Kecak chants + VGM

This was a weird little trend in Japanese videogame music.

Secret of Evermore’s ('93) theme for the Dark Lich is the first time I know of it being employed.

The most explicit usage of it probably comes from Power Instinct 2 ('94), composed by Toshikazu Tanaka.

Another fighting game, The King of Fighters '97 ('97, duh), makes pretty abrupt use of chant samples.

You can hear it in a track Hitoshi Sakimoto wrote for Kingdom Grand Prix ('94). Sakimoto used a similar vocal effect for parts of his Vagrant Story soundtrack ('00).

I’ll probably find a few more examples later.

A lot of Japanese videogame composers had exposure to YMO’s music, so it’s plausible that they also first came across Kecak chants while listening to YMO’s 1981 album Technodelic.

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From the beatmania IIDX Archives:

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the most pop cultural course for kecak reaching video games is probably through the Akira film, which had Geinoh Yamashirogumi’s heavily kecak influenced sound.

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Technodelic still sounds a helluvah lot newer than '81, what an album

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NiGHTS into Dreams (1995)


chants begin @ :32

When I first heard 2:39, I thought of Dark Lich and though they were perhaps cover-referencing that. These dudes were eclectic enough to be a little videogamey sometimes.

Way later I learned of the Balinese Monkey Chant and such, blew my mind. And vocal cords when imitating.

I’m struggling to remember one other game I heard using this; gonna have to dig deep and maybe share later.

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?

(by Shinji Hosoe, for Wii game Let’s Tap, 2008)

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edit: ost is better than arrange in this case

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(no chanting, but thought to put it in here because it’s gamelan)