Alterna Citizen Program M-00: Init (System Noise)

Game info: Wikipedia
Listening: DLC player (requires game), YouTube

Credits

BGM: Katsuro Tajima
Sound Effect: Yasumasa Yamada

Sound Director, Main Composer: Katsuro Tajima (BNSI)
Composer: Yoshihito Yano (BNSI), Kanaya Ohki (BNSI), Mei Osawa (BNSI), Nobuyoshi Kobayashi (BNSI), Kayoko Naoe, Hitomi Koto, Takeshi Watanabe, Chamy Ishi (COLIBRI,Inc.), Satoshi Okubo (COLIBRI,Inc.)
Acoustic Engineer: Hitoshi Osako, Shigeki Kashii

Full performance credits: VGMdb

Info

Here’s the dark, gritty PAC-MAN Metroidvania that I only learned existed a couple of days before it came out. You control some nameless sword-wielding fella and are followed around by a PAC-MAN robot that you can fuse with, and you have to escape a hostile maze with the power of violence, something like that? I liked the song that was used in the trailer (“Sag Das Doch Mal”), and then it turned out that among the ten composers were cool dudes I like CHAMY.Ishi and Satoshi Okubo, so it went into the music queue immediately.

The lead composer on Shadow Labyrinth was Katsuro Tajima, who started working for Namco in the mid- or late ’80s, making him one of the people with the longest tenure as a composer at a single company (counting restructures/mergers) in all of VGM^[1]. I’ve heard a few soundtracks by Tajima but I’m not overly familiar with him; my impression is that he’s mainly known for orchestral and classical guitar music, though he’s also done synthier music for Klonoa 2 and spooky music for Splatterhouse. These are all pretty good references, since Shadow Labyrinth is mostly a dark, synthy soundtrack, with a decent amount of orchestra and some occasional acoustic guitar.

The soundtrack is generally in a pretty standard sci-fi electronic orchestral style, sometimes more electronic and sometimes more orchestral, with a lot of nice sounds and occasionally wacky electronic production that makes you go “wtf.” That last one pairs very well with the occasionally wacky proggy composition that makes you go “wtf.” There’s a lot of “wtf” in the soundtrack, is what I’m saying, and that’s one of the best things music can make me feel, so consider that a ringing endorsement.

Aside from the instrumentation I’ve mentioned already, there’s also a fair amount of electric guitar, generally in the more actiony tracks of course, as well as some choir here and there for obvious reasons. There are also several outlier tracks to broaden out the moods: some less oppressive electronic music, some emotional solo piano, a jazz version of the title screen theme for some reason, etc. Those latter tracks didn’t really make me go “wtf,” so I liked them less, but it’s good to have them to round out the soundtrack. I did also catch like two brief musical references to old Namco arcade games slipped in there; the game is officially part of Bandai Namco’s unified giga-timeline so that makes sense.

Joining Tajima on this one were four other composers from Bandai Namco, three of whom contributed to Katamari Damacy Rolling LIVE, three unaffiliated outsourcers I’m almost completely unfamiliar with, and then CHAMY and Okubo from COLIBRI as previously mentioned. There are a couple of tracks I might guess are Tajima’s based on orchestra/guitar or CHAMY based on some compositional quirks, but I don’t know enough about any of the other folks to attribute the vast majority of the soundtrack to anyone.

Regrettably, the only way to “own” this soundtrack currently is as DLC that adds a music player and artbook to the game; there’s no way to export the music from the music player and it doesn’t list any composers along with the tracks. Garbage! I’m not familiar enough with Bandai Namco to know if they’ve ever done this before for a game they’ve developed, so I don’t know what the chances are of them doing a standalone digital release later.

Recommended tracks:

• “Sag Das Doch Mal” was the most CHAMY-esque track to me, due to the tonal movement in the first section starting at 0:11

• “Grüner Bald” is one of the game’s more ambient tracks, with a bit of a sinister chillout vibe to it

• “Popping Chicken Dance” is some Yoshimi Kudo-ass prog

• “The Beast And The Idiot” is some Minako Hamano-ass Metroid music

• “The Black Tower” has a bunch of nice sounds and an extra beat right before it loops

• “IDK” is more goofy prog bullshit, this one I gotta post because of the random Xevious in-game music quotation at 0:25