If you’re not feeling this OST at any given point, it’s likely that it’ll come around in a matter of seconds. Here in Michigan, we have a saying, “If you don’t like the weather, just wait five minutes,” and it can definitely be applied here. Similarly, a crunchy guitar can get swapped out for a pounding brass section at the drop of a beat. Sawano is quick to weasel a moving, traditional melody on top of a bed of bit-crushed beats in a way that displays everything right about modern music. While the electronica elements may turn some listeners off at first blush, I would encourage them to give this some serious play time before writing it off. Other than providing an engaging listening experience, I imagine this will work wonderfully with the long run-time of the game itself. Clever uses of caesuras, beat dropping, and electronic breakdowns are used to construct individual movements within songs. While some phrases are called back throughout the discs, they’re framed and presented so uniquely that you might not even notice. Even with most tracks clocking in at over five minutes, there are barely any repeated parts and even less filler. The real shocker for me was that nearly this entire album is thoroughly composed. Vocal parts cover various aboriginal styles, rap, vocoder-driven pop, and even Americana there really doesn’t seem to be anywhere this OST won’t go. The juxtaposition of these with Sawano’s style of electronica is so effective that some tracks achieve a palpable other-wordly feel. Alongside all the digital sounds, Sawano also makes good use of traditional instruments from all over the world, featuring koto, shamisen, shakuhachi, guitars, brass, strings, bongos, congas, and even a didgeridoo. While Sawano does lean heavily on electronic instruments, with nearly every song featuring digital drums and synth arpeggios, he’s careful to vary them greatly from track-to-track, and he’s not afraid to forgo them entirely when appropriate. I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say this is the most dynamic OST I’ve ever heard. At a point in time where composers like Revo are synthesizing decades of video game music into outstanding albums, Sawano has stitched together radical new ideas with a unique style that defies definition.
The result is a wealth of music that oozes ungovernable creativity. It’s one thing to make four discs of great music, but it’s another thing entirely to ignore traditional expectations of structure, instrumentation, and genres. With the Xenoblade Chronicles X OST being my only notable exposure to his work, my impression of Hiroyuki Sawano is that he’s a madman. 08 – In the forest (no vocal effects ver.)