Legendary composer Rob Hubbard celebrates career with a Kickstarter
You've probably heard his tunes before.
For fans of games in the UK back in the '80s, especially those who cut their teeth on the Commodore 64, the name of Rob Hubbard is one of quite legendary proportions -- even on a platform filled with amazing musicians, Rob Hubbard might just have been the best of them all. His work for games such as Monty on the Run, Commando and Auf Wiedersehen Monty (with Ben Daglish) have become world famous -- even if you don't know the games themselves, you probably know the songs.
The man's certainly had one hell of a career, and now a Kickstarter project has been created in order to help celebrate that career -- and Project Hubbard might well be, quite easily, the most indepth and varied celebration of any video game composer's work to take. There are so many different aspects to this Kickstarter, listing them all is quite intimidating -- but it begins with a 300 page reference book about the man and his music. Then there's a studio album reimagining classic Rob Hubbard tracks as electronic music pieces from 1980 created by Hubbard himself and Marcel Donne. There's unreleased SIDs, a double album of rare songs including soundtracks for games on the Mega Drive and SNES, a bunch more albums filled with remixes, a new C64 game called "Rob's Life", and a £150,000 stretch goal which will see the music of Hubbard and other '80s chiptune legends being performed in concert by the London Symphony Orchestra. Not bad, really. Oh, and this stuff is all available in vinyl and physical cartridge form to boot.
C64Audio.com, the people behind this Kickstarter, are asking for £50,000 to make all of this possible, which frankly seems like a small price to pay considering just how much material there is here. We're still in the first day of the campaign, and they're already over a third of the way there -- £21,848 at the time of writing. Still, it's a while away -- C64Audio are looking to release this extensive collection in April of 2019. However, it is undoubtedly the most detailed look at a chiptune composer's career we have ever seen, and a labour of love for all involved -- including, of course, Dr. Rob Hubbard himself. If the project interests you in any way, then you can check out further details of it right here.
