Music
Watch the lecture with Yuzo Koshiro – composer of Streets Of Rage
Yuzo Koshiro talks programming and techno with Nick Dwyer, live from Stockholm.
Subtitles are available.
Yuzo Koshiro is a Japanese composer, arranger, and programmer whose contributions helped change video game music. Having discovered video games and their music at an early age, Koshiro learnt to program using an NEC PC-8801 before landing his first jobs in the industry in early 1980s Tokyo, scoring the background music for games like Bosconian, Tower of Druaga and Sega’s 1987 hit Shinobi. Breaking away from the conventions of early BGM soundtracks, which favored pop, rock and jazz, Koshiro setup his own company, Ancient, and quickly established himself as a pioneer in the field thanks to his programming knowledge and early mastery of FM sound chips. He made his biggest impact with the soundtrack to Sega’s early ’90s beat’em up series Streets Of Rage, taking cues from dance music including techno, house and drum & bass and as a result influencing generations of fans and artists such as Just Blaze, Flying Lotus and Ikonika. In 2017, Koshiro and longtime colleague Motohiro Kawashima embarked on a two-year world tour as part of RBMA’s Diggin’ In The Carts series performing their Streets of Rage scores live for the first time.
In this public lecture, held as part of Red Bull EWKND in Stockholm, Koshiro sat with Diggin’ In The Carts host and video game historian Nick Dwyer to discuss the early days of his career, how he and Kawashima sought inspiration in nightclubs for Streets of Rage and why he never let limitations stop him from pushing video game music forward.
This talk was hosted by Nick Dwyer as a part of the series Diggin' In The Carts.
