Music
Discover how the sound of 8-bit took over the world in the part two of RBMA’s new web series.
In the first episode of Red Bull Music Academy’s Diggin’ In The Carts, directors Nick Dwyer and Tu Neill rewound back to early 1980s’ Japan to uncover the origins of video-game compositions.
In the latest instalment, available to watch now in the player above, they set out to tell the story of the “bubble era,” in which inflated stock and real-estate prices in Japan meant that 8-bit technology was soaring: and so was the creativity it inspired.
Dwyer and Neill set out to trace the technology’s roots by meeting both Konami sound team leader and Contra composer Hidenori Maezawa and 8-bit composer Masashi Kageyama.
“The day we spent with Masashi Kageyama in Shizuoka was really touching,” says Dwyer. “We met a man who worked in his office for years and years and for the longest time he had absolutely no idea what people thought of his music.
“He had given up making game music 25 years ago. Only in the past two or three years via the internet has he found out how much people from all over the world liked his music. He was so overjoyed by the fact that we wanted to film with him. So we filmed him riding around with his bike, and it was incredible to see him. He basically personified the music that he made. That day, he looked like the way his songs sounded.”
That 8-bit sound isn’t quite like anything else on Earth, and its presence is still felt heavily in today’s electronic music. Look out for LA’s Flying Lotus and Brooklyn’s Fatima Al Qadiri in the new episode, the former having made music specifically for video games (specifically, for a radio station in Grand Theft Auto V) and the latter having made a conceptual EP that draws heavily on her childhood console experiences.
Check the full episode in the player above and come back next week (Thursday, September 18) for Episode 3 of Red Bull Music Academy’s Diggin' In The Carts.
RBMA Tokyo 2014 runs from October 12 until November 14. Click here for more info.
Want to experience the best of RedBull.com on the move? Get the app at RedBull.com/app.
.png)
