Masaya Matsuura is one of the most unique composers in video game music of all time. In fact should his visions have ever been told to a psychiatrist, he’d probably have been locked up a LONG time ago! However thankfully for us, that never happened. Together with “Laugh & Peace” a quite random and seemingly ear dead pair, they created a dual soundtrack “Vib-Ripple & Vib-Ribbon OST”.
The cult games allowed you to pop your own CD’s into your PlayStation (1 or 2)and then play with Vibri to survive your CD collection! However you were also given some songs on the game itself to play with and that’s what appears on this disc of delight.
Of the 32 tracks on this CD, around half are about 10 seconds long giving some random Vibri vocal snippets which are cute, endearing and maybe to butch males, the kind of thing you’ve been dreading for years. However aside from that, there are some extremely original computer generated music.
“Laugh & Peace” provide 6 tracks that sound like a rock band that has been compressed and pushed through a hyperactive anime computer speaker. Each song like “Oops” has catchy chorus’ and verses that are played through at different speeds. Some songs works better than others and only “Do You Know?” has a truly awful section where the song slows down on a vocal note that pierces the ears! Not nice! However the rest of their contribution is simply mental!
Masaya Matsuura however goes one better and tops it with “Vib-Ribbon – How to Play” – a mind bending silly track of blips and bleeps that still makes me laugh years after first hearing it.
Having done all of the Vib-Ripple section himself, Masaya resorts to a circus like cabaret style of just completely throw you off course from anything you’ve really heard at a long length before! I think the closest I’ve heard to the style and feel here is possibly the Hanjuku Hero series.
Sadly all this insanity only clocks in at 39 minutes and 16 seconds, but then the upside means you can’t get too bored or go too insane listening to it. It’s completely unqiue and you’ll either love it or hate it but everyone should at least appreciate sure genius from the music mental house! Bring it on Vibri!