Matsueda has been with Square since its early SNES days, debuting on Front Mission. Since, Matsueda has made a name for herself composing jazzy/techno/fusion tracks for some of Square’s less “epic” games.
Racing Lagoon was called by Square themselves a “Driving RPG”…A genre-bender that no one saw coming. Basically, it’s a driving game with a good bit of storyline and some advanced shops and parts-assembling. The soundtrack is fast-paced, with plenty of nice loops for our fine composers to wail out on. Speaking of wailing out, a couple of the tracks on the soundtrack (most of them are sampled below) are done with live instruments, such as a saxophone.
If you’re a fan of techno, you should enjoy this soundtrack. However, like with most techno music, listening to the soundtrack too often will become very monotonous and you could begin to dislike the soundtrack (in which case you should save it for those times you just want a nice, fast-paced song to pick up your day).
Like the awkwardness of the game, and its music, the packaging is very strange. Everything has been placed in backwards (the front cover is where the back is, and the booklet when you pull it out is upside-down). I actually tried opening the soundtrack on the wrong side when I first got it, and almost damaged the case. So, if you do purchase the soundtrack, be warned, it’s a tricky little thing.
This beat-filled two-disc set can be purchased at Game Music Online for $36. Thanks to KuZap for a scan of disc 1 tracks 7-9 and disc 2 track 4, and thanks to Eve C. for translating those tracks.
