To this day Hiroki Kikuta’s soundtrack for the Super Nintendo action adventure title Secret of Mana scores on more than just nostaligia, but it has been a bumpy road for the composer. The epic sequel to Secret of Mana was famously denied an English-language localization, as was the composer’s first project for the Playstation. His massively multiplayer online project for Enix called Chou Bukyo Taisen geared toward the East Asian market, was canceled by the international co-developers during beta-testing. Following these setbacks, Kikuta has become increasingly tenacious in his desire to maintain creative control over the music he creates. The result is a fledgling publishing company - Norstrilia - named after the only novel published by science fiction writer Paul Linebarger under the pseudonym Cordwainer Smith. In what appears to be an understated homage to the digitized keyboard culture of today, Kikuta’s latest album published under the label is entitled Alphabet Planet.

Not everyone will warm up to the sometimes saccharine sensibilities of Alphabet Planet. The cover art displays candy-colored donuts, while in the album’s liner notes, the composer likens the selection of songs to a musical box of assorted chocolates. Like a variety of scrumptious morsels, each with their own detectible style, the album is constructed bearing in mind that all us have our own intrinsic listening sensibilities. The 36 tracks are styled after the 26 letters of the alphabet, the nine digits, and zero: a veritable keypad of musical notes. Added to the simplicity of the approach is an unambitious palette of synthesized sounds and guitar samples, most of which could be emulated on technologically modest game consoles like today’s candy box-sized Nintendo DS. These ingredients all add up to a collection of simple and vibrant strokes from one of the most unique voices in game music. The limited edition collection is an underdog approach for once executed by necessity instead of design. Unattached to an official corporate sponsor, the album is a modest package for some of this year’s most memorable sounds in game music.

Alphabet Planet has all the makings of a strong videogame score. The rocking introductory track, “Vivid,” could carry any action adventure game with its wailing trumpet and electronic beats rising out of the silence like light emerging from the void. One gets the sense that looking back in time, had the song been attached to a popular Super Nintendo title, it may well have become legendary. The low key set by “6 Pence and a Moon” recalls character select and menu screens, while “4 degrees” evokes the trembling icicles and frosty gusts of a sidescrolling ice stage. “2nd Variety,” with its resonant horn track rising from the silence like the sun after a lunar eclipse, calls to mind a title screen from the heyday of 2D Squaresoft role-playing games. And as for the emotionally ambiguous, fast paced action themes that made the Mana series a lastingly memorable experience, “Rossum’s Universal Robots” presents a mechanical cold shell to hide its emotionally robust core. For those whose longing to revisit the aural experience that breathed life into Flammie the Dragon and the hopping and biting rabites, a brief shot at the tempestuous “Zeal” may well bring back memories, and even foster a few more.

When videogames wrestle with the most bloated of Hollywood budgets, the surface features of an album created in the image of yesteryear’s chiptunes may appear an exercise in archaicism. Those looking for a return to Soukaigi’s bravura orchestration or Koudelka’s choral selections might feel off-put to find themselves returning back to the basics. But if even an algorithm can make a fifty piece orchestra sound impressive, turning so-called bleeps and bloops into a listening experience might serve as a sort of litmus test for vgm. Few artists can take the ABC’s of game music and make them sound enigmatically both alien and familiar. An elementary approach to the genre, the palette of Alphabet Planet is simple enough to be summed up in a single word. Sweet.

Popularity: 8% [?]