Is the magic returning?

As a Wild Arms fan, the Playstation 2 era has been an extremely trying time. I'm not going to sit here and say the four outings on the system (3, ACF, 4 and 5) were bad musically or game wise, yet there is a part of me that just has to admit Media.Vision has yet to top the original Wild Arms or it's first sequel Wild Arms 2.

While I miss Naruke being at the helm of the series music in a certain sense it doesn't really matter: I found WIld Arms 3 soundtrack extremely bloated as she tried to take her style to the next level given the advancement in technology. Some may knock Naruke's earlier works for being somewhat simple yet this is what I feel made them so accessible. ACF more or less struck in the middle of these two extremes thus gave a mixed result; the new tracks dwarfing most of those with a history. After this, as most know, Naruke's appearances have been few and far between as she fell ill. As for Wild Arms 4 and 5, I can literally take ten discs worth of music and fit those I enjoy on one disc or less. Yes, that is pretty cutthroat...

So, as pessimistic as all this seems I didn't have high hopes for Wild Arms XF at all. I figured it would maintain the series sound and nothing else. Boy was I wrong. Don't get the wrong idea, the music for Wild Arms XF isn't the second coming for the series' music, but I'll be damned if it isn't the best soundtrack the series has seen in a good, long time. The most surprising thing was that this was music for a strategy RPG... something I learned after hearing the soundtrack since I hadn't read up on the game - after Wild Arms 5 I decided not to follow the games themselves anymore.

Anyway, as fanboyish as it may sound if you haven't given WIld Arms music a look recently or it fell out of favor with your tastes as it did mine I'd recommend giving the Wild Arms XF soundtrack a shot.

The appeal of never ending.

I can be an indecisive dude sometimes. I can't tell you how many times I've put on an album and then, mid-song, have had the urge to listen to another song or skip around or put on an entirely new disc. It's not because I am not enjoying what I'm hearing; I just want to hear more. I always want to hear more. I wish I had several different sets of ears and just as many brains so I could listen to a bunch of stuff at the same time and take it all in simultaneously. That set-up would suit me better than these clunky ol' pierced musician ears and the tiny little dusty clump of gray matter I have in my thick skull.

There is one type of album that I do not have the urge to skip around, and that is the type of CD where tracks bleed and blend into one another, those listening journeys where scenes and sounds merge into one long experience that can only be summed up as such. You hop aboard at 0:00:01 and hang on for a non-stop ride through the disc, not knowing where one track ends and the next begins. Those albums are truly a gift, and I have a deep respect for those types of discs.

VGM-wise, think of the Silent Hill OST. For 36 tracks, this disc is a living, breathing, angry ambient beast that deserves a full, complete listen. You can't put the disc on and hop around back and forth from "Claw Finger" to "Moonchild" to "Children Kill" and be like, "Yeah, that has some good tunes". No, no, no, dammit! See, Hiroki Kikuta had it all down proper when he arranged Secret of Mana+. That album is one track that's upwards of 50 minutes long because that's how he wanted the disc to be. It would lose some of its effectiveness and impact if it was broken down into a bunch of tracks that you could simply skip through. SOM+ is an excellent disc that can only be taken in as it was meant to be taken in - one, big, deep listen that identifies the album as an album, not a collection of songs. You could ask me when song A turns into song B into song C on that disc, and I would have no friggin' idea. I don't care to; I just take it all in and I don't even touch the volume, let alone any other button, while I listen. When the disc stops spinning and the little mechanical arms and lenses and whatever the hell else in that radio makes my CDs stop moving, that's when I stop listening. It's not just a CD or a VGM arrange album - it's an experience.

Lately, I've been listening to some DJ mix albums that have that same type of appeal; one song becomes another becomes another becomes another until the disc ends and I'm just sitting there thinking, what the hell just happened? Lately, I can't sit there and enjoy a full song. I skip. I'll go to the next song after the loop. I'll get bored. But, I'll be damned; if I put on one of Dave Seaman's new Therapy Sessions discs or Nick Warren's GH #024 or Adam Freeland's essential mix, I will listen to the whole album and I will not have an urge to stop for any reason. The exact opposite will happen - I will stop doing other things so I can continue to listen. I will pull into my driveway and will turn the car off and will sit in that driver's seat until the album stops. The appeal of having an album mixed together as one long track is huge, and as such I can respect it more than a disc that just has a bunch of tracks in sequence. Instead of short, little rides, these albums are one huge trip. No stops. No layovers. No skipping around.

Never, ever trust popular opinion, seriously.

In my time as a fan of video game music, I have to say that one of the most universally maligned soundtracks I've ever come across is the one belonging to Marvel vs Capcom 2. I mean, the fact that the soundtrack is frequently modded by its players should say enough by itself, nevermind the fact that people put stuff like The Sound Of Music in there.

Either way, MvC2 is one of my favorite Capcom soundtracks, but everyone I run into says it just doesn't "fit the feel of the game". For now, I'll choose to ignore the fact that most people who say that don't even know how to play the game, but I also have to mention that they always go and cite the Marvel vs Capcom soundtrack in contrast as being much better. Now that I've actually played that god-forsaken game (I don't even want to HEAR Wolverine's infinite ever again), my only reaction is...

"People pass up MvC2's music for this?"

I have no clue what it is. Maybe people get way too hung up on MvC2's admittedly annoying character select music. Maybe people are just too attuned to melody-driven music to give anything else a shot. Whatever it is, I don't get it.