The composer of the original Metroid, Hirokazu Tanaka, has revealed that his second album “Domingo” will be available on July 15th 2020. His first album “Django” was released in October 2017, a collecton of music heard from his live shows, and simlar to the music you might hear from his Earthbound compositions. Domingo is a brand new album with eleven brand new pieces of music, described by him as a requiem to his past.
From Tanaka-san’s official YouTube channel:
Three years after delighting music lovers around the world with his debut solo album Django, CHIP TANAKA is back and ready to release his highly anticipated second album: Domingo.
Video game fans know him as Hirokazu “Hip” Tanaka, the pioneer artist who began spinning chipsounds into video game music in 1980 while working as a sound engineer at Nintendo. In addition to composing music for legendary games like Metroid, Super Mario Land, and Earthbound, his storied career includes writing and arranging numerous theme songs for the Pokémon animated films and TV series. His contributions to music catapulted forward yet again in 2017 with Django, the first album released under his live performance name CHIP TANAKA.
With Domingo, Chip returns with an all-new album of 11 conceptual pieces that combine disparate imagery of the sea, the night, outer space, and the retro-computer age, while exploring themes of nostalgia for bygone people and places. With an unpredictable mélange of genres including reggae, dub, and techno, and a rich palette of chiptune sounds, listeners will be transported into new and unknown auspices.
In his own words: “This album is a requiem to my past- a new life form born from treasured memories.” Don’t miss this epochal release from an artist who still has plenty to say!
Here are the eleven tracks featured on the album:
01 Calm Sea
02 Hammerhead Shark Song
03 Tubeworm Dub
04 Moonchild
05 Oppama
06 A Song For Stars
07 Guiding Light Dub
08 Plasma
09 Momongah
10 Rad Bat
11 Night Flight
Back in 2018, we had the pleasure of interviewing Tanaka-san, where he revealed he was “thinking about a next album” and we are pleased to see this has finally come to fruition! The first track on the album “Calm Sea” is available right now from Tanaka’s Bandcamp page. Be sure to pick up Domingo when it launches on July 15th!