Jobie Reviews Music 138: ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 黄金の風 O.S.T Vol.2 Intermezzo (album) by 菅野祐悟

(requested by a friend of mine)

ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 黄金の風 (JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure Golden Wind) O.S.T Vol.2 Intermezzo is a 2019 soundtrack album by 菅野祐悟 (Yugo Kanno). It is 26 tracks long, totaling 1 hour of music. It’s a continuation of the soundtrack to JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure: Golden Wind. Unlike its predecessor, this volume follows a noticeably darker tone in its instrumentation and overall sound. Most of the tracks on the album are either dramatic, suspenseful, or a combination of the two. This can be attributed to the anime that this soundtrack was made for getting darker as the story progresses (no spoilers, but once you watch about half of the anime you’ll get what I mean).

Much like its predecessor, the album features well composed, cleverly orchestrated tracks. From the intensity of tracks like “vita” to the solemn nature of the track “mortre”, this album expresses the tone and sound that it’s going for in an excellent manner. Several tracks on the album, even without the context of the anime in mind, still manage to be extremely suspenseful.

The album makes heavy use of dark, suspenseful orchestration. The track “suspense” in particular showcases this very well. The album has many different varieties of suspenseful sound, with the track “di molto” in particular using some rather unusual instrumentation in order to achieve its sound.

The occasional upbeat tracks that were present in the first volume of the soundtrack are largely absent, aside from a select few tracks on the album. The departure from this tone results in the album being (as previously mentioned) made up of tracks with a darker tone. In my opinion, this is beneficial for the album, resulting in more intriguing composition work from Kanno being showcased on the album.

One thing that this volume of the soundtrack and the previous volume of the soundtrack have in common is the reuse of “il vento d’oro” in the tracks’ composition. It can be most clearly heard in “resa dei conti”, where the main melody is reprised as a progressive rock track. This continuing use of “il vento d’oro” allows the listener to hear some interesting incorporations of the theme into other tones and styles, some of which being largely different from the original.

My favorite tracks from this album are “coercizione”, “puro”, “spiritoso”, “incursione”, “pesce”, “passatoo”, and “determinazione”.

Overall, ジョジョの奇妙な冒険 黄金の風 O.S.T Vol.2 Intermezzo is a great follow up to the first volume of the soundtrack. Its orchestration, instrumentation, and overall incorporation of the tone that it’s trying to achieve are on par with volume one of the soundtrack. Its sound follows a largely darker tone than volume one, allowing for Kanno to deliver interesting showcases of suspenseful and dramatic sound.

Overall rating:

9.3/10

LINK TO ALBUM:

https://open.spotify.com/album/4cLP1UgLCeyEenAts75zt3