Jake 'virt' Kaufman

Jake Kaufman (a.k.a. virt) is an American video game composer responsible for the amazing soundtracks to games such as Shantae, Shantae: Risky's Revenge and BloodRayne: Betrayal. He has also released a vast quantity of original music and arrangements, many of which are freely available on his website. A highlight of his oeuvre is his series of fictional video game soundtracks (FX, FX 2.0 and FX3), the first of which you may have encountered in arranged form in an earlier Weaboo Week upload. Four of his notable recent works follow:

Jake Kaufman - Contra Dual Spirits Original Soundtrack (2008)

Contra 4, released in Japan as Contra Dual Spirits, is probably Kaufman's most famous soundtrack. Composing a Contra soundtrack was seemingly Kaufman's dream from a fairly young age, as such this is an extremely developed stylistic homage which even features an updated version of his Contra-style track Vile Red Falcon made for the album FX2 in 2002. Fans of this soundtrack should be sure to check out the remix album, Contra 4: Rocked 'n' Loaded.

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Jake Kaufman - Mighty Milky Way / Mighty Flip Champs OST (2011)

This album opens with one of the best Vocaloid songs I've ever heard (actually, I prefer the extended version that appears later, but they're mostly the same song). This track is distinctly J-pop, even featuring some Japanese lyrics despite its American origins, but other tracks on the album offer completely different styles. Incidentally, Kaufman is also responsible for what is probably my favourite Vocaloid song, Lorem Ipsum.

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Jake Kaufman - Mighty Switch Force OST (2011)

Self-descibed as "space disco house music", this follow-up features both original music and some familiar tunes from the previous games in the series rearranged as Daft Punk-esque electro. I feel this album exceeds hipster-favourite Glass Swords in its insane happiness, especially the track Love You Love You Love which I've found myself listening to more times than I feel comfortable admitting. Towards the end of the album this track gets remixed by coda in the style of Tree of Knowledge, an album coda worked on which pays tribute to the eroge soundtracks of Ryu Umemoto.

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Jake Kaufman - Kwakfest (2008)

Last is Kaufman's first physically released album, an anthology of songs made for the speed composing party known as Kwakfest. Every song here was made within a strict 1-hour time limit using the MIDI format. In spite of this (and/or because of it) virtually every track is amazing, with Choppastyle and World's Most Wanted Wiener being my favourites. Also of note is Supabonk, one of only two pieces of synthesised music I've heard that manage to sound pornographic despite being entirely instrumental. The other is Chibi-Tech's Oniichan Dakara Iiyo, which is even worse if you know some Japanese.

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