Publisher Bloomsbury announced that the next volume in its 33 1/3 book serieswill focus on Koji Kondo's iconic soundtrack for Nintendo's landmark 1985 platformer Super Mario Bros.
Launched in 2003, the 33 1/3 series provides critical analysis of historically significant music albums, with past volumes featuring The Pixies' Doolittle, My Bloody Valentine's Loveless, and Led Zeppelin's IV. The upcoming Super Mario Bros. book marks the first time the series has studied a video game soundtrack.
Written by Maestro Mario: How Nintendo Transformed Videogame Music into an Art author Andrew Schartmann, 33 1/3: Super Mario Bros. will explore how composer Koji Kondo "put to rest an era of bleeps and bloops -- the sterile products of a lab environment -- replacing it with one in which game sounds constituted a legitimate form of artistic expression." 33 1/3: Super Mario Bros.will launch in May 2015.