Jazz Jackrabbit 2 Original Sound Version (1998)
17 tracks, 67 minutes
Listen and download at KHInsider
What is the complete opposite of yesterday’s all-acoustic album of solemn, religious chants and prayers? A late-90s video game starring a green, gun-toting, anthropomorphic hare who's too legit to quit, I suppose. Yup, that’s Jazz Jackrabbit 2. It was a fairly typical run-and-gun platformer that could never quite complete with its rival series of Sonic the Hedgehog and was eventually forgotten by most. It was quite good and I had fun with it when I was little, but that soundtrack still slaps well after Jazz hung up his bandana.
There’s a superb groove through everything on the soundtrack, but despite its name, this ain’t jazz. It’s all electronic; trance, techno and other electronica play a big role in the sound, and there’s a few little pastiches in there, but for the most part this is funk. This isn’t some crude replica, either – this funk is hard. Yes, the instrument sounds aren’t the best – it’s only a couple of steps above General MIDI – which lends it a particularly ‘gamey’ feel, but the synth sounds are quite good and the music itself is of a quality that can utterly transcend those timbres. You’ll forget that the instruments are shitty reproductions or whatever, because they work so well in context.
Soundtracks can be weird sometimes, because their quality isn’t necessarily tied to the quality or popularity of the thing they’re soundtracking in the first place. That’s how you can get some proper righteous instrumental funk locked up within a mildly unsuccessful PC game. It’s a shame, really – the music fits the game well, but it really does stand well on its own, and hasn’t dated nearly as badly as the game. This stuff deserves to be heard on its own merits.
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