Tamashii no Mon – Dante Shinkyoku yori Soundtrack, Masumi Ito / Yoshiyuki Ito / Fiori Wakakuwa, 1992
It turns out that 2010’s Dante’s Inferno, that God of War-like reworking of Dante Alighieri, was not the first game inspired by the poet’s 14th-century Divine Comedy. That should perhaps not be surprising. The poem’s towering literary status and its vivid imagery of Hell’s nine circles make it eminently adaptable to other media. Another title drawing on The Divine Comedy was Koei’s Tamashii no Mon – Dante Shinkyoku yori, literally Gate of Souls – From Dante’s Divine Comedy. As one would expect, players assume Dante’s role as he struggles through the depths of Hell. The developers framed the game as an adventure with platforming and melee elements, while making excellent use of the ageing PC-98’s graphical capabilities. The limited colour palette, combined with superb sprite art, brings the game’s nightmarish settings vividly to life.
For the soundtrack, the developers turned to Masumi Ito, Yoshiyuki Ito, and Fiori Wakakuwa, who composed under the collective name hyym. Little information seems to survive about Wakakuwa’s career; his only other credits appear to be Koei’s Super Mahjong Taikai and Inindo: Way of the Ninja. The opposite is true of the husband-and-wife team of Masumi and Yoshiyuki Ito. Beginning as arrangers and composers on various Koei titles, they continued arranging game music into the mid-1990s for numerous album releases, including Super Metroid, Virtua Fighter, and Donkey Kong Country. They later moved into anime scoring. Masumi Ito also launched a successful solo career as a singer, while Yoshiyuki Ito went on to work as Head Music Producer at Lantis; both artists ultimately amassed discographies running well beyond 100 titles.
Scoring Hell is a tantalising prospect for composers, giving them licence to pursue unusual sounds in an effort to match aurally one of literature’s most dreadful locations. And the Itos and Wakakuwa seize that opportunity with extraordinary gusto. The Tamashii no Mon – Dante no Shinkyoku yori soundtrack turns into a roiling cauldron, combining an astonishing number of genres and ideas into something genuinely singular. In some respects it recalls the broader approach of many Castlevania scores, mixing an overall Gothic mood with modern influences. But this soundtrack goes much further in refreshing tradition; at times, it feels as though the heady excesses of a 1970s prog-rock concept album had collided head-on with early 1990s electronica.
Take “Techno Troubadour”, the soundtrack’s most optimistic, and perhaps most gloriously wayward, cue. Its opening lithe lute melody suits the game’s medieval inspiration perfectly, before a pumping 1980s R&B bass line enters and quickly merges with a house-style piano lead. And that is before the composition truly lifts off, adding a rapturous solo violin over harpsichord and all the other elements already in play. The result is thoroughly idiosyncratic yet wonderfully convincing, a uniquely uplifting, if faintly bewildering, synthesis of styles. In that context, a children’s choir, in fact Masumi Ito overdubbing her own voice several times, singing the lute melody scarcely feels out of place, and fits the cue’s brief surge of elation beautifully.
As one might expect, most of the Tamashii no Mon – Dante no Shinkyoku yori soundtrack is a sombre affair, something opening track “Divine Comedy Renaissance” makes clear immediately. Faintly reminiscent of Enigma, the cue combines more traditional elements, a stately church organ, with dance rhythms and simple, dramatic synth lines. It is an effective opener, though it inevitably feels somewhat tame beside what follows, and those lusty female voices intoning “Porta del inferno!” are enjoyably, almost absurdly melodramatic. Then again, they testify to the composers’ determination to throw almost anything imaginable at the wall here, and, astonishingly, a great deal of it sticks.
Indeed, while several cues sound as though the composers had hurled a truckload of disparate ideas into a blender, the music ultimately coheres remarkably well. These are consistently atmospheric pieces, sometimes bordering on the surreal, which is only fitting given the setting. Throughout the entire soundtrack, the composers keep finding fresh ways to combine old and new. “Dark Forest”, for example, already generates an atmosphere thick with dread through ominous synth washes, trip-hop beats, abrasive glissandi, and disorienting effects. On top of that, the cue achieves a strange, twisted grandeur through the addition of an operatic alto solo. “Wise’s Man’s Hill” likewise uses operatic voices to moving effect, though this time in contrast with a calm, pop-inflected piano ballad that blossoms into a lushly dreamy episode of chimes, glowing synth pads, and fluttering birdsong.
Part of the reason why the Tamashii no Mon – Dante no Shinkyoku yori soundtrack can reconcile traditional and contemporary influences so effectively is the composers’ firm grasp of orchestral writing. Consider “Malebolge”, whose lengthy, well-developed deep-string lines create precisely the tragic gravitas one might hope for in a score about lost souls fighting their way out of Hell. Yet eerie distant chanting and entirely unexpected bursts of computer-noise effects lend these familiar, quasi-classical strains a genuinely alien dimension. “Vengeful Witch” goes further still. Symphonic bombast, more operatic singing, and harsh processed orchestral hits collide with stuttering beats and manipulated vocal samples. The latter turn barely recognisable male voices into a scat-like rhythm instrument and female voices into transcendentally abrasive, blinding shafts of sound. For a while, it becomes the score’s most psychedelic and extreme piece.
But just as there is logic to the soundtrack’s madcap patchwork of genres, there is also a discernible arc to it, which means things must become stranger still before they are finally resolved. There is real method to the composers’ madness as they push everything towards an apocalyptic culmination.
“Pluto’s Cliff – Styx” takes the crown as the soundtrack’s most challenging composition, no small distinction. At first, a forlorn flute lead dances over trip-hop beats and an organ ostinato that soon expands into a surprisingly substantial solo. Manipulated choral voices enter, cut off before the ends of their phrases, before a screeching violin solo seems to howl from the deepest circles of Hell. Finally, the cue delivers its killing blow when free-jazz alto saxophone and electric guitar tear into one another in an exhilarating three-minute avant-garde noise duel, driven mercilessly onward by ritualistic percussion. It is unlike anything heard in game music up to this point, and in its blasted, visceral intensity it is entirely appropriate for the terrifying locations it underscores.
But eventually Dante’s journey must lead towards the light. “Purgatory” is somewhat overlong, though perhaps that is appropriate for music accompanying the slow transition from Hell to Heaven. After a string dirge and agonised violin writing, austere electronic pulses give way to 1980s synth textures in the manner of Vangelis, who once, fittingly, composed a concept album titled Heaven and Hell. These tenderly flowing passages unfold with patient melodic beauty, their swelling, yearning sonorities offering moments of rare repose. Closing track “The Spheres of Heaven” develops this atmosphere further without lapsing into saccharine cliché. Even these lavishly scored celestial realms remain strange territory, despite all the tinkling chimes and tolling bells. It is the final destination of an awe-inspiring aural journey, one that tells its epic tale with all the gravity one could hope for, only by means so unusual that they remain without equal in game music.
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