Composer Yasunori Mitsuda’s video game soundtracks are the stuff of legend at this point. So I won’t waste too much time telling you why you should be excited about the newest album from video game music label Materia Collective. I only have to tell you that it’s a tribute album for Chrono Trigger. That statement should be enough to capture the interest of most people.
It’s titled EPOCH: A Tribute to Chrono Trigger. And what I have had the chance to hear from it so far has been great. It contains a total of 60 tracks. That’s a lot of content. So I still haven’t quite made it through all of it. EPOCH isn’t the work of a single person, but rather several contributors. This means you get pieces in many different styles. Everything from rock to jazz, to ballads, is represented here.
The contributors here include Videri String Quartet, The Game Brass, String Player Gamer and indie game composers John Robert Matz (For the King) and Jordan Chin (ZENITH), as well as many others. The producers provided the following comments with the press release.
“Chrono Trigger is one of our favorite games of all time, so there was no question in our minds that we wanted to pay tribute to its beloved music. When crafting our vision for EPOCH, we thought a lot about how the characters in the game combine their skills to create unique and powerful tech combos. We wanted to honor this spirit of teamwork by encouraging musicians of different skill sets and backgrounds to band together in a similar fashion in order to make each performance one-of-a-kind. Everyone put a tremendous amount of work and love into this album, and we are proud to present our take on this timeless soundtrack.” Producers Jeff Brenneman and Daniel Romberger.