Fast RMX Soundtrack

Fast RMX Soundtrack, Bjulin / Manfred Linzner / Martin Schioeler, 2017

One of gaming’s great frustrations (at least at the time of writing in 2020) remained Nintendo’s steadfast refusal to revive its classic F-Zero franchise. The last entirely new F-Zero title had arrived back in 2004, when F-Zero Climax was released for the Game Boy Advance — only in Japan, adding insult to injury for Western players. Thankfully, German developer and Nintendo loyalist Shin’en Multimedia seemed determined to fill the gap with its Fast series. Beginning in 2011 with WiiWare title Fast – Racing League, the franchise went from strength to strength with 2015’s Fast Racing Neo for the Wii U and 2017’s Fast RMX, a launch title for the Nintendo Switch. All three games won praise for their stellar presentation and gameplay, which generated an overwhelming sense of speed while building on an Ikaruga-style polarity-switching system that granted extra boosts.

Fast RMX essentially served as an expanded version of Fast Racing Neo, incorporating all of that earlier game’s tracks and DLC while adding a handful of new courses of its own. For game music fans, this was ample cause for celebration. Fast RMX gathered all of the outstanding music written for Fast Racing Neo and added further material still, resulting in more than two hours of music across almost 50 compositions. The masterminds behind the score were Shin’en Multimedia veterans Manfred Linzner and Martin Schioeler, joined by relative newcomer Bjulin.

On his website, Bjulin recalls the excitement of realising his childhood dream of scoring a game for a Nintendo console, one that would become an ongoing project for years. At the same time, he is frank about the steep learning curve involved in working on Fast Racing Neo. One early track featuring electric guitar reportedly went through 40 revisions before Linzner and his team finally signed off on it.

Arduous as the process may have been, the care and attention to detail invested in the Fast RMX soundtrack are evident from the outset. This is one of the finest electronic game soundtracks of the 2010s — and, at over two hours of consistently strong material, also one of the longest, which only makes the achievement more impressive, even if the game does borrow three tracks from Linzner’s Nanostray HD Sessions arrange album. In keeping with the game’s obvious points of reference — the F-Zero and WipeOut series — Fast RMX’s music harks back to the 1990s, drawing mainly on trance, rave and techno to evoke the requisite sci-fi racing atmosphere.

What makes the Fast RMX soundtrack exceptional is the composers’ maximalist approach, which turns almost every track into an astoundingly elaborate construction. This is electronica with an almost symphonic depth, such is the richness of the arrangements. It is not that the musical material itself is unusually complex; rather, it is the sheer number of layers and ideas packed into each cue that makes the score so rewarding. The relentless beats are, of course, indispensable in a racing game like this, but it is the head-spinning accumulation of rhythms, colours and melodic fragments rushing past that creates the sensation of jaw-dropping speed. Repeat listens are essential simply to grasp everything going on in these dazzlingly dense compositions.

With the score running beyond the two-hour mark, such an unbroken assault could easily become tiring. Yet the Fast RMX soundtrack remains so varied that it registers instead as consistently daring and grandiose. The ebb and flow of these cues is managed with striking assurance, each track sustaining its looped four- to five-minute span with ease. There is enough tunefulness in every piece to provide shape and often guide it towards melodic peaks, made all the more exhilarating by the fierce adrenaline rush coursing through the music. Once the composers introduce electric guitar on tracks such as “Mueller Pacific” and “Chouko City”, the score tears through the stratosphere and becomes as epic as one could hope for in a futuristic racing game. Other cues are more rhythm-driven, from the nervy counterlines and vocal samples of “Zenshoh Habitat” to the polyrhythms of “Kenshu Jungle”, which underpin slow, dissonant chord progressions.

Almost every piece on the Fast RMX soundtrack finds a distinctive angle; few cues here sound remotely alike. Some tracks fittingly reflect their respective course settings, often with a subtlety that belies the score’s all-out attitude. “Antarctica” has the expected tinkling arpeggios and crystalline sparkles, but what really defines the frozen landscape is its more spacious, transparent acoustic image. “Iceland”, by contrast, approaches its chilly setting with leaner textures and knotty breakbeats. Hand percussion makes a welcome contribution to the soundtrack’s already vast rhythmic arsenal on “Pyramid Valley” and “Sendai Outpost”, while “Mori Park” charts fresh territory through subterranean wooden percussion that further expands the score’s explosion of colour.

Other examples of the composers’ seemingly inexhaustible inventiveness abound. “Storm Coast” is the soundtrack’s clearest throwback to 1990s techno, with bright staccato leads and the occasional string overlay arriving as an unexpected but entirely fitting flourish. “Hangar Games” could hardly wear a broader grin as it combines a poppy electric-guitar melody with four-on-the-floor beats. “Sunahara Plains”’ hummable hooks recall the singalong quality of Linzner’s Iridion scores, while balancing their treble focus against some of the heaviest beats on the album. The pairing of “Waimea Coast” and “Alpine Trust” encapsulates the soundtrack’s range particularly well. The former catches the listener off guard with its soothing piano lead and lighter palette, while the latter’s alternately shredding and screaming guitar presence pushes the composers’ everything-and-the-kitchen-sink aesthetic to a hugely satisfying extreme. Futuristic racing soundtracks do not come any bigger than Fast RMX.