5 out of 5

Label: Sumthing Else

Producer: Jonathan Mayer

Infamous 2, thus far, has been the only game whose soundtrack caught my attention while playing.  In what seems like a gimmicky move, the score was split into two albums, representing the moral paths the game can take – a blue soundtrack for the good path, and a red soundtrack for the evil path.  I would’ve liked both, but, natch, the red version was only available with the special edition of the game, so I settled for the blue version.  And, upon discovering that Amon Tobin had worked on the Infamous 1 soundtrack, I picked that up as well.

A lot of the same guys carried over from infamous 1 to infamous 2’s non Tobin tracks – Jim Dooley, J.D. Mayer.  They brought with them the concept Tobin brought to the first album, of making something down and dirty, detuned, played with trash instruments.  Or so I read.  Even though my initial playthrough of the game was the “good” path, and thus the blue soundtrack, some of the elements I remembered from the score I couldn’t really hear on the album, and it was more cleaned up than I would’ve expected with that whole “trash” pitch.  But don’t get me wrong – it’s still great.  They find some excellent and unique themes and the mixture of artists working with a unified concept gives different sides to the overall feeling of the album – some of it funky, some of it more “heroic,” some sad.

I finally got my hands on the red album.  And it is exactly what I wanted.  This is the dirtied-up album, which shows that this wasn’t a gimmick at all – these are darker tracks, much more fitting for our “evil” storyline, weird sounds and elements brought into the mix.  It gets more thematic again right toward the end of the album, but whereas Tobin’s 1st soundtrack – which, again, was definitely the main influence for this trash / groove sound – suffered a bit from not feeling 100% cohesive, the Red Soundtrack feels like it’s telling me a story from start to finish.  However you can track it down, if you’re in to dark instrumental stuff (Tobin’s a good touchpoint, but take out some of his funk and add more strings), this is such an original listen.