Kingdom Hearts HD 1.5 ReMIX Original Soundtrack

	Album Title: Kingdom Hearts – HD 1.5 ReMIX – Original Soundtrack
	Record Label: Square Enix
	Catalog No.: SQEX-10466/8
	Release Date: November 26, 2014
	Purchase: Buy at CDJapan

Overview

The Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and 2.5 ReMIXes came with a collection of games that spanned several consoles all condensed onto the PlayStation 3 and remastered with high-def graphics and an soundtrack reorchestrated with live instruments. The captivating storyline of the games, which revolve around Sora and his quest to visit various childhood worlds to vanquish the “heartless” forces that engulf their victims in shadow, borders on innocent, but maintains a deeper quality than that. Fans were enchanted with the series since Square Enix released the first Kingdom Hearts in 2002. The original score, composed by the now-legendary Yoko Shimomura, while receiving an extremely positive and enthusiastic response, struggled in its original instrumentation, sometimes failing to completely convey the ranged emotions of the scores due to the often-rough PlayStation 2 music generator. The score was still a massive success, but was also a significant part of a video game music cover trend that began shortly after the release of the first game. I have to think that this was, in some part, due to the realization of Kingdom Hearts fans who wanted something more regarding the instrumentation of the game. I was very much looking forward to receiving a copy of the score (along with the ReMIXes themselves), and was glad that the soundtrack met my expectations for the revamped music.

Body

Right from the remastered “Dearly Beloved,” the first track of the 1.5 and played almost exclusively on piano, the change in instrumentation is palpable. The piano is so much more convivial, and brings new life to a piece that begins the games of the two main series. A second “Dearly Beloved” opens Kingdom Hearts II with a descending xylophone arpeggio, hinting briefly at the main theme of Kingdom Hearts before the piano finally enters, this time with a couple of trills to differentiate itself from the piano in the first game. Upon receiving the album, before listening to the whole collection in its entirety, the first thing I did was quickly brush through my old favorite tracks, from various world-based field and battle themes to grander-scale boss themes. The “my favorite Kingdom Hearts track is” list is an extremely long one, but the extensive soundtrack merits its length. Perhaps Shimomura’s largest stamp on the world of video game music is her colossal set of pieces that add so much to the world of Kingdom Hearts. The fact that most of the tracks were not performed by live orchestras in the original games was, admittedly, rather audible in-game and particularly out of context.  The soundtrack is a vibrant one, shifting quickly between moods and tones without ever really losing its vivaciousness. Shimomura’s ability to combine animation with authenticity shines through in these tracks, consummately disproving the notion that the two concepts are mutually exclusive.

Some of the old favorites return with some beautiful solo performances, such as the warm alto saxophone in “Traverse Town” and the light piano of “Scherzo di Notte.”  Songs like that depended on performances for their quality benefited the most from this revamped score. “Traverse Town” has a much more sophisticated grand piano to support the sax’s gently quavering notes than the original version, which sounded a little more like a pub’s stand-up piano. “Scherzo di Notte” has a much different approach to incorporating its piano, using the instrument as both solo and accompaniment in the complex and nimble piece that serves as the battle theme in the penultimate world. While the pieces themselves have not changed very much, the quality of instrumentation does give new life and substance to the popular tracks so frequently rehashed and covered.

“Wonderland Surprises” plays during the first Disney-generated world that Sora visits.  The track is a light one with quick, staccato flutes beginning a playful passage that so delightfully encapsulates the quirky, high-stakes-but-low-gravity world of Wonderland, in which Sora must rescue Alice from beheading by tracking down a guilty party of heartless. In the original game, the synthesized sounds were especially rough in this track, which is meant to be gentle, almost Classical, in style. The first time I really paid attention to this track was in the arrangement featured in the Kingdom Hearts Piano Collections album, which mischievously blends the piece with its counterpart battle theme, “To Our Surprise” and continues a pattern of alternating themes right up to the end. With its new instrumentation, the in-game piece is even more playful, and the shift to the battle theme is so light that the player feels it at first rather than hearing it.

The first time I played Kingdom Hearts, “A Very Small Wish” was one of the tracks where I found myself arranging my gameplay to deliberately spend more time in the area just to hear more of the music. The world in which “Wish” plays is a six-room puzzle which the player has to solve to get through; incidentally, this is also the “whale” level that seems to have a strange popularity in many eastern games. The music is quick, catchy, and mildly dark in some areas, suggesting a disquiet in the moods of all the characters (which, yes, extends beyond the disheartening fact that they are trekking through the digestive tract of a giant space mammal). Shimomura used accents in the synthesized instruments of the original piece to serve as percussion; due to the mechanical nature of the sounds, the accented notes are just harsh enough to give a sense of percussion without actually including any type of drum. The newer version is far more subtle, instead using lighter accents and delicate pizzicato to mark the downbeats in the ¾ piece. “Merlin’s Magical House” takes a similar approach, using an extremely subtle bass drum to bring about a clock-like rhythm, which had previously been held down by sheer force of instruments in earlier versions.

Perhaps the most drastic difference in the remastering is through the tracks that depend on specific instrumental textures over tracks with distinct melodies. “Deep Jungle” and “Having a Wild Time” are two such tracks, both taking place in the Tarzan world from the game, and heavily incorporating wood-based instruments to effect a jungle feel. “Deep Jungle” opens with a solo panpipe fanfare-like pickup, and the main melody is on the same low wooden pipes. The authentic pipe adds a much fresher and more airy sound to music that serves as a kind of overworld theme to a heavily wooded area. “Having a Wild Time” switches the melody to a more substantial oboe, and backs it with gentle touches of low electric guitar to give it an edge that the overworld theme doesn’t have. Because the specific instruments and textures are so crucial to musically defining the location, the reorchestration significantly adds to the jungle appeal of the world and its music.

“Captain Hook’s Pirate Ship” is a more ambient piece, with ominous but sporadic bassoon, oboe, and marimba lines running around the piece, and no real melody. This was one of my least favorite pieces from the original soundtrack due to its rather bland nature, and anticlimactic progression. Through the remastering, the piece sounds much more intentional, with the instruments capable of being recognized simply for their distinct, fresh timbres. While the track still isn’t one to be wildly enthused over, it does bring another dimension to the ship. In contrast to the drab world theme, “Pirates Gigue,” the corresponding battle theme, is way up on my “favorites” playlist. The bright, inclusive series of instruments in this piece and the rapid 6/8 meter has turned what would be an otherwise dull world into one of the most fun settings for battles. In fact, especially after Sora has received the ability to fly (thanks to Peter Pan’s abilities), the combination of the vivid battle music and more advanced skills Sora has learned make this areas one of the most enjoyable battle settings of the game. The new instruments add another layer of delicacy to the battle theme, which depends on a number of melody and harmony lines brimming with flourishes and oscillations in the dynamics and intensity. Similar to “A Very Small Wish,” “Pirates Gigue” originally depended on harsh PS2 generators to accent the melody heavily enough in various areas to serve as the percussive element. The newer version is much lighter, and a meter like 6/8 requires a certain level of dexterity and nimbleness for the piece to sound more like a gigue and less like a stomp.

One of the ongoing themes throughout the entire series of Kingdom Hearts – and a personal favorite – is “Destati,” which serves as one of the main themes, playing at both the beginning and end of many of the games in the series. The theme returns in several settings, from the original “Dive into the Heart,” a choral opening piece, to “Fragments of Sorrow,” a gentle and ominous battle theme, to “Dismiss,” a much more heavy-handed percussion-crazy boss theme.  The live choir significantly changes the effect of the iconic melody in the game. From the start of the playable game, as “Dive into the Heart” is first transitioning into “Destati” with gentle movements of the low strings and gentle percussion, I had goosebumps while anticipating the entrance of the choir and the descending melody that has so permeated the Kingdom Hearts games, and it does not disappoint.  The music is both chilling and riveting, and with each permutation the theme returns in a beautiful new setting. “Fragments of Sorrow” takes the theme and separates into several diverse octaves, but the best part of it is the choir. With the new live recording, the piece sounds wonderfully pure and each layer of choral part is far more audible. Despite the fact that the sopranos have the iconic melody (ultimately transferring it to the altos), a few lower male parts make their way through to create a resonance that simply did not exist in the original Playstation generator tracks.

“Music Pour La Tristesse de Xion” has always been a track residing well towards the top of my favorites list, but even upon first hearing the synthesized music, which meant for rough Nintendo DS speakers, it was very clear that the potential of the track was lost in the weak recording. “Xion” benefits in a big way from the revamped recording given to the classic theme. The piece begins on piano, and uses a tender blend of strings (soli, solo, arco, and pizzicato) and metallophones to  execute the warm melody. The instrumentation is unusual, and “Xion” is one of the few pieces for which I did not expect the specific series of instruments that Shimomura uses in the remastered score. “Lord of the Castle,” another returning bonus track, makes for a wonderful finalist in the list of remastered DS pieces, featuring a wild piano, Shimomura’s trademark percussion, and a heavy combination of strings, brass, choir, and even organ.

We also get an orchestral recording of “One-Winged Angel,” which takes the final boss theme from Final Fantasy VII and remixes it to fit a battle against Sephiroth, one of the Final Fantasy guests in the Kingdom Hearts games, and a notoriously difficult boss fight (albeit an optional one). This arrangement comes with both pros and cons. On one hand, the thought of Yoko Shimomura arranging one of Uematsu’s most popular tracks – and with live instruments! – is any Square Enix fan’s dream.  And seriously, the live orchestration is wonderful – “Angel” is one of those tracks that, with the wrong instrumentation, can sound very off in a live setting. It is difficult to get a really good live recording of this piece – most of the ones I’ve heard have a choir that’s too soft, or not well balanced against the orchestra. Shimomura’s rendition is spot-on; the choir sounds extraordinarily bright and vibrant up against the orchestra, and each section is audible in the remastered edition. The issue really lies in the fact that a large portion of the original “One-Winged Angel” is cut out, which is really an issue of the original Kingdom Hearts scores, not the remastering. Because the instrumentation is so exquisite, I found myself hoping that somehow those missing sections had been brought back in along with the new instruments, but as with the rest of the pieces on the scores, it is a very direct transcription. However, those looking for more vibrant instrumentation for the classic, old-school track will certainly be happy with the sound quality of this one, if relatively untouched.

Summary

On the whole, Yoko Shimomura’s score for the Kingdom Hearts 1.5 and 2.5 ReMIX editions is worthy of the original score. The new tracks did not surpass my expectations, but it did meet them. The value in this box set, while not entirely devoid in the larger pieces, is in the smaller ones that have perhaps not had as much time spent on them. I found that my favorite pieces to listen to were the ones that perhaps had less attention devoted to them over the past twelve years. For those interested in the score, the orchestration is a strict remastering of the original score, but does not add or significantly alter anything in the original music, beyond a few shifts in instrumentation and balance. However, the new instrumentation does seriously add to the quality of the already high-quality score, and the resulting soundtrack is even more vivacious and vibrant than the original.

Posted on March 1, 2015 by Emily McMillan. Last modified on April 26, 2015.

Tags: Kingdom Hearts, Square Enix, Yoko Shimomura

About the Author

Emily McMillan A native and lifelong Texan, I currently work in software education while contributing news, reviews, and interviews to VGMO on the side. I love the feeling that comes with the discovery of a brand new soundtrack, and always look forward to the next rekindling of that excitement. Outside of VGMO, I enjoy playing piano, listening to classical music and film scores, and trying to go unnoticed in any stealth RPG I can find.

Related Posts

Symphonic Memories Concert – music from SQUARE ENIX →

KINGDOM HEARTS – III, II.8, Unchained χ & Union χ [Cross] – Original Soundtrack →

MONACA Interview: Revisiting the Music of NieR →

Final Fantasy VII Remake Original Soundtrack ~special edit version~ [Limited Edition] →