise in him/her?

Is it just really No More Heroes, or is there more I ought to check out?

GMR's discography for Masafumi Takada here: http://www.gmronline.com/results.asp?di … results=25

Michigan is definitely Takada's "black sheep" soundtrack - I wouldn't use that album as a good parking point for Takada's work. It's much more drawn out and ambient than anything else he's done, including the RE:UC OST, but there are some gems in there. "Chicago Skyline in the Fog" is incredible, along with the reprises of the main theme. And yes, I was on the purchasing end of that transaction... so thanks. I used to have the album but sold it to a friend and then when I saw your older sale post I wanted to reacquire it.

For me, it all started with killer7. I heard the music in-game and fell in love, especially with "Rave On". It was the first Takada album I had heard, so once I ended up digesting that I ended up looking into his other works, which was the first time I bought Michigan. It didn't sit well with me at first because I was looking for something more upbeat, and in time I ended up purchasing the Japanese version of God Hand for PS2 because it came with the GOD TRACKS! album, and then Samurai Champloo OST and now No More Heroes.

If you're looking to get into Takada, I recommend checking out his Big Three: killer7 OST, GOD TRACKS! and No More Heroes. If you dig those, then it's well worth digging deeper into his more varied soundtracks, like RE:UC, all three Silver soundtracks/arrange CDs, Samurai Champloo, etc. As far as I'm concerned, Takada hasn't let me down yet; my initial thoughts toward Michigan weren't so hot because I was expecting something else.

I praise Takada because of his inventiveness, his ability to compose in a lot of different styles, his melodies, and just the overall "holy shit" factor of the albums he puts out. He has yet to let me down.

Takada and Fukuda have also worked on Contact for the DS, which has some great tracks.

Lately I've been listening to No More Heroes and Takada's contributions to Super Smash Bros. Brawl ("Shin Onigashima" ROCKS). He's a good composer and arranger.

Dont forget that Takada also composed two tracks for the beatmania series:

Icecube PF.
http://mx.youtube.com/watch?v=E_vH7jMWync

Watercube PF.
http://mx.youtube.com/watch?v=wNfXmwsZM30

Here's a neat fact; the last song, Watercube, was actually one of ending credits songs in Killer7 but for unknown reasons it was replaced for Dissociative Identity in the final version, I personally wouldn't choosed that one instead, this is some sweet ass acid jazz tune. Here's a clean version of the track:

http://killer7.3dactionplanet.gamespy.c … ffroll.mp3

The only soundtrack of Takada that I haven't heard yet is Blood+: One Night Kiss,  there's some guy over Gaming Force forums that ripped out the soundtrack, but there's not signal of the rip yet.

Anyway, here are more unreleased tracks from Killer7 that didn't make it on the last moment amongst other GHM stuff:
http://killer7.3dactionplanet.gamespy.com/dl.htm

So you have rips of Air Boarder 64, 2TAXGOLD, NEKOZAMURAI, Moonlight Syndrome, Gigantic Drive, Shining Soul II, Earth Defense Force, Tetsujin 28-Go, Ranma 1/2 Battle Renaissance, Chou Soujuu Mecha MG, and Earth Defense Force 2?  Gimme!

-Mike

Heh, I speaked too much, but in this topic there are some rips from the Moonlight Syndrome:

http://killer7.6.forumer.com/viewtopic.php?t=572

I covered some details of the remix album at SEMO:

'Masafumi Takada mentioned in his Game Developers Conference talk that there will be a remix album dedicated to his score to No More Heroes. More details about the album have come to light. To be called No More Heroes Soundtracks: Dark Side, it will feature nine tracks from a variety of artists including Takada himself. Norihiko Hibino will be producing a remix featuring his band The Outer Rim. The album will be released on March 14 and will be available from Grasshopper Manufacture's online store.'

Full track listings here. Anyone able to translate?

This one has been ripped, at the very least. If you hop on dc you can get it from me. And there was an official release for Neko Zamurai (PCCB-00373).

Does this mean Masafumi Takada is the Masashi Takada named here:

http://vgmdb.net/db/artists.php?id=310

And did he hence contribute to Epica Stella? Kanji seems to be the same.

Yup, that was the same guy. Verified it with information from a vocal collection album that includes that song because there's jack all information about that OST in Japanese. Moved those two albums over to his real entry and deleted that bad Romanization.

So chalk up one ED theme from Vanguard Bandits to Takada as well.

Shoot me a msg letting me know when you'll be on and I'll meet you there.

And wow, up until a few weeks ago I didn't think Takada composed music for too many games.  However if you combine his soundtracks that got CD releases with ones that didn't you really get a sense that Takada is way more than some VGM newbie.  Shit, he's been composing game music since at least '97!

-Mike

Anybody have some sites with Takada-Fukuda fan remixes?

I've got one, with three songs from Killer7:
http://www.human-bbq.com/music.html

Awesome interview, Arc. Glad to hear ghmRecords will be releasing more stuff in the future.

Yeah, cool interview.  Keep up the good work!

I got my copy of No More Heroes Sound Tracks Dark Side in the mail today.  Just gave it a once over and so far so good.  A few tracks stood out to me right off the bat: ANY MORE (RX-Ver.S.P.L.) which is Takada's own remix medley of K-ENT, Rocket Surgeon, and the main theme, then there's 6955 showing off his chiptune skillz on N.M.H. 6955 mix, then you have a sweet jazzy version of the main theme in N.M.H. The Outer Rim Remix which was arranged by Norihiko Hibino and performed by his band, and a strangely enjoyable vocal/rap version of the main theme with It's kill or be killed mix.  I'll listen to it more tomorrow on my trips back and forth from work as this is some excellent driving music.  So far though, highly recommended if you're a NMH or Takada fan such as myself.

-Mike

Hell yeah, that track kicks ass.  The atmosphere/mood is deadly cool.

Any recommendations of similar chippie tracks from anywhere else would be welcomed.