Einhänder Original Soundtrack

	Album Title: Einhänder Original Soundtrack
	Record Label: DigiCube (1st Edition); Square Enix (2nd Edition)
	Catalog No.: SSCX-10015; SQEX-10099
	Release Date: December 21, 1997; July 18, 2007
	Purchase: Buy Used Copy

Overview

When you think of Square and their music, you usually think about classical pieces. A light flute rolling off a grassy hill as a child relaxes in the crisp, summer air. The powerful trumpet blast as the enemy storms into town, destroying everything in it’s path. Somber, sweet piano keys played in the backdrop of a touching scene. These are the sounds that usually saturates a Square soundtrack. Not this one…

Not synths layered over synths ripping through an intensive drumbeat. But that’s what you get when listening to the Einhänder Original Soundtrack. It’s a beautiful piece of Techno wonder that still hasn’t been reached in other Techno ventures, whether it be video game inspired music or “official” store brought albums. All the tracks are courtesy of Kenichiro Fukui.

Body

The soundtrack offers hit after hit. Outstanding tracks include “Factory,” “Madness,” “Dawn,” “Shudder,” “Chase,” “Badlands,” “Machine Beat,” “Bloody Battle,” and “Warning”. The rest always accompanies the game perfectly and often stands tall on its own.

“Factory” is one of those powerful Techno imbued tracks that hits you with layered over standard breaks, nice work with the synths, and various hits on the electric guitar. “Madness” throws you in a bit of a confused organized frenzy as the beat comes in on the somewhat offbeat synth and thrust you into a still jagged melody.

“Dawn” is one of the more softer pieces that uses quiet quips of synth notches here and there. The bass line is soft as well and accompanies the main melody nicely. And “Shudder.” What a wonderful song. It starts off with the hi hats being played very rapidly as the main melody begins to pan out and then, it hits you with all it’s got. One of the better points of this piece has to be the rap displayed at the end. Though you can’t really hear what he’s saying, at least it sounds good.

Summary

So many hits on a Techno soundtrack are very hard to come across, but Kenchiro Fukui does it splendidly. It’s a very solid soundtrack that does this very different game wonders beyond what anyone could ever hope for. One of the greatest Techno soundtracks ever.

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