Right now I’m at a hotel where the internet’s been out since I got here on Sunday and so I’ve had to use extremely slow hotspot speeds for three days, so you know what that means: time to repost five songs from games released this year that I feel like reposting for some reason! This batch’s unofficial official partial theme is wind instruments, with four tracks featuring them in some way I enjoy (the fifth is a chiptune).
FAIRY TAIL 2 – “Universe One”
Composed by Saki Shimura
It took twelve games through my binge listening of Takashi Yoshida’s works for KOEI TECMO before running across a composer there who seems cool that I wasn’t already familiar with, but it finally happened in this game just released a couple of weeks ago: a brand new hire, Saki Shimura! In several tracks in this game she displayed a mix of folk instrumentation crossed with interesting sound design and occasionally weird writing, with this track being the most darkly electronic and ambient of the bunch. This game’s soundtrack overall has a Celtic music bent to it across all the composers, so I’m interested in finding out if she writes stuff like this all the time (being a jazz flutist) or if this was a specific style she deployed for this game only.
The Legend of Zelda: Echoes of Wisdom – “Eastern Temple” (unofficial title)
Music: Masato Ohashi, Manaka Kataoka, Chisaki Hosaka, Reika Nakai, Yuri Goto, Ryotaro Yagi, Azusa Kato
Right out of the gate smashing me in the face with these big jazz chromatic planing stacked piano and wind chords, instantly iconic intro. Also the beep boopy synth is just randomly going ham in the background throughout. Also also what’s even going on with the phrasing at 1:12??? Nintendo you gotta stop this.
Kunitsu-Gami: Path of the Goddess – “Plague”
Composed by Chikara Aoshima
WARNING! A HUGE BATTLESHIP -PROGRESSIVE JAZZ- IS APPROACHING FAST
Shiren the Wanderer: The Mystery Dungeon of Serpentcoil Island – “Mount Jingara Descending”
Composed and arranged by Keisuke Ito
Here’s list-of-the-year mainstay Keisuke Ito back again with his fourth appearance (counting a bonus cheat pick). I’ll stop posting him when he stops writing sick music every time he opens up his DAW! This is the most winds-y track of the set, with both prominent melodic and sectional writing, but how about those pairs of chords that end all of the phrases in the 0:02-0:42 section? They stop me dead in my tracks every time.
UFO 50 – “Campanella 2 – Vaalpolis”
Composed by Eirik Suhrke
A beautifully mystic, subtly polymetric piece with an amazing-sounding scratchy reversed bell tone in the background, love how that’s programmed
And now for the traditional cheat section, finally being used again in the specific purpose I initially envisioned: to post one track from the prior year that I didn’t actually get to listen to until this year. I was actually really posted to break the “rule” (it’s not a rule) and post another track from 2019, “The Decision -Chaos-” from Shinsekai: Into the Depths, but I’ve already posted something by Chikara Aoshima in the main list, so we’ll avoid double dipping.
Humanity – “LEAP”
Composed by JEMAPUR
This is the modern production Pikmin 2 caves theme I never knew I needed until right now
Of course, we can’t leave without the bonus tracks:
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Another Code: Recollection – “ANOTHER” // unknown
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BREAK MY CASE – “The Catalyst” // Sondai Nishijima
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Gakuen IDOLM@STER – “Koukei” // Hakushi Hasegawa & Arthur Verocai
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Nintendo World Championships: NES Edition – “Player Icons / Pin Collection” // Masaru Tajima
And here’s some blog-exclusive bonus jazz fusion by Shoya Kitagawa of DEZOLVE that I haven’t posted about yet, because I only listened to it for the first time last night and there’s no soundtrack release yet (and probably won’t be for a good while):
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