[Music] Worth Mentioning - Nov. 22nd, 2011
Tuesday! The big day, when all the new stuff hits – except for those extra-special titles that beg to be different. Last Tuesday was Assassin's Creed: Revelations, Jurassic Park: The Game, Saint's Row: The Third, Colon: The Oscopy and The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword on Friday. That's like four new albums from bands you love, just waiting to be heard! Also... some ABBA. For the dancing queen in all of us. Come on over to the thread and check it out.
It's Tuesday again! New release day! What do we have on the soundtrack shelf for this last week?
Saint's Row: The Third
has two kinds of music to talk about – the original stuff by prolific live musician Malcolm Kirby Jr. and the 150+ radio tracks available across eight radio stations in the game. The playlist for each station has some pretty excellent selections in each category, side by side with some pretty terrible ones – pick a genre, and on the mix CD that they call a radio station there will be at least one artist who you hate. Still, 90% of it is fun stuff, and it fits the mood of the game well, with most of the musical choices portraying a sort of goofy bad-assery. I especially dig the Adult Swim station with Unknown Hinson, Danger Doom and Dethklok all in attendance. You can check out the complete radio tracklisting at the Wiki.
Actual gameplay footage.
Malcolm Kirby Jr. has put together the original score. This guy has played and recorded with a lot of talented artists like the Campbell Brothers, John Medeski and Terrence Howard. He did the film score for a few terrible movies - "Cop Out" and "The Love Guru", as well as the TV show Pimp My Ride, and maybe that's a pretty good resume for the music-maker behind a Saint's Row title. Kirby Jr.'s production style is mired in the nineties, with a lot of West Coast rap, grunge and club influence in the beats and in the overall tone. Even his ambient stuff will remind you of things you've heard before. In the end, blending elements of multiple genres together has resulted in something entirely tolerable, even effective. You're not going to hate it, and there's plenty of hooks to latch your groove onto. It's also kindof forgettable. His original soundtrack is available for sale at Amazon, and other digital distribution sites.
Who's playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword? The music of the Zelda series has consistently been catchy and clever, even when it was bleak and subdued – I'm looking at you, Twilight Princess. I've been listening to Skyward Sword tracks all weekend, and Nintendo has finally moved away from the electronic stylings of the N64. It's a good move. Full orchestration of some old themes and plenty of new ones is a welcome, necessary style change to the Zelda franchise. I'm a guy who loves synthesized sound, and yet after listening to the Skyward Sword soundtrack for a few days, I hope they never go back.
Jurassic Park: The Game has pretty lackluster music when it isn't dragging John Williams' epic score out of the mausoleum to shuffle around on display for us. There's some fun to be had here if you're a fan of Isla Nublar, but the instrumentation – terrible synthesizers – will grate on the sensitive ear. They would have been better off just using the original film tunage.
Assassin's Creed: Revelations! The return of Jesper Kyd, composer behind the Hitman series and each Assassin's Creed title. I really like his style, Kyd uses a lot of organic and electronic sounds together in his work, and it's a very cutting-edge style. It's really groovy when you're running around some Rennaisance city and the background tune is using classic instrumentation and chord progression to do modern things. Jesper's music does the difficult – it succesfully captures the conflicting moods of a person in the present who is living a life in the past. Technology and history, blended together and molded into music! The soundtrack is available on Amazon.
Rhythm Releases
ABBA: You Can Dance! You heard me, an ABBA specific dancing title is sitting on store shelves for the price of $40. I have to wonder who the market is for this stuff. Some of the dance games that we've seen in the last few months are such an obvious cash-grab - they take an established game engine, slap some new tunes in it and change up the performing artist, and I guess somewhere out there is a Wii owner who just has to bring home the newest ABBA title? I blame hipsters. This week they get 26 tracks of un-ironically terrible music to ironically enjoy, and I hope they choke on it.
My only friend.
Happy Thanksgiving, Americans! I cut it short this week because I have pies to bake (I got my apron ready and everything) but I'll be back next week, when the gushing onslaught of awesome games finally slows to a trickle, and we get a chance to talk about some of the other awesome video-game related albums floating around. Looking for something new to listen to, some music that scratches your digital itch without being mindless background ambience? I might have just the thing. Stay tuned!
It's Tuesday again! New release day! What do we have on the soundtrack shelf for this last week?
Saint's Row: The Third
has two kinds of music to talk about – the original stuff by prolific live musician Malcolm Kirby Jr. and the 150+ radio tracks available across eight radio stations in the game. The playlist for each station has some pretty excellent selections in each category, side by side with some pretty terrible ones – pick a genre, and on the mix CD that they call a radio station there will be at least one artist who you hate. Still, 90% of it is fun stuff, and it fits the mood of the game well, with most of the musical choices portraying a sort of goofy bad-assery. I especially dig the Adult Swim station with Unknown Hinson, Danger Doom and Dethklok all in attendance. You can check out the complete radio tracklisting at the Wiki.
Actual gameplay footage.
Malcolm Kirby Jr. has put together the original score. This guy has played and recorded with a lot of talented artists like the Campbell Brothers, John Medeski and Terrence Howard. He did the film score for a few terrible movies - "Cop Out" and "The Love Guru", as well as the TV show Pimp My Ride, and maybe that's a pretty good resume for the music-maker behind a Saint's Row title. Kirby Jr.'s production style is mired in the nineties, with a lot of West Coast rap, grunge and club influence in the beats and in the overall tone. Even his ambient stuff will remind you of things you've heard before. In the end, blending elements of multiple genres together has resulted in something entirely tolerable, even effective. You're not going to hate it, and there's plenty of hooks to latch your groove onto. It's also kindof forgettable. His original soundtrack is available for sale at Amazon, and other digital distribution sites.
Who's playing The Legend of Zelda: Skyward Sword? The music of the Zelda series has consistently been catchy and clever, even when it was bleak and subdued – I'm looking at you, Twilight Princess. I've been listening to Skyward Sword tracks all weekend, and Nintendo has finally moved away from the electronic stylings of the N64. It's a good move. Full orchestration of some old themes and plenty of new ones is a welcome, necessary style change to the Zelda franchise. I'm a guy who loves synthesized sound, and yet after listening to the Skyward Sword soundtrack for a few days, I hope they never go back.
Jurassic Park: The Game has pretty lackluster music when it isn't dragging John Williams' epic score out of the mausoleum to shuffle around on display for us. There's some fun to be had here if you're a fan of Isla Nublar, but the instrumentation – terrible synthesizers – will grate on the sensitive ear. They would have been better off just using the original film tunage.
Assassin's Creed: Revelations! The return of Jesper Kyd, composer behind the Hitman series and each Assassin's Creed title. I really like his style, Kyd uses a lot of organic and electronic sounds together in his work, and it's a very cutting-edge style. It's really groovy when you're running around some Rennaisance city and the background tune is using classic instrumentation and chord progression to do modern things. Jesper's music does the difficult – it succesfully captures the conflicting moods of a person in the present who is living a life in the past. Technology and history, blended together and molded into music! The soundtrack is available on Amazon.
Rhythm Releases
ABBA: You Can Dance! You heard me, an ABBA specific dancing title is sitting on store shelves for the price of $40. I have to wonder who the market is for this stuff. Some of the dance games that we've seen in the last few months are such an obvious cash-grab - they take an established game engine, slap some new tunes in it and change up the performing artist, and I guess somewhere out there is a Wii owner who just has to bring home the newest ABBA title? I blame hipsters. This week they get 26 tracks of un-ironically terrible music to ironically enjoy, and I hope they choke on it.
My only friend.
Happy Thanksgiving, Americans! I cut it short this week because I have pies to bake (I got my apron ready and everything) but I'll be back next week, when the gushing onslaught of awesome games finally slows to a trickle, and we get a chance to talk about some of the other awesome video-game related albums floating around. Looking for something new to listen to, some music that scratches your digital itch without being mindless background ambience? I might have just the thing. Stay tuned!
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