The score to the PS2 video game
ボクと魔王 (released outside of Japan as Okage: Shadow King) brought together six composers under the umbrella of the ‘Peak A Soul+’ name, to write cues for the game both individually and in various collaborative configurations. The majority of the music takes on an almost carnivalesque mood, with emulated wind instruments and little blats of brass joining programmed percussion and tambourines, with inventive combinations of odd rhythms helping to foster a proggy sense of the musicians’ immersion in their work.
The pieces representing different villages of the game are given little touches of individuation, like the background whir of gears for “Theme of Madril”, and the assorted dungeons and battle themes are given similarly distinct energies to fit with their contexts. For a score with such a large team of composers behind it, the music generally flows together well, with revisited motifs and retained instrumentation helping to make the jumps from one of the song-writers to the next almost indistinguishable.
At two CDs in length, with alternate versions of a number of cues included directly after their original cuts, it does run rather long, but that also offers some insight into the ideas the composers had for how to approach the same material from different angles. While the presentation might have benefited from some ordering adjustments, the actual content is excellent, and much like the game itself, takes some unorthodox approaches to qualities which have become common-place for the genre.
Scrambled Brains 