We’re really not. I know it’s been six months since an update but I just wanted to reassure you all that we’re still alive and kicking and planning some cool new tracks.The last six months have been crazy for all of us, but our lives are finally starting to level out again now, so we’ll have time to record some stuff once again.

Here’s some updates of what we’re actually doing:

First CD:

We’re working on finalizing an 18 track CD which we’ll be releasing as a free download via this site. It’ll include many of the pieces already on here as well as some new ones, and we’ll be putting up official artwork that you can download so you can put together a physical CD if you want. We’ll also be doing a limited run of high quality, professionally printed CDs to sell for anyone who wants them – but our music will still be free for anyone who wants to just download and listen.

Second CD:

As well as working on a first CD, we’re going to be recording more tracks and releasing them as usual. These’ll be going towards a second CD, but as always we’ll release them as we finish them. You can look forward to tracks from games like Banjo Kazooie, Final Fantasy IX, The Zelda Series and F-Zero as part of our second CD.

FAQs:

• Yes, we do take requests but we can’t promise we’ll do them. Suggestions are always Welcome!
• No, we don’t have tabs for the stuff we do apart from some very rough paper tabs that wouldn’t be much use to anyone. We’re working on something so you guys can play along, though.
• We’ll be setting up an equipment page so you can see what we use to record sometime in the near future.

Thank you to everyone for all your kind comments over the last few years, and we’re here to stay, we promise. I hope all you TRW listeners had a great Christmas and New Year – here’s to plenty of Videogame Music in 2010! Please leave any song requests and stuff in the comments!

Final Fantasy VII again. There’s something about this game – while I prefer FF9′s soundtrack, FF7 has some truly phoenomenal pieces of music that give me shivers. This is one such tune. Ahead on Our Way is one of the stand-out tracks from FF7 that isn’t a pumping battle theme like Aerith’s Theme.

As with most of the Final Fantasy tracks we cover, this one is by the amazing Nobuo Uematsu. He really captures the feel of that segment of the game where the party is getting a rest from the fast-paced events of the game for the first time in the appropriately named town of Kalm. Here we’ve got some synthesised strings via keyboard throughout the track as well as some piano later on.

The bulk of the track is carried by soothing guitar, with ‘backing’ guitar picked and strummed and lead guitar punching through with a bit of reverb just to make it sound right with the feel of the track. We did try to turn this one into a bit of a power ballad after experimenting with different styles, so the track ‘builds up’ into a big climax with everything getting bigger until it all quiets down for an understated finish.

Remember to check out Our MySpace and YouTube Channel. If you want to stay up to date with new tracks, sign up for our RSS Feed! We’ll gladly accept requests and suggestions from people who add us there, or via the contact page here on our website!

Did You Know?
Ahead on Our Way is the first proper ‘town’ music in Final Fantasy VII, despite appearing around halfway through the first disc. With the party trapped inside Midgar for the early part of the game, it’s a while before the party enters FF7′s first traditional FF town – Kalm – which is where Cloud tells his story of what happened On that Day, Five Years Ago…

 

 Ahead on Our Way (Final Fantasy VII) - The Red Wings [3:35m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Sonic 3 & Knuckles is one of my favorite games of all time. In the top three. I’m sure it rates pretty high for the other guys, too. When joined together, that is honest-to-god the best 2D platform game of all time. It also has some god damn amazing music by Jun Senoue, Howard Drossin and Tomonori Sawada.

I don’t know what one of them is responsible for the fantastic music to Lava Reef Zone, so we’ll give all three of them the credit on our cover – they all deserve it anyway. This point in the game is right when the plot is starting to hot up, and the game does a great job of drawing you in without any text or voice acting – just 2D graphics to explain what’s going on.

While a cover of Lava Reef, this track also touches on the Hidden Palace Zone music, which also features a little in Lava Reef. There’s a fair bit of synth here and we took a very different approach to recording the rhythm guitar as we arranged it to be such high notes. Overall we’re very pleased, and we’re definitely gonna revisit Sonic more.

Remember to check out Our MySpace! We’ll gladly accept requests and suggestions from people who add us there, or via the contact page here on our website!

Did You Know?
Lava Reef is actually the longest level in any of the Mega Drive/Genesis Sonic games. In terms of raw size and number of different paths characters can take the level is larger than any other, and really stretches the Mega Drive’s RAM to its limit.

 

 Lava Reef Zone (Sonic & Knuckles) - The Red Wings [2:32m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

This is an old track. Well over a year old. So yes, we know that the recording quality isn’t anywhere near as good as our latest stuff and the same can be said of the piece in general… but we still love this song. When most people think Mario Music, they think of the iconic NES tunes, including most of TRW. Not me, though.

As I grew up as a Sega Kid, I was more accustomed with Sonic, and while I knew Mario and had of course played his games, I didn’t actually own one until I got an N64 with Super Mario 64. That game blew my mind, and the music was a big part of it. To this day the main theme of Mario 64 is one of my favorite pieces of game music – and this here, the “Staff Roll” – the credits theme – is the second best track in the game.

It’s an exact cover with some slight changes, and another homage to the genius of Koji Kondo, Nintendo’s Uematsu. We’ll be sure to revisit Mario in the future, especially for some more retro stuff… and maybe even new stuff. The Mario Galaxy soundtrack is amazing.

Did You Know?
Completing Super Mario 64 100% rewards players with a cannon outside the castle which allows them to reach the roof – where they’ll find Yoshi. You can’t ride him, and fan backlash over the lack of a ridable Yoshi led to his return in Super Mario Sunshine.

 

 Staff Roll (Super Mario 64) - The Red Wings [3:22m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

We’re back with yet another Battle Theme from the end of the Final Fantasy series now officially definied as ‘retro.’ Sandwiched between the fourth and sixth entries in the series, Final Fantasy V is often majorly overlooked, but if anyone remembers one thing from FF5, it’s this – The Clash on the Big Bridge.

Literally taking place on an area of the map called “The Big Bridge”, this section sees you going through continuous battles with this track looping until you reach Gilgamesh in his first of many appearances in the FF series. This track is a classic, really, yet another piece of true genius from Nobuo Uematsu. Because of this, we don’t mess with what isn’t broken, and do a fairly straight cover of the original – two loops – a second pass so that Lloyd can solo a little, as he so loves to do.

I’m really pleased now as I’ve finally managed to perfect an organ sound I like, and one that mimics the Black Mages a little, great for use in those Final Fantasy battle tunes. Expect to hear the organ a lot more in the future! The organ is the sole synth part in this, though… we wanted to keep it simple. Or as simple as you can get with three guitars, two organs, bass and drums. Which isn’t very when you’re mixing it!

Remember to check out Our MySpace! We’ll gladly accept requests and suggestions from people who add us there, or via the contact page here on our website!

Did You Know?
Gilgamesh is now one of the most recurring characters in the Final Fantasy series, appearing as both an enemy and a summonable esper.

 

 Clash on the Big Bridge (Final Fantasy V) - The Red Wings [2:29m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Hey everyone! Hope all our visitors are having a good 2009 so far. We’ve been hard at work this January and have already begun work on around 8 new tracks that you’ll be seeing shortly. Our first album is now also 100% finished – we’re just deciding on some CD cover art you can all download and have as the ‘official’ cover for the first TRW album.

This post is mainly here to inform everyone we recently went back and rerecorded large sections of the track “A Premonition ~ Chrono Trigger”, which will be the first track on out second album. The version on this site has been updated to match, too, so check out the track page for the full download of the new version.

There’s going to be a new download winging it’s way to you next week. Keep your eyes peeled!

Hi everyone!

We’d like to thank you all for your kind comments all the way through this year and wish you all a Merry Christmas & a Happy New Year!

As you’ve no doubt guessed, we’ve slipped our album into 2009 thanks to major constraints on how much work we can do. Two of us are at university full time, with one of the two also continuing work as a budding gaming journalist and another is working full time, making chances to record TRW few and far between. Work is progressing, though, and expect the album to actually get finished very early in 2009. We’ve actually got a few tracks ready to go for the second album already, too!

The point is, 2009′s going to be a big year for us. Definitely one album release, and I’ll stretch my neck out and suggest that there might well be a smaller ‘EP’ style release from us in the latter end of the year too and of course track releases throughout the year.

As a bit of a Christmas Present for you, we’ve got a new track online! It isn’t on this site for download yet, but our version of “Battle 1″ from Final Fantasy IX. You can give it a listen over on our YouTube channel, and a full download will be making it’s way to this site sometime soon. We were laughing about how another FF battle theme isn’t much of a Christmas Present, but it’s one we wanted to show off. Next year will be something more Christmassy, I promise!

So thanks again to you all for your continued support! Keep checking back for more new stuff!

Hello all!

First of all, thanks to everyone who has been messaging us on our MySpace, YouTube and Official Website pages. We read every damn comment and we really appreciate it.

We’re very happy to announce to everyone that we’re featured on LOSER: A Sega Genesis Tribute Album, released by the awesome guys at Game Music 4 All.

We’ve contributed two tracks to the album, “The Genius of Doctor Robotnik” from the Sonic Series and “Wilderness” from Golden Axe. Head on over to the website and grab the album’s 39 tracks of Sega goodness.

As far as our own album goes, we’re not quite done – we’re all so busy that it’s difficult to make things happen – but we’re still shooting for the end of this year.

What with Square Enix announcing that Chrono Trigger will be rereleased on the DS, we figured it’s about time that we released this track that we’ve been sitting on for a little while now. Frog is one of my favorite RPG characters ever. He’s an awesome character – and he has an awesome, awesome theme.

Similarly, Chrono Trigger is one of the best games ever made, with one of the best soundtracks ever made. We originally entered this track into a competition on the Penny Arcade Debate & Discourse Forum in a Cover competition which we surprisingly won! Thanks to all the guys at PAForums, and this one goes out to all the great musicians on that board!

From a musical standpoint, this track has a lot of synthesised parts alongside the live instruments. There’s some strings, some brass, and a single piccolo flute, all played in via a MIDI keyboard. I felt we had to keep these, as if we didn’t we’d lose the slightly medieval, epic orchestral quality of the original. The live rock instruments were, as usual, recorded in a single session. Everything came out pretty well, and I love – love how the drums in particular came out on this track. Download and streaming player below.

Remember to check out Our MySpace! We’ll gladly accept requests and suggestions from people who add us there, or via the contact page here on our website!

Did You Know?
In the Japanese version of Chrono Trigger, Frog is called Kaeru – literally a Japanese word for a Frog.

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 Frog's Theme (Chrono Trigger) - The Red Wings [2:04m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

At last. It has come to pass. What, you ask? Of course, I’m referring to Square Enix’s announncement that they are to re-release (or port in this case) the SNES classic Chrono Trigger to the DS. This is exciting for us in particular, as we are in Europe, that barren wasteland that in the days of the SNES never saw release of games such as Chrono Trigger or Final Fantasy, in part because of Square’s localization teams lacking the ability to do so, and in part because back in those days, this was Sega-land.

So at last, Chrono Trigger announced. This combined with the many requests from our friend Craig to cover another track from the game (his favourite ever) finally made us look at the game’s music once more and get off our asses and do it. As we’ve already done the best piece of music in the game, Frog’s Theme (download coming soon!) it was a toss-up between this and Wind Scene. This slightly won out. But Wind Scene will also be coming. In time

This track has a lot of synth parts in it. The entire “Premonition” track is synth, and then throughout “Chrono Trigger” there’s a lot of quieter synth parts to help keep it close to the original. One major difference is where the original piece ‘pulls back’ and gets quieter, ours just gets louder and louder, building up to an even bigger ending. We had to. We are a rock band, after all.

Did You Know?
The original character in Chrono Trigger was meant to be called Chrono, but the game engine couldn’t handle a name that long for the English language version. As such, the h was dropped, and he was renamed Crono. In the subsequent PS1 release despite longer names being allowed, Chrono was still a blacklisted name – the game wouldn’t let you have it even if you swapped o’s for 0′s and so on. Press at this year’s E3 confirmed that the DS version will be the same, true to the original.

 

 A Premonition/Chrono Trigger (Chrono Trigger) [2:40m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download