Kingdom Heartbeats Vinyl Review By Lo Fi Lee "Firaga Records Bring Us Another RoboRob-Helmed Remix Album" 📀 @FiragaRecords #VideoGameVinyl #Vinyl #VGM

Firaga Records bring us another RoboRob-helmed remix album here, this time centred around venerable JRPG series Kingdom Hearts. The record comes beautifully presented, with a glossy gatefold sleeve inside a printed polybag housing a ten-track LP on clear vinyl.

If you’ve heard any of these remix albums then you know what you’re getting – EDM-heavy versions of classic soundtracks, and if that’s your bag then you’re in for a treat here. Things kick off with series big hitter Simple and Clean, where the plinky-plonky original turns into a dancefloor banger with big basslines. Tension Rising is up next, featuring co-producer arthur x medic with a similar vibe – bassy again with added chopped-up choral samples.

Three more tracks finish up side A. The 13th Struggle comes with strings and pounding kicks, before a dubstepped-up Sora’s Theme leads us into Passion, a curious number with J-pop vocals over bass and bleeps. 

Flip the record and we come to Dearly Beloved, a noughties-feeling metronomic number which is probably the highlight of the album after the next track: Face My Fears (VIP), featuring Chuck None and vocalist TOFIE, which builds up from light beginnings into a massive dubstep drop with sirens, before the second drop throws us headlong into pounding drums and breaks.

A change of pace is necessary after all that, and Traverse Town throws the bendy basslines in over ultra-jaunty chiptune sounds that you’d expect in a jolly 16-bit platformer. The album closes with Sinister Sundown (featuring Mega Flare) with happy hardcore vocal samples under a UK garage bassline and This Is Halloween, and you can tell this is the one where RoboRob and co-producer arthur x medic went, “Right, let’s distort the bass as much as humanly possible” and threw every drum sample they had into it. Good fun, mind.

SUMMARY

As I said at the start, if you’re a Firaga Records fan then this does what they all do, i.e. bringing classic soundtracks up to the point where EDM became ubiquitous on the scene, so about ten years ago. 

But that doesn’t mean this isn’t a fun ride, so if it’s your kind of thing then you’ll definitely find a lot to like here. As usual, Bandcamp and streaming services are where you’ll find this, with the former always recommended if you want to support the artists.