Game info: website
Listening: YouTube (single video)
Credits
Sound Director/Sound Designer/Composer: Hirokazu Koshio
Composer: Norio Nakagata, Nobuyuki Shioda, Yukiharu Urita, Akari Kaida
Sound: bransic LLC.
Composer: Izumi Mori
Info
I just found out that syn Sophia, developer of the Style Savvy series of fashion simulator games, released a new fashion simulator that’s not technically a Style Savvy game! That series has some cool music, generally very cute electronic poppy/jazzy tunes, which probably isn’t a super surprising musical direction. That continues in Fashion Dreamers with a fresh batch of composers who haven’t worked on any of the Style Savvy games:
- Hirokazu Koshio: freelance composer who used to work at Taito. I mainly know him for his electronic shmup tunes, but he’s also responsible for some of the most bizarre (and so coolest) rhythm game music ever produced, stuff for the Groove Coaster series under the name E.G.G.
- Norio Nakagata: used to work at Namco in the ’80s, doing some pretty impressive arcade music for the time, before stopping writing VGM and being a game director for like 20 years. He came back in the 2010s and has dropped some really cool prog that I like a lot, both for video games and original albums.
- Nobuyuki Shioda: formerly worked for the developer KID in the ’90s, does a lot of modern chiptune work. The only game of his I’m familiar with that he did more than just like a guest track for is Recca for the NES, a legendary chiptune rave soundtrack.
- Yukiharu Urita: composer formerly at MICROCABIN and Taito. I haven’t heard anything else by him.
- Akari Kaida: composer at music production company ATTIC, formerly at Capcom. If you know her, it’s probably from Rockman & Forte, Breath of Fire III, or the Mega Man Battle Network series. Her music is very often jazz or jazz-pop in a way that’s a clear fit with this game, and indeed she’s written music pretty similar to this soundtrack before.
- Izumi Mori: composer for the music production company bransic, mainly doing vocal composition/arrangement. Apparently does a whole bunch of PreCure songs??? I’ve never heard of her before now.
So a pretty random bunch of mostly freelance composers! Though some of these folks have worked together previously on arrange albums and original albums and stuff, so there are some personal connections there. The soundtrack mostly doesn’t sound like the work of six different people with very different backgrounds and styles, so they all got the assignment for what “fashion game music” is supposed to sound like I guess: lots of upbeat synth/keyboard melodies mixed with bright, crystalline synths and chill or gently energetic electronic styles. Very good for teleporting you directly into the happy zone. There’s also a number of “Room” tracks in varying random styles unlike anything else in the soundtrack, which I assume are for some kind of showroom theme customization thing.
Recommended tracks:
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“Cocoon HOPE 1” (Urita) has a pretty nice tapestry of sounds
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“Cocoon ACT 2” (Shioda) drops some sick chord changes at 1:48
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“Cocoon LOVE 2” (Kaida) has a nice bit where most of the layers drop out at 2:05 except a bunch of syncopated boops and beeps
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“Cocoon Test B” is one of the most ambient tracks in the game, sounds like setup menu music or something like that (which based on the title, it might be?)
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“Bizarre Room” has by far the hardest edge of all the electronica, I’d guess this one is by Koshio
(Track titles are unofficial. Specific attribution is available for some tracks because their filenames include the artist’s last name.)
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