Clashing of Styles in VGM.

I know the thread title sounds a bit weird, to make myself clear, what I mean is on certain game soundtracks, the pacing and order of tracks can sometimes throw off the course of the music.

A clear enough example, in the Chrono Cross OST, disc three you have the track, Jellyfish Sea, a nice calm ambient track, followed right by Orphanage of Fire, completely opposite type of track.

I know they do it based on the flow of events in the games, but sometimes it can disrupt you while just listening to the soundtrack, I guess it depends on the mindset of the listener.

There are many examples I could think of, another being in the Silent Hill 2 OST, from Love Pslam to Silent Heaven, a very huge jump in style.

Any more you can think of, that tend to derail the soundtrack at points?

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On the 2-disc Mr. Driller soundtrack it's quite jarring going from a fully produced vocal tune right into the GBC soundtrack. I guess that's what happens when you put 5 soundtracks on many platforms into a single set, but they could've organized it a bit better.

Other than that, nothing comes to mind. There is another one from Silent Hill 2 for the track leading into Angel's Thanatos, but that's meant to be clashing, so it's probably not what you had in mind.

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A lot of Motoi Sakuraba's PS1-era soundtracks had a bit of discrepancy between the type of sound that the music was presenting and the world that it was supposed to be representing. For instance, a lot of the dungeons in the first Valkyrie Profile had a very strong, heavy metal sound to it to give it a sort of feeling of corruption; however, the result was somewhat odd at times, kind of breaking the feeling of Norse mythos or fantasy battles with synths and rhythms that beat you over the head.

Also, sup, Mana Dragon. What are you listening to right now?

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Instead of clashing of style, I will say the composer is inconsistent during the composing. It's either he/she intentionously composed that way for experimental purpose, or because it's necessary. The game needs different style to put different atmosphere.

I think Blue Dragon is the example of inconsistency. Some tracks featured ethno of folk instruments, while others have fusion of rock ballad with heavy metal instrument. I couldnt really enjoy such album to be honest. I much prefer if the composer has one distinct style and thus, make the album distinguishable.

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Go play Shadow Hearts, okay.

Seriously, that soundtrack is all over the place--traditional Asian/Chinese folk music, downbeat and minimalist ambience, pounding danger/chase stuff, and a few songs that, had I not known better, I would seriously have thought composed by Akira Yamaoka himself (namely Melt Down). On top of that, the game frequently style-hops between immediately adjacent scenes.

In the words of JTHM: "...it was wacky."

I was speaking idiomatically.

Mana Dragon man, I could bet that almost every VGM soundtrack has at least a pair of continuous songs that have that contrast.

As you, I also think that it can be somewhat annoying sometimes, but it's the nature of VGM soundtracks, the tracks are not necessarily in a sequential order of the music itself, but in the order of the game events in which they were placed.

But I like something about that: it makes you remember the game, what happened first, what happened later, what was all about and how were you feeling and what were you thinking at that time. You can remember how was the game carrying you through a lot of emotions and thoughts from the beginning to the very last moment of it.

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