Outside of being either a hardcore fan or digital composer the name Ben Daglish may not be a name you’re familiar with, however if you’re a gamer from the 80’s & 90’s you have definitely heard his music. The digital world mourned last week when Ben Daglish passed away at 52 years old after his second fight with lung cancer.
Born in London Ben came from a musical family and a harmonica was one of his first instruments. During his schooling years he was a percussionist before switching to a mathematics degree which ultimately flamed out. It was at this point that he started making music for computer games. Ben freelanced for many developers and composed tunes on the Amstrad CPC, Commodore 64 and Amiga, Spectrum ZX Spectrum and Atari ST platforms.
Some of Ben’s games for the Commodore 64 include:
- 720°
- Blasteroids
- Deflektor
- Firelord
- Gauntlet
- Gauntlet II
- Hades Nebula
- Hero’s of the Lance
- Pac-Mania
- TechnoCop
- The Last Ninja (with Anthony Lees)
Ultimately the 8bit scene started to dry up and Ben moved on and became a professional musician first writing music for plays and then moving on soundtracks and working with other UK musicians such as Loscoe State Opera and SID80’s. Ben also had a Commodore 64 revival band called Press Play on Tape.
Last but not least, if you would like to listen to some of Ben’s music you can go over to the High Voltage SID Collection (aka HVSC) and just type ‘Ben Daglish’ into the search field. This will bring up a ton of results. Enjoy.
