Recently in Music Category

Final Fantasy XIII is releasing this week! So let's commemorate the occasion of its arrival -- in an admittedly miniscule manner -- by featuring the soundtrack to...one of Square Enix's worst games: Unlimited: SaGa.

What's the point of this? Glad you coercively asked! Featuring this game isn't sending an indirect message that it's what I or anyone here thinks will reflect the quality of FFXIII. No, it's being featured because it features a great-though-unpopular soundtrack by the game's composer: Masashi Hamauzu. People around the 'net still kind of refer to him as an unknown entity among Square Enix Music's prowess (well, formerly among), and Unlimited: SaGa is kind a representation of that trope. Heck, it's probably the biggest representation.

Hamauzu seemed to have a curse looming over him for every soundtrack he was lined up to compose. The unfortunate fact is that the majority of the soundtracks he's composed have been for games that ranged from bad to mediocre. Upon seeing early impressions and numerous reviews, it seems FFXIII is going to be a rather polarizing game for the series' fanbase; perhaps even more than Final Fantasy XII was. But even if you consider that, FFXIII will likely be the best game he's composed the soundtrack for.

(He was also involved in Final Fantasy X's soundtrack as well, but the fact that he was merely "involved" is the reason why that game wasn't mentioned above. There, he and Junya Nakano were only involved as assistance to then-series mainstay composer Nobuo Uematsu.)

Unlimited: SaGa's soundtrack bears many trademarks of Hamauzu's sweeping musical style: gratuitous use of violins (positively gratuitous, mind you), piano, electronic instruments, and a plethora of acoustic material to create an overall feel that's pretty grand. Well, for the first disc, at least. The second disc represents a little of this too, but it's mosly comprised of techno and electronic remixes, with a few jazzy themes thrown in the mix.

Most of it sounds great, but keep in mind that I'll be pulling the samples from the first disc. Sure, it's mostly typical Hamauzu material, but an alarming number of people don't even know what "typical Hamauzu" is, so I felt it best to showcase that here. The tracks are so good that it made this rather difficult to do.

To start things off, this first track here is "The Seven Travelers," which sounds like music that would either go towards a text scroll, menu theme, or character selection -- since this game has seven scenarios; one for each character depicted in the semi-portraits on the cover above (My playtime with the game was very...not extensive. Could you tell?). It's a beautiful track; well representative of Hamauzu composition style:


The second track here is "Battle Theme I," the first of four normal battle themes, if the track naming scheme on the soundtrack isn't deceptive. A pet peeve I have with RPG battle themes is that too many of them aren't good enough for you to hear over and over again throughout the entire (sometimes very lengthy) game. This, however, is not one of them. And there are (again, presumably) four of them! Very impressive:


As previously stated, this game has seven central characters. And wouldn't you know it, every character has a specific theme. This one is "Laura's Theme," who, on the cover above, is the blonde-haired woman on the left. Her specific melody is rather emotional and sad, perhaps (I hope) related to her place in the story:


What you've heard, unless you just skimmed to the bottom, is just a small representation of Unlimited: SaGa's entire soundtrack, which is an incredible soundtrack for a game that's just the opposite. Please give the entire thing a listen. If anything, writing this entry has gotten me in the mood for seeking out more of Hamauzu's music (aside from FFXIII, since I don't like to listen to too much of a soundtrack for a game I intend to play), and if that's happened to you as well, think of it as a positive-though-unintentional after-effect. If you don't like FFXIII, at least you'll like the soundtrack.

When I wrote the entry for Soul Blade's Original Soundtrack last week, I expected better results. By that, I mean that I thought it would be something resembling genuine coherence. It wasn't until after I finished the entry that I realized that Soul Blade's soundtrack isn't as good as I remembered. I halted this before when I planned on writing about Stella Deus' soundtrack, which I realized hadn't aged too well despite having the talents of both Hitoshi Sakimoto and Masaharu Iwata -- both of which were responsible for the superlative soundtrack to the superlative Final Fantasy Tactics.

But I promise that this isn't the case with the Soul Blade's alternate soundtrack: Khan Super Session. I mentioned it last week, but upon listening to it again, I realized that it's aged perfectly fine. It's better than I remember, in fact! Soul Blade, I believe, is the only fighting game to have two disparate soundtracks, and they both mesh (or "meshed") together well within the game's context. It also helps to give the stages a sense of variety and a different ambient feel upon multiple playthroughs (with either the AI or local friends).

And then there are the tracks themselves, which are beautiful compositions. I was pretty bummed when I played Soul Calibur on Dreamcast and discovered that there was no longer a viable alternative to the arcade tracks, because I liked how different they made the game feel. Soul Calibur may have made Soul Blade feel like an amateurish effort in comparison gameplay wise - Blade feels incredibly sluggish these days, despite it being fine for the time - but the lack of that extra musical option made that particular aspect feel like a step back. Not to say the soundtracks to Blade's progeny were lackluster, far from it, in fact. Well, unless you're talking about Soul Calibur III.

The Khan Super Session was composed by five then-current employees at Namco : Masumi Ito, Benten Maru, Yoshiyuki Ito, Aki Hata, and Taku Iwasaki. Namco, fully aware of how good the soundtrack was and how fans of the game liked it, decided to distribute it separately from the Original Soundtrack.

This first song is "The Edge of Soul," a vocal track used for the CG intro specifically made for the console version. It utilizes a nice combination of rock and traditional Asian instruments for its background tune. It's also in English. And it's actually mostly understandable to boot. Imagine the feeling of hearing this in a console video game back in early '97, because for some of us, it was actually pretty mind-blowing. The closing credits theme, "Our Way Home," is also in English, though it veers into Engrish territory pretty often:


This next song is "A Haunting Wind," the theme to Taki's stage. It uses the same combination of instruments "The Edge of Soul" uses, though there aren't any vocals this time around. The rock aspect doesn't fit with the time period Soul Blade exists in (the Renaissance Era), but it's not like the game itself doesn't take numerous liberties with that. And it doesn't matter when the result is so good:


This last song is "A Mediterranean Call," which goes with Sophitia's stage. The ironic aspect of this track is that despite the original arcade track (which is completely different) featured last week for her stage was called "Heavenly Engage," it's this track that sounds much more heavenly:


It was listening to this soundtrack again that made me miss its inclusion in future games in the series, and it made me realize how much it outclasses the arcade soundtrack. I'd like to hope that Namco (or Namco Bandai these days) realizes how much fans of the series like this soundtrack, and liked having the option to choose which soundtrack they wanted to listen to while they played. But I doubt it. Sure, you could play this soundtrack through the current consoles' Custom Soundtrack features, but the effect doesn't come off as similar. A new Soul Calibur game is an inevitability given how SCIV is the second best selling fighter this generation, and they usually have something (or "things") special for each game. Hopefully this will be one of them.

Though I'm not counting on it.

I have a hypothesis.  Something I can't ever test, but is fun to think about.  I like to think that the person who Carly Simon is singing about in "You're So Vain", Alanis Morissette is singing about in "You Oughta Know", and Janet Jackson is singing about in "Son Of A Gun (I Betcha Think This Song Is About You)" is the same person.

I know what you're thinking.  The songs are decades apart, so how could it be the same person?  Well, if it's a time lord...  Seriously, though, it's not impossible if you think about it just a little.  Carly and Alanis both refuse to name who their songs are about, although Janet says it's just about men after her fortune.  Okay, so why sample a mysterious song like You're So Vain if you don't want to appear a little mysterious yourself?

Meanwhile, Alanis has refused to talk about this song at all, despite Full House star Dave Coulier being so vain that he thinks her song is about him.  She has stated in interviews that the song is personal.  It's a similar thing with her song "Hands Clean", which talks about a relationship that both she and an unknown guy have agreed not to talk about.  She's given a few details about it, but once again she has not named the guy.

Carly Simon has, over the years, partially broken the silence about who her song is about.  She's revealed three letters in the man's name (I wonder if I'm allowed to buy a vowel?), and has recently whispered his first name in a re-recording of the song, David.  At one point, it's been speculated that the song's about James Taylor (which means that I've now mentioned that name in two of my three music columns).  But now the strong front runner is a record executive named David Geffen, who used to be her boss at Elektra records, and who she might've been jealous with over the attention he'd been giving Joni Mitchell's career.  This possibility has been denied by Carly and proven wrong, but it seems to make sense as long as you don't take into account the argument she made against it.

First of all, not all songs are what they seem.  I remember one romantic Savage Garden song was revealed by lead singer Darren Hayes to actually be about a break-up (and have since forgotten which song it was, nor can I find the interview he revealed this in... damn, if I had known I needed to reference this stuff in a music column, I would've bookmarked it when I found it out years ago; I'm pretty sure it's I Knew I Loved You, but now I'm not so sure).  Second of all, when she was contacted by Janet to get permission to use samples of You're So Vain, Carly offered to re-record them.  She even stated this in an interview.  "I said I would prefer to re-record everything that might otherwise have been sampled. Why get Elektra involved and potentially hold up the process?"  Did she have another reason why she wanted to avoid Elektra?  Possibly.  But by then, David Geffen was no longer at Elektra, so who knows?

It's possible we'll never know who the song is about, even with Carly's hints, but hey: at least we're getting hints.  We have no such help with Alanis's song.  And although Janet has revealed the song isn't about any one man in particular, I can't help but think that perhaps it just might, and that all three songs could be about the same man.  A man named David.


A very decent cover version of the song

Maybe it's just me, but there seems to be a perception that fighting game music isn't usually up to snuff with the music accompanying many other genres. This could be the opinion of a lot of gamers (and people in general) who grew up listening to atmospheric-laden material that accompanies a lot of fighting games they played when they were younger, like Mortal Kombat and anything else that was a blatantly obvious rip-off of it - some of which came from Midway themselves. That's a shame, and I'd like to help change that opinion.

I believe I was almost one step from saying that no one makes fighting games as good as Japan does, and that's unfortunately true. Within the last few years, western developers have been making games in multiple genres that are just as good, if not better, than what Japan has been producing. ("Western" being a word referring to developers throughout America and Europe for simplicity's sake.) The most popular fighting game from a western developer has been Mortal Kombat, whose quality has greatly varied throughout each iteration. This isn't to say that what Japan produces is always good of course, because that sure isn't the case.

But hey! Music! If there's one thing that you could say with certainty about the Soul Calibur franchise, it's that it has always had some great music. But there was a game in the franchise before Soul Calibur came to be, a game so many tend to forget because of its comparative obscurity to the rest of the games: Soul Blade. Called Soul Edge in Japan (likely because of this moron), this was the game to launch the franchise from Namco in Arcades and PSOne back in 1996/1997. Time hasn't been kind to it, but it's still worth acknowledging because of its place on the stage of history.

Soul Blade actually has three options for music tracks in the games. The first is the usual, and definitely superior, remixed versions of the soundtrack found in the arcade game composed by Takayuki Aihara and Takayuki Ootsura, but the second option consists of tracks specifically composed for the console game. These are known as the Khan Super Session tracks, and they're completely different from the original soundtrack. This entry will focus on the original soundtrack, an entry on the Khan Super Session material will be made at a later date.

This first track is called "Heavenly Engage," the theme to the woman who is on a mission from the gods of Olympus, Sophitia. She's since become the requisite buxom blonde of the franchise, but her stages always have some good music. Her stage music also identifies who she is, given all of the bells and the overall tone of the track. It's rather angelic:


This next one is "Recollect Continent," the theme to Rock's stage. Probably not the most fitting theme for a stage that's almost literally out in the middle of nowhere, but it does the job well enough by merely sounding nice:


This last one is "The Gears of Madness," the theme to Voldo's stage. The theme fits the character very well, a man who's driven insane by the mystical dark sword that's present in every game, aptly named Soul Edge:


The thing about Soul Edge's OST is that the themes tend to fit the characters more than the stages they're present in, which is an interesting way to approach that attachment. The themes themselves never feel off within the context of the game during play, though they will when picturing them and what stages, along with what kind of stages, they're going to. The Khan Super Session tracks take a completely different approach, enough to make the entire soundtrack feel diverse. I'll feature them another day soon. No really, soon.

Folklore is a pretty good action/RPG, which is why I felt it was necessary to review. In that review, I also mentioned how good the soundtrack was. So yeah, this was inevitable.

Folklore's soundtrack is pretty good, but it's also very different from the usual material you would hear from a video game. And that's fitting, because this is a game that takes place in an environment that's different from the average game, even for the genre. For its immersive purposes, Folklore relies heavily on atmosphere, and uses the soundtrack to accompany it. This usually means that the soundtrack for the game is best when listened to after you've played the game for nostalgic purposes. And that's true here as well.

But! There are quite a few tracks here that a perfectly listenable to anyone who hasn't played the game, let alone seen it. This speaks volumes for how diverse all of the music actually is, which is something you would expect from a game whose soundtrack has five different composers. Not to say there's something here for everyone, but anyone who likes some sort of good music will find something they like here.

Oh, and one of the contributors is not Danny Elfman. But you can tell the composers were inspired by his work. Again, this is fitting for the game, which feels like a Tim Burton movie in more an a few ways.

This first track, called "The Mysterious Door," is from the title screen when you first boot the game up. It's one of those pleasant themes that you really wish was longer than it is. Some anime fans may recognize the style of music being utilized here; it's composed by Kenji Kawai of Ghost in the Shell, Vampire Princess Miyu, Gundam 00 and various others. He usually sticks to anime, movies, and J-drama, and he rarely ventures into the video game realm. Enjoy it while he's here:


Oh, but if you're looking for a longer Kawai track, here's "The Beginning of a Journey," which is fittingly the name of the opening theme. It's gloomy, melancholy tune sets the perfect mood for the game. The story you're about to hear is far from a happy tale. But that's not to say the track itself is inherently disturbing. It's actually quite pretty:


Since I'm trying to stick to track from the beginning of the game, the last track I'll feature here is called "The Forgotten Village" by Ayako Saso, which is the theme for the place you'll be hanging around. Said place, Doolin, acts like a hub with access points to various sections of the Netherworld, so yeah, you'll be hearing this track quite a bit. But the magic of it lies in the fact that you'll never get sick of hearing it:


Hearing the music again while writing this feature makes me wish Kawai would stick to video games more often. Then again, it's probably good for everyone if he sticks to what he thinks he does best. Folklore is a pretty different kind of game, and it's not like he's the only composer here who provides a different vibe than their usual, expected one, and the result is a very ambient soundtrack that's fantastic to listen to.

Well, I've decided to start a music column, just to see how long it'll last before I get bored with it and/or run out of material and just go play more video games.  Also, if I think of a better title, I'll just change this one, too.

Regular readers of Adventures of a Canadian Gamer (formerly, Adventures in Canadian Gaming) will know that I work in a video game store.  Well, the store also sells music as well as musical instruments and accessories.  Everyone in town knows us by one name, while officially, we're another name.  It's a long, sordid tale, but suffice to say, name changes outside of blog entries tend not to stick.

Another local business just went through a similar rebranding.  It's the exact same store, but I guess the business got bought by another chain or something.  Now it's known by a new, more generic sounding name, but the old name is going to stick for everyone who has lived here for the past twenty years and are familiar with the business.  No one will call it by its new name unless they've lived here a total of two days, give or take.

I said all that so I could say this: I will always refer to it as Badman.  Go and read the excellent article that Geoff wrote.  Anyway, music:

So at the store I work at, we're stuck with the local radio, one of the EZ Rock stations all day, and I'm getting kind of sick of it.  I can stand repetition as long as it's music I like.  But if I have to listen to John Mayer over and over again every day, I would probably want to kill something.  Oh, they're improving.  Yesterday, I heard Owl City on the local radio for the very first time.  That was a nice surprise.  Also, they finally seem to be willing to admit that the late 90's happened, which they haven't done for about half a decade.  But there are some other things they could do to improve themselves a little more.

Kudos to EZ Rock for playing more than the latest two Celine Dion songs!  Sackcloth and ashes to them for substituting those songs with only three or four others.  She has a large library of songs to choose from, considering the volume of compilation CDs that exist for her.  I would advise them to pick some more.

"Orinoco Flow" by Enya is one of my favourite songs, and it is obviously a favourite at EZ Rock, too.  There are a good amount of others that would fit the "easy listening" format, too, but aren't played.  It would be great for EZ Rock to acknowledge they exist.

I appreciate the "no repeat workday" idea.  We used to listen to an awful station out of Spokane, and they only had a limited playlist of, I swear, twenty songs.  They occasionally played other songs to break things up.  For example, they played "Where'd You Go" by Fort Minor exactly once out of all the times I listened, but "I Gotta Feeling" by the Black Eyed Peas was played at least three times during my workday, and once they even played it four times within that period!  But while I appreciate only being subjected to each Jason Mraz song once a day on EZ Rock, I would appreciate it if a song were not played again for a few days.  They should at least act like they have a large playlist.

I also wouldn't mind it if they play more international music, but that pesky Canadian content law gets in the way of that.  Still, only about 35% of the songs have to be Canadian, so that shouldn't be too much of a problem.  Elton John gets played a lot, and I sometimes hear Savage Garden, but what about someone like Delta Goodrem or Angela Aki?  I guess radio stations only play music that's currently available in the market they're playing to, and I'm pretty sure that Delta and Angela's CDs would require an import.  But that sucks: a whole world of music out there and we're stuck with what sells in Canada.

That reminds me.  Susan Boyle sold very well in Canada and I haven't heard her on the radio.  She would be perfect for the "easy listening" format.

I know that some radio stations have their fans, but I'm not really a fan of a lot of the stuff they play.  If I were in charge of EZ Rock, I would dump a lot of what they currently play, but I know that Sheryl Crow has her fans.  I would add in a bunch of foreign language music (Angela Aki, Maaya Sakamoto, Angelique Kidjo), I would add a lot of the Chipmunks' music since everyone is a closeted Chipmunk fan, I would take anyone who has only one song on the current playlist and add at least seven or eight more songs, I would add the Afro Celt Sound System just because.

But then, I might as well just load all this music onto a memory stick and listen to it on an mp3 player.  Come to think of it, I already have.


*This title is 100% true, and no I'm not going to elaborate unless you're a close friend.  Otherwise, this is between James and I.
**I like listening to music while writing.  As this will be a regular (I hope) music column, I'm going to list some of the songs I listened to in the making of each article.

Masaru "Go" Shiina is an incredibly talented music composer, and has thus far lent his talents to many of Namco's efforts. The unfortunate aspect of that is the number of people who have never heard of him, let alone heard any of his work at all. If you play a lot of video games and haven't heard his stuff, that's not entirely your fault, because Namco doesn't seem to use - or have the desire to use - his talents for too many projects. Or if they do, he's only present for certain snippets. It's mystifying, really.

So yeah, this entry is definitely going to be about Mr. Driller Sound Tracks (which in name sounds awfully Engrishy), but also about some of the best music Shiina has ever composed. It's a shame that Mr. Driller isn't a very prominent franchise, especially outside of Japan. The fact that some of its potential success has been squandered by the parent company recently hasn't helped; Mr. Driller: Drill Spirits for DS had its best mode, Dristone Driller, and a character removed from the American version, while Mr. Driller Online for Xbox Live Arcade had, ironically, a broken and glitch-ridden online mode, no local multiplayer, and fuzzy sprites. And to top it all off, Mr. Driller: Drill Land for Gamecube, heralded by fans as being the best game in the franchise, was never released outside of Japan. Needless to say, the situation hasn't exactly been rosy for Mr. Driller.

(Yes, I'm aware of the, er...Freudian overtones of the character's name. I don't think it's hampered the franchise's chances of success, however. Solid Snake is still popular, right? Don't even mention when the characters start running out of oxygen...)

If you're reading this blog, Namco unfortunately hasn't given you too many opportunities to enjoy the franchise. So I'd like to give you the opportunity to enjoy some of its music. A dilemma I sometimes have when recommending a soundtrack is finding precisely which tracks to use as samples; I had that problem last week with Castlevania Judgment's OST, and I'm having an even bigger problem with it here. Not surprising, given that this soundtrack consists of music from three games: Mr. Driller, Mr. Driller 2, and Mr. Driller G. It also consists of two discs, called Susumu Disc and Anna Disc; they're, of course, named after two of the franchise's central characters: protagonist Susumu Hori (the son of Dig Dug protagonist Taizo Hori), and his German friend/rival Anna Hottenmeyer.

This first track here is from the Anna disc, given the nonsensical name "Fragrant Remains." Shiina is known to compose some rather grand musical tracks, featuring some brilliant orchestral instruments and sounds. It's, in essence, his composition style in one three minute and thirty second package:


This one is the first track on the Anna Disc, known simply as "Go." As you might have surmised from the name, it's pretty energetic. It's a good track to use to help you either become or keep energetic as well. It's also incredibly catchy:


The last one here is "Speed of Light," also from the Anna Disc (noticing a trend here). The interesting aspect of this track is the Latin American musical feel it has overall. Combining that with traditional Japanese musical composition styles leads to some great results, as this track can attest:


Again, it was tough to pick which tracks would be best here, as the soundtrack overall is rife with excellent tracks, and if a soundtrack is able to turn more people on to the franchise (and its addictive qualities), then more power to it. In terms of game releases, Australia's OLFC has rated Mr. Driller: Drill Till You Drop for multiple platforms, though Namco Bandai hasn't officially announced the game yet. Hopefully it'll be good enough to ease the pain of the gimped Mr. Driller Online and the threadbare Mr. Driller W for WiiWare. You can expect an announcement any day now.

When you have a favorite music artist or composer, they'll always inevitably reach the point of stagnation in some point in their life. What's worse is that eventually fans will begin to notice it, and the criticism will begin to affect the person the works originated from in some way. Sometimes, they'll branch out from their usual routine, mostly with mixed results. In this case, it happens to almost all popular music composers in video games. Like Yasunori Mitsuda.

The point of stagnation doesn't mean their particular tracks have become bad, just samey. Anyone who hasn't heard every work, and every kind of work that composer has done, will find themselves enjoying what they hear. Early in the last decade, Mitsuda kind of hit a brick wall, and soon after that he took a small hiatus from working solo on video games after Xenosaga (which also meant he only composed a few tracks for a lot of games here and there). One of the last soundtracks he composed solo was that for Tsugunai: Atonement.

And that's a game you probably haven't heard of, and the game whose soundtrack I'm featuring here today. Tsugunai: Atonement is an RPG for Playstation 2 developed by Cattle Call (who also later made Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits and End of Darkness), and was published by Sony in Japan. Nine months after its original release in February 2001, Atlus released the game in North America. Unfortunately, it wasn't received well at all, though if it was good, it might have joined Jade Cocoon 2 and Shadow Hearts in being great RPGs unfortunately overshadowed by the then-looming behemoth: Final Fantasy X.

But hopefully no one forgot about the soundtrack, which goes b the name An Cinniuint. It might have been considered generic back then, but it's been so long since Mitsuda's done a soundtrack by himself that it stands out as a piece of greatness nowadays. These days, you might say that it reminds you of the good old days. You know, if you remember them.

This first one is the first battle theme, fittingly called "Battle - Level 1." This is one of the first tracks where you can feel the Celtic vibe Mitsuda is known for. It may not be one of the most memorable battle themes he's composed, but it's worth a few listens:


This is definitely a town theme, and it definitely sounds like one; it's known as "Early Afternoon in the Village." When people said this soundtrack was rudimentary and predictable, they weren't kidding! But hey, that doesn't mean it's bad:


The last one here is called "The Devil," and it's as haunting as you could imagine. It's ability to send a chill down your spine is what makes it one of the more captivating tracks on the soundtrack:


Listening to these makes me wish that Mitsuda was still composing the entirety of most soundtracks he's contributed to. He did the entire soundtrack to DS RPG Soma Bringer, though Nintendo of America didn't feel it was worth bringing over despite the praise it received in Japan. He also did the soundtrack for Sands of Destruction, which, wouldn't you believe it, is being released tomorrow in America by Sega. He also contributed to the upcoming Wii RPG Arc Rise Fantasia, coming from Ignition Entertainment later this year. So yeah, he's still around, but in a more subdued position.

P.S. Originally, it wasn't my intention to use "The Devil" as a sample of the soundtrack. I actually wanted to use a more emotionally-driven track known as "Grief." The problem? Well, most of the second disc isn't even on Youtube, which shocked me. It's, I think, proof of how underrated this soundtrack is.