5 out of 5

Produced by: ?

Label: Sony 

This is a stunning accomplishment.  As a score; as a standalone experience; as a followup to the first game’s soundtrack; as a companion to ‘the red soundtrack‘ from the same game, one each representative of the general good / evil morality alignment of the inFamous series.  Jim Dooley and J.D. Mayer come over from the previous score, Mayer (I believe) again leading things, recruiting Brain and Galactic to fill in the juxtaposing musical elements to Jim and J.D.s more orchestral stuff – a position held by Amon Tobin on inFamous 1.  What’s notable about that is how this approach retained and grew upon the seemingly Tobin-guided concepts lain down: the earthiness of Amon’s approach is absolutely maintained through (what at least sounds like) live instrumentation and a fairly stripped down style that makes the addition of strings and occasional horns truly effective; more importantly, were not aping Tobin’s particular jungle rumba: some of the percussive aspects are here, but Brain and Galactic come at this from much more of a jazzy, funky angle, which nicely underlines the game’s shift in characterization of lead Cole from rabble rouser rebel to something more varied, more potentially chaotic.  The inFamous games themselves have stood out in the way that they don’t completely pat you on the back for being a super-powered badass; good or evil, there’s a sense of tragedy.  The cityscapes are destroyed; the ‘conduits’ are fearsome.  Tobin nailed the beat-the-pavement, roaming vibe of the first game, but it didn’t sync up 100% with Mayer’s / Dooley’s cinematic stuff.  On the blue soundtrack, for various reasons we could speculate, that discrepancy is gone.  Not only does the whole score ‘get’ the game’s moodiness, all of the tracks support the weird blend of hope and somberness that pervades up through the ‘good’ ending of the game, capped here on the score by an incredibly fitting band: Black Heart Procession.

Interestingly, the score almost seems dull when listened to back to back with inFamous 1.  It’s hard not to get distracted by Tobin’s energetic efforts, and wonder where those are on inFamous 2.  But as you go deeper into the blue experience, the emotionality of these tracks is stunning, and once you’ve given yourself over to that, the wonder is about how you could’ve ever been bored by its surging flow of shuffling beats and screeching horns and testy strings.  Amazing stuff.