Any discussion of video game soundtracks is brief by default. Music is not the main reason, though as a rule it doesn’t carry any message, rarely causes emotions and generally is the last thing to arouse debates. The major difficulty on the way of music to become a separate culture (and it hasn’t become yet, no matter what they say) and a serious topic for discussion is in complete depersonalization of its creators. Who are the people responsible for the music score of game universes, whose fingers touch the keyboards, press the guitar strings or turn the knobs on a mixer? How do they look, how do they live, about what do they think? An average portrait of a game composer looks like this – some mysterious person without any, even fictional, biography, almost never-seen, but who is writing something (this activity is also a murky secret). Then we hear something in the game; sometimes it’s even cool, but one way or another soon it all disappears, everything is lost and forgotten; even the very best things in game music are rarely published and find their listener out of the context of an interactive project; even more rarely these works make its creator famous.

Akira Yamaoka, one of the most important figures in the Japanese electronic entertainment industry for the last decade, has been consciously doing all his best so as not to fall under a definition of “a mysterious person”. Yamaoka is clearly a bit non-Japanese, cause he wrote purely European music in spite of hell. He criticized Japanese composers treating music composing solely as business, accused his own game industry of immaturity, had a performance with a symphony orchestra like Steve Vai, produced and ruled the game development (a unique case for a composer), broke stereotypes in every possible way and on the whole stood out dramatically. The influence he has exerted on the rest of the world perhaps is even stronger than the modern Japanese composers like Nobuo Uematsu ot Joe Hisaishi have had. Yamaoka is copied by thousands of newbie guitar players and composers, he is worshipped, his tracks are used on Russian TV (though breaking the law), a ballet was staged to his music… Nowadays Yamaoka seems to be more popular than such prominent Japanese composers as DJ Krush and Ryuichi Sakamoto put together.

It's surprising that Yamaoka earned his colossal fame not putting any special promotion efforts – he hardly had performances outside the country, didn't release solo records and didn't participate on collaborations with other artists. That all is why because all his career was connected with a sound designer work for Konami company and he had several work limitations to the freedom of his creativity. But he was OK with it; so it resulted in outstanding music and sound for the first four games of Silent Hill series, which ascended him to the rank of stars. And as it often happens with genius people, after an unprecedented rise Yamaoka bumped into difficult times. Konami made him write one and the same music again and again for already tacky and taken under American developers’ custody franchise of Silent Hill, the composer’s talent was quickly fading away and at first Yamaoka descended to selfcopying and then to evidently shoddy work, an example of which is a soundtrack to Shattered Memories, a loose remake of the original game of 1999, not only lacking of any sense and old charm but roughly designed of ancient samples in a try to make only heaven knows what. Shattered Memories is a first Silent Hill soundtrack, about which really nothing can be told. It’s not a trip-hop and not even an ambient – it’s an unskillful heap of crappy digital tools, absolutely plastic, flat sound, some abstract electronics - not because of its conception (it’s hard to believe there is any) but abstract by chance. Dare I say it, but we witness Yamaoka’s end as a composer.


Akira Yamaoka has always paid special attention to album preproduction. Official soundtracks of the first four parts of Silent Hill have always been something more than just a music from the game recorded on CD, they’ve been separate and carefully designed music stories. Starting with Silent Hill: Zero a reverent attitude towards compiling his own music gradually begun to vanish, and in the following Silent Hill: Homecoming there appeared to be simply nothing to compile: raw music material, unattractive graphics for CD cover, that was why Konami never released a full-extent album – they preferred to distribute the soundtrack for free to buyers of U.S. online store Gamestop. Shattered Memories shared the same fate.

There is not even one full-fledged piece of music in Shattered Memories. All the contents of the soundtrack are tiny fragments, pathetic demos and recycled scrap. In Silent Hill: Zero and Silent Hill: Homecoming an averaged length of a track was hardly kept but still kept within “a bit more than 3 mins” limits, a typical composition from Shattered Memories doesn’t hold out even till two minutes. And if instrumental tracks in Silent Hill: Zero still could be described as pieces of one complex puzzle, here the whole picture cannot be seen at all. In Silent Hill: Homecoming there were two very good instrumental compositions and two at least not bad ones, but in Shattered Memories even this minimum is not fulfilled.



Always On My Mind is the only song here, which still falls under a definition of trip-hop (though a very cheap one) and like O.R.T. it starts with an ambient prologue, but then, unfortunately, their roads part. Beautiful and melodious O.R.T., which is an entry track in the game Silent Hill: Zero (not in the album) was the first new track by Yamaoka after a 3-year break between SH-games releases. No wonder it should have performed special functions. The developers of Shattered Memories decided not to apply an old method of using a song in the opening credits that’s why Always ON My Ming is just ordinary and highly carelessly made composition with Mary Elizabeth McGlynn’s vocal. A pulsing synthesizer, a depressing melody, obviously off-key piano and wildest swings between piles of synthetic sounds (just like in a not very successful album “Sound of the Universe” by Depeche Mode) and some dull minimalistic insertions. The historic meaning of Always On My Mind is only in the fact that it’s the darkest Elvis Presley cover song and on the whole the first official cover-version in Silent Hill history.

A cheerful track When You're Gone is the shortest rock song Yamaoka has ever written and this fact comes to the track’s rescue – for the allotted three minutes maestro simply doesn’t have time to screw up by squeezing something needless in the composition in order to plug the holes of the arrangement. A melancholy Acceptance with a piano accompaniment is just another one “lullaby” fail. On the whole don’t be surprised if you’ve already read one third of what is written here in a previous review of Silent Hill: Homecoming – if something changed, then only for the worse. Writing about it again is depressing, and listening is even embarrassing. (You can scold me for my involute turn of phrase and lack of any proof reading of this text but almost of the same Yamaoka can be accused.) Hell Frozen Rain closing the album is the fourth song (the magic number didn’t help either) is also written by an old template “heavy music for the finals” but at the same time it’s trying to break the rule: the concentration of guitar riffs stolen without any changes from his own old tracks exceeds all limits here by at least a hundred-fold.



Instrumental sketches in Shattered Memories are similar to the first musical experiments of young Russian game composers. Childish Thoughts reminds of a bad hip-hop backing track, melody from the Creeping Distress is desperately trying to stir to pity but it freezes too quickly and rounds up in no time. Hostility has some dreadful (not in the sense of fear but very-very poor) marching drums. Moreover Yamaoka starts to play with symphony motives, rather unskillfully I should say, in Angel's Scream and Forsaken Lullaby with the melody in the latter being brazenly stolen from the cult Weather Storm by Craig Armstrong. Such a borrowing could be noticed earlier in Yamaoka ‘s “classic” works too, but then it was delicate and sophisticated and now so low-graded as in Shattered Memories.


It could have been a bit more interesting if Shattered Memories soundtrack had been a collection of remixes for SH-tracks from the all parts – then there would have been no complaints. But these tracks are not remixes, these are nothing but cheap, amateur caricatures. Considering that nowadays an amateur composer may well be writing a quality professional music, sound of Shattered Memories looks especially dull. It’s interesting that a lot of composer’s fans traditionally engaged in self-deception and convincing themselves, that nothing dreadful has happened to SH music, suddenly noticed a stitch-up and begun to complain about it in forums and blogs. The most unpleasant thing is that on the background of Shattered Memories a soundtrack to Silent Hill: Homecoming looks quite decent, and music from Silent Hill: Zero seems to be at least brilliant (though it’s far from it). When this review was being prepared some stunning news appeared - Akira Yamaoka has left Konami after 16 years. Can we sigh with relief and be sure that no mistakes will be repeated in the near future? Difficult to guess, but who doesn’t hope for the better?