Jet Set Radio
Year: 2000
By: Hideki Naganuma, Richard Jacques, Toronto
In the early 2000s, SEGA was in the middle of a creative golden age. Artsy experiments such as Rez would release alongside huge innovative and expensive masterpieces such as Shenmue. At the same time, the studio was dying, plagued by the poor sales of both the Saturn and the Dreamcast and terrible business practices. Jet Set Radio came out in this very peculiar moment in time. An arcade game about graffiti, youth and subculture, it popularized cel-shading (a technical way to make 3D graphics look like cartoons) and influenced the video game for decades to come — ever heard of Splatoon?
A big part of JSR’s attitude came from its crazy soundtrack, Hideki Naganuma’s very first work as lead composer. Taking inspiration from funk and big beat genres, and making use of advanced sampling techniques, he made a soundtrack that sounds like no other. Maybe because sampling was barely ever used in video games before (Sonic CD being a notable exception).
In-house composers Tomonori Sawada (under the alias Toronto) and Richard Jacques also contributed to the original soundtrack under the supervision of Naganuma, and SEGA added a few licensed tracks to the final game — making the titular “radio“ of the game a tasteful, underground blend of hip-hop, rock and electro.
Best picks
Let Mom Sleep
Humming the Bassline
Everybody Jump Around
Rock It On
Grace and Glory
Full soundtrack
Mask up 
Maria Wildeis is out of Cologne, Germany and she just put out an EP called Deep Meaning. It's an ambient-ish, avant-garde, ethereal, industrial-ish but still enjoyable type of odd record, at least to me. You gotta remember, I like Coil. It reminds me of Coil. Some very wild, jarring things out of nowhere in it too (especially right at the end), that I really dig. Cool samples throughout. 
UKW 94.0/ Stream o94.at
Greg Cocks 
