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beevean · 1 year

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Have another positive ask: your top ten overall Sonic soundtracks? :]

Ah, I had a whole list but then I lost it 😭 let's try again...

10) Sonic 3D Blast (Genesis). My absolute favorite OST on the Genesis, since the game came out so late in the console's lifespan it has some excellent sound quality and complex tracks. Volcano Valley 2 and Boss 1 my absolute beloveds <3

9) Sonic CD (US). I played CD with this OST first so it's almost nostalgic for me. I feel the dreamy, alien quality of the tracks is underrated, and the Bad Future themes are outright nightmarish. Not fun to blast in your car, but certainly atmospheric. Stardust Speedway Good Future is a little gem IMO.

8) Sonic CD (JP). The complete opposite of above :P super fun, avantguarde tracks that fit CD's wackiness. What can I say? It's an iconic OST. I can never decide on my favorite, so for now I'll say Quartz Quadrant and Palmtree Panic Bad Future :P

7) Sonic 2 (Game Gear). Yeah. Hear me out. I love this OST. I am not deterred by the 8-bit quality. There is not a single track from this game that I dislike (but note that I specified the GG version, not the MS version). The boss theme and Scrambled Egg live in my head rent free.

6) Sonic Heroes. It has an unique style that for me sits right between SA1 and 3&K, fitting as the game is pretty much a 3D Classic game. Peppy and fun and sadly overshadowed by its older sibling, Mystic Mansion is one of Hataya's finest works for me.

5) Sonic Mania. I really don't know how to judge OSTs half made of remixes, but not only a good chunk of those remixes elevate the original tracks, but the actually original tracks are fantastic. Tee Lopes is a welcome addition to the sound team <3 I mean. He composed one of my absolute favorite extra level themes, Egg Reverie!

4) Sonic Colors. This OST feels "fresh", for lack of a better word, and I feel that Ohtani and Tokoi together are a great team. I never played Colors myself, but its music just puts a smile on my face <3 Another OST I just cannot pick a favorite from... so get all three acts of Planet Wisp because man is that level just beautiful.

3) Sonic Unleashed. A game about exploring the world cannot not have a rich OST. Again, I am at a loss for words to describe what makes this soundtrack so alluring. I'll just say that Jungle Joyride Night is one of my favorite tracks in the whole series.

2) Sonic Adventure 1. Call me biased :P but this game's OST is phenomenal. Exceptional variety, and some of the best tracks Jun Senoue composed. I even came to appreciate the dated MIDI sounds lmao. And yet, Fumie Kumatani's contribution is not to be ignored, because for some reason, of all the rocky tracks, my favorite one is Tricky Maze.

Sonic '06. Everything that I love about SA1's OST, '06 takes it and elevates. It has better instruments, it has richer compositions, the same amount of variety, and overall the direction feels like the direct evolution, just more... movie-like? Intense? You can tell that this is the first OST with Ohtani as a sound director. I feel so many emotions with this one. Technically my favorite track (medley, actually) is Crisis City, but End of the World is something special for me.

#sonic the hedgehog #sonic 2 8-bit #sonic cd #sonic 3d blast #sonic adventure #sonic heroes #sonic 06 #sonic unleashed #sonic colors #sonic mania #thanks for the question <3

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dj-popcultcha · 4 years

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The Sonic Dreem Teem, Part 4

Fourth on the line, this entry is going to talk about one of my favourite Sega composers, if not my favourite VGM composer period: Fumie Kumatani.

Kumatani joined Sega in 1996. Her very first assignment was in NiGHTS into Dreams, Sonic Team’s most iconic game on the Saturn. She arranged the bitter (content Nightopian) themes for many of the stages, and most memorably composed the wonderfully theme for Elliot’s first stage, Splash Garden. NiGHTS allowed Kumatani to first showcase the surreal, emotional nature of her music, with the bitter arrangements of Frozen Bell and Mystic Forest making use of the fast-paced techno beats and spacey synths she’d later pioneer.

Her second assignment was Sonic Team’s second original Saturn game, Burning Rangers, again for Hataya. Burning Rangers makes sparse use of music in gameplay, so the instances when music does kick in are very memorable. Kumatani mainly took charge of the game’s cutscene themes, using melancholy synths and pianos. When it comes to action, her shining hour was the boss theme for Gravity Zero, Argoyle G, where she further showed her love of techno with fast breakbeats.

The game that really brought Kumatani to the top, and her biggest assignment yet, was Sonic Adventure 1. The newest member of the game’s composing staff, and the only one who had never worked on the Sonic series before, she brought a fresh perspective that was perfect for reinvigorating and restarting Sonic’s musical identity. She got to show off all four of her main influences in music - world music, smooth jazz, energetic house with eclectic samples and beats, and perfected the somber style she honed in Burning Rangers with the hauntingly beautiful themes for Tikal and Gamma. She wrote Amy’s cheeky “My Sweet Passion”, with coquetteish lyrics that made her once comment, “the slightly sexy lyrics have stirred the Americans.” Something she rarely receives credit for is co-producing Speed Highway’s theme with Senoue - in addition to handling the synths and programming, according to him, it was her idea to add the famous “Up and down and all around!” sample.

Kumatani played possibly an even more important role in SA2, as the main composer behind the game’s two new characters, Shadow and Rouge. Rouge’s themes are jazzy, loungey with a simultaneous maturity and mischievousness. With Shadow’s themes, Kumatani got to achieve a career goal by working with club DJ Heigo Tani, producing and arranging her original compositions together. Shadow’s themes are dark, futuristic, and spacey, with icy synths, jungley beats, and deep bass that gives way for angelic currents and vocals. They perfectly convey the tragic emotions of Shadow’s character and story in Sonic Adventure 2, which helped make it one of the most memorable installments in the series.

In between SA1 and 2, Kumatani joined the second series that would make her famous, Phantasy Star. Phantasy Star Online brought the series - and gaming! - into the new millennium, and she composed just under half the soundtrack, including its ending vocal theme, Can still see the light. Boasting dramatic vocals and sweeping orchestrations before switching gears to a pounding techno beat, the song further showed Kumatani’s range as one of Wave Master’s most eclectic and stirring musicians. Kumatani became an integral part of the Sonic Team era of Phantasy Star, composing the ending theme of every game up until 2008′s Phantasy Star Zero in addition to her main composing duties.

PSO was a turning point in her career that helped evolve Kumatani’s sound. In the mid-2000s, she worked on a string of games in close association with Kenichi Tokoi, including Phantasy Star Universe, Sonic Riders 1 and 2, and Sonic and the Secret Rings. The latter games allowed her to not only further showcase her fastbased, trancey house roots, but even infuse some of her experience from PSO - most memorably in Secret Rings with the ending ballad Worth a Chance, and the epic Arabic string-driven Levitated Ruin. Also in 2007, she returned to the series she debuted on by contributing a lush pair of boss themes for NiGHTS: Journey of Dreams.

Although she missed out on Sonic 2006, Kumatani returned to the main series with Sonic Unleashed, where she was mostly in charge of the serene hub world themes and dramatic night time themes. Her rich background in world music was a huge boon for the game’s grand scale, and she also contributed the stellar daytime theme for Skyscraper Scamper, which seamlessly fused jazzy saxes with limitless breakbeats.

Despite her prominent status in two of Sonic Team’s biggest franchise, and her huge contributions to several of the games she’s worked on, Kumatani is probably the most prolific and prominent Sega musician who never worked as a formal sound director on a game.

Kumatani was notably absent from Sonic Generations and Phantasy Star Online 2, along with several other games Sega had released since then. It was later confirmed by Hideki Naganuma, somewhat anticlimactically, that she had left Sega at the same time he did a few years prior, around 2008 after the completion of Unleashed and Phantasy Star Zero. Despite that, she made one last hurrah in Sonic Colours, co-composing the game’s main theme and several cutscene themes with Kenichi Tokoi. Kumatani is extremely reclusive nowadays and has no social media profiles, which make it unclear why she left so abruptly, but comments from other Wave Master musicians on the instances she’s been mentioned indicate they’re generally still in touch with and on good terms with her.

One of the final releases of new music from Kumatani was on the album “Girls Make the World Go Round: Sega Vocal Traxx”, which contains several unreleased songs from an older, unreleased project produced with vocalist marhy. Though apparently recorded circa 2005/2006, they make a very nice sendoff to her career at Sega, especially “Joy”, one of my favourites on the album.

Notable games worked on:

Major composer: Sonic Adventure, Phantasy Star Online, Sonic Adventure 2, Phantasy Star Online Episode II, Phantasy Star Universe, Sonic and the Secret Rings, Sonic Riders: Zero Gravity, Sonic Unleashed

Additional composer: NiGHTS into Dreams..., Burning Rangers, GuruGuru Onsen, Roommania 203, Shinobi, Sonic Heroes (Special Stage: Emerald Challenge), Nightshade, Astro Boy, Sonic Riders, Phantasy Star Zero

Personal thoughts:

In my opinion, one of the most unappreciated and overlooked composers in all of VGM.

Kumatani’s greatest strength is her ability to convey emotions. Almost all of her music feels like the rawest and most open expression of emotion imaginable. Her music makes you feel sadness, wonder, amazement, serenity, anger, and happiness almost effortlessly. Her use of synths and samples, backed by her knowledge of a wide variety of world and underground music, makes her ingenious at combining types of flavours together. I’ll never forget the first time I heard Supporting Me, Rhythm and Balance, Fly in the Freedom, or Gamma’s Theme. They made me hear sounds I never thought were possible or imaginable.

The lyrics she writes for her vocal songs are almost always self-admittedly abstract, but they never cease to make you feel what the character or the singer must be thinking and feeling. From the Dreamcast era interviews we have with her, as well as the diary she maintained on Wave Master’s website, it seems like this abstract, dreamlike way of thinking was simply how Kumatani approached the world and music, and you can really feel it in her approach. I’m saying that a lot, but I guess that’s what it comes down to. Music is sensory, yes, but more than any other Wave Master musician, her work is something that I simply feel.

It’s very sad that she’s no longer with Sega and is pretty much impossible to reach. I wish I could hear or do a new interview or hear what music she would be able to come up with today. With how much of a comeback Sega have made, and how nostalgic their music is, it’s a shame she as a person is so often left out of the narrative surrounding the games that left such a mark on people, when her music was instrumental to that otherworldly feeling that made Sega feel magical. But at least in Sonic for example, her music is never forgotten and is still popular and still gets remixed. She may not be here to get the accolades from it, but even 20 years after SA1 and 2, what she made and left hasn’t been forgotten.

Favourite tracks:

Rhythm and Balance, Fly in the Freedom, Bright Sound, Letz Get The Party Started, Argoyle G, The Amazing Water, Taisetsu na Mono, Dive into Gravity, High and Broken, Joy, Cool Edge (Night), Empire City

Notable quote:

“Favorite sound ... House (recently I like lounge / French / soft rock / Mondo / Bosa), groove that consists only of rhythm and bass, infinite LOOP, sometimes classical piano (because I can play it by myself), sometimes Guitar pop, strings that seem to cry (I write it as I can think of)

I believe that I am happy to work with my favorite music. There has never been a year when I wasn't aware of sound since I was 3 years old. I want to touch music until I die.

Recently, my motto is ennui and coquettish sound. (Because it tends to be that way rather than the motto?) The concept is constantly changing, so I have to update it again. I like making melodies here and there, so I go to the bathroom, sing and go back and hit. Sometimes I utter at my seat, but ... I will obediently accept new things and make music that I feel. Nice to meet you.”

#Fumie Kumatani #Sega #Sonic #Sonic Team #Sega Sound Team #Wave Master #women in music #women in video games #Sonic Adventure #Sonic Adventure 2 #Phantasy Star Online #Shadow the Hedgehog #Rouge the Bat

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