Full show today, with loads of fantastic game music! AND A WEED WHACKER.

Stephen Froeber just finished producing a giant 4-CD set called MOBIUS: Sonic the Hedgehog Remixed in honor of the little blue guy’s 25th anniversary this year. Stephen is part of the Materia Collective, a group of composers and musicians in the game audio and remix community. Members of the collective performed and arranged dozens of tracks from nearly all the Sonic games.

In fact, the list of folks who worked on MOBIUS is insane. Check it out.
You’ll hear Stephen talk about producing the massive project, along with his love of Sonic and the tracks he contributed to the album.

Coincidentally, another guest on the show contributed to MOBIUS. Composer Troy Strand teaches at MacPhail Center for Music here in Minneapolis. Each summer, he runs a camp for kids called Composing for Video Games. I had Troy on to talk about the camp, which just wrapped up last week. Troy’s also a member of the Materia Collective, and remixed “Flying Battery Zone” from Sonic and Knuckles for the MOBIUS project.
Just as Troy and I started our interview, his neighbor fired up a weed whacker. So you’ll hear that too. Sigh. Haha!

And if you’d like to hear all the music the students wrote over the course of the camp, you can find the playlist for the morning session here and the afternoon session here.

Our Patron of the Week is Jordan Paulin. I’ve “known” Jordan for years thanks to Twitter. From his list of favorite game music, you’ll be able to tell how much he loves one certain series of games… we talked about the first two.
1. “The Root” from Assassin’s Creed IV: Black Flag – Freedom Cry DLC by Olivier Deriviere

2. “juchu” from Botanicula by DVA

3. “Flamerock Refuge” from Borderlands 2: Tiny Tina DLC by Raison Varner

4. “Fight Club” from Assassin’s Creed 3 by Lorne Balfe

5. “Ezio’s Family” from Assassin’s Creed 2 by Jesper Kyd

6. “New Worlds” from Mass Effect 2 by Jack Wall

7. “When the Wind Blows” from Rayman Legends by Christophe Heral