Overview

The Trash series of CDs contain music to many small projects by Supersweep. Trash 002, featuring compositions from Shinji Hosoe and Yousuke Yasui, is a short album dedicated to a game called Prodigy Racing. Is it worth picking up?

Body

Most of the album is written by Yousuke Yasui, though two themes are contributed by Shinji Hosoe. The first, "Try It," has a very robotic, industrial sound to it, but I find it to be extremely underwhelming. There are some interesting synth accents dispersed throughout the theme, but for the most part, I find it to be rather repetitive and lacking any hook. His second contribution, "Trapp'n Musix," combines a variety of different soundscapes. There are some more menacing synth effects, a bit of a groovy beat, and a futuristic melody line. Although I find this piece to be ultimately more captivating than his other contribution, I still find it to be rather weak.

The rest of the soundtrack is composed by Yousuke Yasui. Unfortunately, most of his work suffers from "stagnant racing soundtrack syndrome". Most of the tracks are extremely repetitive and offer very little variety, the worst offender being "Electromagnetic Wave". It's the longest theme on the album but I find myself becoming bored with it very quickly, despite a variety of synth effects used in its duration. "Prodigy Racing" is pretty decent, but can get old quickly as well. It features some distorted vocal work and a pretty funky beat, but in the end, doesn't really engage much.

Fortunately, there is a redeeming factor in the soundtrack and that is "FiRe Cr@cKeR". This is Yousuke Yasui's take on industrial music and it turns out to be quite a thrill. While it starts out with a very soft synth melody, it quickly transforms into an energetic industrial techno theme that is just a lot of fun. While it also suffers from repetition, I find the choice of sounds to be the ultimate factor in how fun the track is. It's got a nice variety of beats and soundscapes that also help make it more tolerable.

Summary

Unfortunately, I think that this album really does deserve the title of Trash 002. Most of the themes seem to be put together rather quickly and suffer from a lack of development. There are some interesting effects used here and there, but with only one theme, in my opinion, worth listening to again, I'm going to have to recommend that you pass on this album, unless of course you are a Supersweep album collector and have to have everything they publish.