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Michiel van den Bos
Dutch composer (born 1975) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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Michiel van den Bos (born 23 May 1975), is a Dutch musician and electronic composer.[1][2] He has composed soundtracks for over 20 games including Unreal, Deus Ex, Sonic, and the Age of Wonders series.[2][3] He's also known as M.C.A. in the demoscene and tracker community.[4] As indie/alternative DJ he uses the alias Mike Boss.[5]
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Early life
Michiel van den Bos was born in Rotterdam, Netherlands on 23 May 1975.[1] He attended the former Caland Lyceum in Rotterdam.[2] Ever since he was a young boy he wanted to become a composer and started with the Commodore 64 and the Amiga in the 1980s.[6][1] As a hobby he learned playing the piano and became a self-taught guitarist in bands.[6] At the age of 19 his father died and he moved homes 4 times.[6]
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Career
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1990s
Since the early 90s, Van den Bos wrote music under the alias MCA of the group Vicious.[4] He later transitioned from demoscene composer to writing music for video games.[4] He worked full time at a games store and a DVD/Laserdisc store while overcoming the limitations of Impulse Tracker to make soundtracks for Unreal, Unreal Tournament, and Age of Wonders based on textual map descriptions.[6] At the time, he had complete creative freedom to compose music for Epic Games' Unreal and Triumph Studios.[6] Van den Bos worked closely with Alex Brandon on the Unreal soundtrack and wrote an adaptive score.[6][7] However, for Unreal Tournament they received direction from Cliff Bleszinski and handed in songs.[7]
2000s
Van den Bos composed 4 CD tracks for the original Deus Ex of Ion Storm with the Impulse Tracker in 2000.[6] His mother passed away when he was 25 years old thus he declined making OSTs for Age of Wonders 2 and Age of Wonders: Shadow Magic.[6] At 27 he founded his own company and was hired by Triumph Studios to make music for the Overlord series.[6] Since 26 March 1999 Van den Bos has posted over 60 tracker music files on the Mod Archive.[8] The module files are mainly of Unreal, Unreal Tournament and Age of Wonders.[8]
2010s
In 2012, Van den Bos collaborated with other composers for One Big Album of which 80% of the proceeds were evenly donated to Starlight Children's Foundation and Save the Children.[9][10] Subsequently he scored music for various mobile games. Most notable are Hardlight's Sonic Jump, Sonic Dash, Sonic Jump Fever[11][12][2] Van den Bos returned to the Age of Wonders franchise with Planetfall in 2019.[13]
2020s
In 2020, Van den Bos collaborated with Alex Brandon to reimagine iconic songs of Deus Ex for the album Conspiravision: Deus Ex Remixed to celebrate the 20th anniversary.[14][15] Van den Bos made the full OST of Age of Wonders 4 which released in 2023.[16] It is composed predominantly of completely new material with a few nods to legacy songs.[16] In 2023, Van den Bos crafted the music for mobile game Sonic Dream Team.[4][17] On 15 May 2023, Van den Bos released a composed and mixed lo-fi soundtrack called Age of Wonders 4 LoFi Fantasy which includes a few AoW 1 and 3 songs.[18] Van den Bos made soundtracks for the AoW 4 expansions: Empires & Ashes (November 2023), and Eldritch Realms (June 2024).[19][20]
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Musical style and influences
Van den Bos' musical style is primarily energetic electronica, natural orchestral and soundscapes.[2] His specialties are music sequencing.[2] His studio consists of multiple, custom built audio PCs with a myriad of high end sample packages.[2] He uses high end music samples such as EastWest Sounds, Vienna Instruments, Steinberg, Cinesamples. Spectrasonics and Native Instruments.[2]
Van den Bos' greatest musical influences are John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, LTJ Bukem;[6] Commodore 64 composers Martin Galway, Rob Hubbard, Jeroen Tel, Ben Daglish;[6] metal bands Carcass, At the Gates, Insomnium;[6] and electronic artists PFM, Underworld and Artemis.[6]
Van den Bos is also an indie/alternative DJ with the alias Mike Boss.[1][5] His debut EP is Taking the Fifth (deep house) followed by Drifting Through Static (techno) in 2014.[5][21] The UNATCO remix of the album Conspiravision was on NTS Radio Node w/ Avant on 22 December 2016.[22]
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Composer
Discography
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References
External links
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