I tend to ramble, so please, bear with me.
Well, as many of you know, back in 2006 I released "The American Album", the first video game music tribute to American game composers. This was before "Video Games Live" hit the scene and all that, and pretty much every remix project or tribute out there had been done to honor the Japanese guys. Final Fantasy via Nobuo Uematsu, Chrono Trigger via Yasunori Mitsuda, and all that. (Visit the official website for more ramblings in that regard... in short, my original project was a first-timer to tribute the American guys.)
Well, that album was what I'd call a success; the composers loved it, the fans loved it, and it was a wake-up call that there's a hell of a lot of quality American music that isn't getting as much attention as it should. And since then I've always had the idea of a sequel in the brain.
Well, here we are, years later, no one else (to my knowledge) has done another American tribute, and I've been itching to do a solo Mazedude album, so, here 'tis. I'm honoring a lot of the composers that I didn't get to the first time around -- Garry Schyman, Michael Land, Jake Kaufman, and others -- and -- I'm going all out with bringing in live performers, proper mastering, legal licensing, all that jazz.
This will be my Opus... an electronic fusion masterpiece theater feeding off of the original music of Bioshock, Shantae, Mass Effect, Advent Rising, and beyond. I've already started, and plan to have this puppy out in 2012. When in the year will depend largely on how many pre-orders I get, so I can focus on bringing this to life.
(Hint hint.)
~ Mazedude
