![]() The character of these songs is very different from the rest of the album, and pretty jarring for anyone used to the idioms typical of Sonic music. Aside from being very heavy on Fairlight and similar sequencers and synths for production, both Sonic CD and Masque feel like they could have their music being played as demonstrations for the sort of people buying equipment in a RadioShack in the early 90s, much in the way The Mind's Eye series was for their video demonstrations (and signature vocalist for MMEB, Chris Thompson, cameoed on the soundtrack for one of them). In some respects Masque pushes a line between "album as commercial entity / art for its own sake" and "album as tech demo for specific hardware". Because Mann owned a studio, the Workhouse, this wasn't just part of the creative process but an investment in digitizing the studio around this time, which of course was, like any recording studio, bookable by other musicians. The Sega Multimedia Studio team obviously had access to one by virtue of the credits, and it was still at least cutting-edge for game soundtracks to use one at the time, but it's worth noting that it was a key part of Mann's music by the mid-80s, which focused on a very sequencer-heavy studio sound. The Fairlight deserves a little digression here, because while it wasn't as common into the 90s as a focal point for music production, in the 80s it was incredibly common for studios, at least ones that wanted to be cutting-edge to have one. While Sterling was credited in his work with Santana mainly as a keyboardist, for Sonic CD, aside from composition, his credits are for playing guitars and programming the Fairlight III synthesizer, the last of Fairlight's (CMI series). Joining him for these songs include Armando Peraza on percussion and Bobby Vega on bass, also from the Santana backing band. Nilsen counted on the work of Mark "Sterling" Crew, whos credits include songwriting for Santana, specifically the song Bella, from the album Blues for Salvador, and keyboards on the same album. ![]() ![]() While every other area, barring Metallic Madness at the very end, had all its music composed by Spencer Nilsen with help from fellow Sega musician David Young, who had also made the CD soundtracks for Spider-Man vs the Kingpin and the Ecco games, among others, the short deadline for publishing Sonic CD meant there wasn't enough time to properly produce as much music as was necessary to fill the game's content. Collision Chaos presents a conundrum for someone who'd want to arrange it.
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