3 out of 5

Label: Fangamer

Produced by: Fangamer.com

I’ve played and enjoyed the Yooka-Laylee games, and share a love with many for the platforming games of yore; it’s an awesome miracle that so much effort can be put into a crowd-sourced / independently produced set of games… even if I found the final products rather indistinct.

The same vibe ultimately carries over to the sequel’s soundtrack, bringing in some major soundtrack composers – David Wise, Grant Kirkhope – and giving us an appreciably lush, full suite of tunes. But it’s unable to overcome the kind of milquetoast tone of the game it’s supporting.

This can be sensed in the theme and Overworld tracks, which reappear with different moods across the 2 LPs worth of music: boppy and laid back, the tunes are not uncatchy, though they’re also not very memorable. As with the games’ general designs, the melodies are a middleground of feelings, cutting a cute, squiggly line through the high-level feeling of themes from other platformers. A struggle starts to emerge on the album’s A-side between this almost elevator-music background nature and the creative impulses of the composers, pushing the borders of some tunes to include some experimental electronic flourishes and more organic instrumentation that steps away from the pleasant jungle bop, only to be rerouted back to bop. This leads to some absolutely puzzlingly named tracks, like Frantic Fountains, which doesn’t sound frantic at all – this is just a name, but is representative of the game / music lack of confidence in forging its own identity.

The B- and C-sides of this thing come to the rescue. It should be stated that the production on Impossible Lair, and the mastering for vinyl, is gorgeous throughout, whether it’s the background music stuff or the more edgy, experimental works found in the middle of the album. We still get some Overworld themes, but the meat of the soundtrack has the bulk of the runtime where our composers inject personality into the music, crafting real senses of fun or danger and settings.

The D-side is a weird mixed bag, with the 5 parts of The Impossible Lair occasionally sounding like moody boss fight music from an entirely different score. It’s hard to assess these, given how much they don’t fit in, though the last couple parts start to blend in the soundtrack’s themes, making me think a smarter ear can probably pick up where that was happening and I just wasn’t hearing it. Still, the swerve of these tracks kind of robs the album of a proper ending.

For the production, and handful of worthwhile tunes, this score is surely worth it. The rest of the music isn’t bad either! It’s fun, but I can’t say I have any tune stuck in my head to hum afterwards.