Tokoi, Ohtani, Nanba and Kobayashi are the main four people involved with the music in this game, all of them having previous work around Sega (Kobayashi did a fair few tracks in the PSO series, while Tokoi, who absolutely loves using real jazz instruments, previously cued up Casinopolis' music in SA1.) They're a very solid music team and I'm willing to say easily that they destroy Senoue's compositions, since his SA2-Shadow work is just way too much electric guitar and little of anything else.
Also, Chun-nan Night (the hub world) is an amazing track by Tokoi. I also love all the extra parts he added to Jungle Joyride Night.
I think it's safe to say that those guys are like some of my new found SEGA composers of the forever. Jun, while he'll always be a legend, just seems to have been on as you said an electric guitar binge. Diversity needs to be present in Sonic OSTs and when it's bogged down with too much of one type it kinda gives an "okay but could be awesome" vibe on the soundtrack as a whole. This reminds me, I should do a top 10 composers in video games list sometime soon.
But seriously, I haven't loved a soundtrack this much since Galaxy & Brawl and if we're talking about SEGA soundtracks, Sonic Rush.
*Goes back to his Savannah Citadel Day humming*
Posted on: January 30, 2009, 11:41:43 PM
You know, I hate when awesome inspiration strikes me and I can't work on it. I had this really great idea of mixing different voice samples from musical legends of New York (Frank Sinatra, The Notorious B.I.G., Nas, and a few more that I need to relocate from my music library) into the main Skyscraper Scamper Day theme with the appropriate amount of record scratching a la Hideki Naganuma and it's been bothering me that I don't know how I'd go about doing something like that.
I [tornado fang]ing hate this, especially since what I have in mind sounds [tornado fang] awesome listening to it in my head.