Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: soundtrack album (w/music info), iTunes/Apple Music, extracted audio
Info
Returning composer Kanako Kakino took over as sound director for the sequel (the sound director for the first game was never explicitly listed but it was probably Eriko Imura). The areas in Klonoa 1 were generally themed after natural elements and had music to match: the forest village has a bunch of percussion in it, the sun shrine has sitar because that’s the kind of instrumentation you use to invoke sunny places like the desert, etc. However, Klonoa 2’s areas are themed after feelings, and therefore ended up a bit more varied in their aesthetic design and musical expression. So you’ve got the joy kingdom, which is an amusement park with some orchestral circus-y and haunted house-y music, and the discord kingdom, which is a city at war with itself with jazz and prog music, stuff like that. There’s less of a unifying sound universe this time around and it sounds more obviously like the work of several composers, which I don’t mean with a negative connotation.
Half of the composers from the first game returned, and four new Namco sound staff joined in on the fun for a mere eight composers this time around (plus an external arranger, Kei Kusama, doing a few tracks for some reason). While I really miss the presence of Junko Ozawa and her odd time and minimalist shenanigans and Tetsukazu Nakanishi and his synths and beats, Asuka Sakai, Yuji Masubuchi, and Go Shiina all swooped in to drop some of my all-time favorite tracks by them. Also Hiromi Shibano wrote more than two tracks this time, love her she’s great. I’ve never really been sure whether I like 1 or 2 more and I’m still not even after these latest relistens; 1 I feel is more consistently good but 2 has more moments that make me go “whoa nelly.”
Unlike the first game, the original CD soundtrack release for this game had all the stage theme variations split into separate tracks, and so the digital release is actually identical.
Recommended tracks:
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“MAD BISCARSH” (Yuji Masubuchi) is some Zappa-esque prog nonsense
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“MOONLIGHT MUSEUM Ver.2” (Hiromi Shibano) is a pretty, minimalist piece with really weird sound design
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“LIGHTNING BUG” (Go Shiina) feels like it invented Chimeratio music
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“ARK Ver.2” (Asuka Sakai) is an intense remix of an earlier stage theme, adding harsh piano, percussion, synth sounds to a pretty, fusiony piece
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“HYUPONIA / RUIN OF SADNESS” (Eriko Imura) has a bunch of broken interjections of earlier songs from the series that finally make sense now that I’ve played the game; the final world is really subtly bold in what it symbolizes
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“MIRAGE” (Go Shiina) mixes Shiina orchestra/electronic music with Klonoa instrumentation and odd time
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