There was no single influence as far as I can remember. I spent much of my childhood neglecting schoolwork in order to play and design games of my own: first, single-player roguelike-esque card games, then programming in BASIC, programming for my TI-83, then eventually using Klik N Play.
When everyone else my age was listening to Green Day, I was listening to bands like Orbital and Daft Punk and Underworld, and recording game soundtracks directly onto tape so I could listen to them on the bus to school. Back then you couldn't buy game soundtracks like you can now.
I was already experimenting with building my own games and my own computers, drawing comics, and writing. Experimenting with music, for a while, was just another one of the things I enjoyed doing.
When the time came to consider where to go for college, I really wanted to get into game design. Unfortunately, only 2 colleges in the US offered game development programs, and they were both prohibitively expensive, and there was no way I was getting any kind of scholarship with my abysmal grades. So I went to a 2-year program for communications with a focus on audio engineering, thinking maybe I could one day do audio for games.
I learned more and more about music and music in games, and kept making my own tracks. I got better at it every time I finished a piece, developing a passion for it as I went.
To name some specific, musical inspirations though, these were the biggest ones: William Orbit, EarthBound, OCRemix, Jesper Kyd, and Star Salzman. OCRemix, in particular, helped me a lot later on, as 'getting good enough for OCRemix' turned out to be a very good quality goal to set for myself.
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