Music Spotlight - Project Destati
Riding the video game music train of my previous posts, I think today's blog post truly spotlights work that embodies earnest passion for celebrating something that you love.
Project Destati is a collection of re-imagined orchestral arrangements of music from the Kingdom Hearts video game series, available to listen on Bandcamp, YouTube, and other modern music streaming platforms. Created by a small team of musicians who are dedicated fans of the series and especially of its beloved musical score, much of which was composed by the legendary game composer Yoko Shimomura, Project Destati pays tribute to the music of Kingdom Hearts with their own unique interpretations of tracks from across all of the games. Out of a planned trilogy of albums, the volumes released so far include Light and Darkness, with a handful of other smaller releases throughout.
The music of Kingdom Hearts is one of the best parts of the series. Even for those who understandably find the games themselves, especially when it comes to the overall plot, to be overly convoluted, the original music and Shimomura's work in particular is still considered a highlight of the series. Not to mention, there is also the absolutely iconic vocal songs produced for each of the main numbered titles, by the incomparable Hikaru Utada (which could easily be its own topic). All of this music has become unforgettable in a series that already stands out for being a one-of-a-kind fusion of Disney and Final Fantasy. Still, with all the complexity of Kingdom Hearts and its grand scale of countless worlds, characters, and storylines weaving in and out with each other, I think this is also why I find Project Destati's work to be particularly outstanding. Through the intricate storytelling meticulously woven into their versatile compositions, Project Destati is often able to succeed in ways that the games have sometimes fallen short when it comes to bringing fuller emotional resonance to the narrative of the Kingdom Hearts games.
A single track by Project Destati can express the entire story of a character, their full emotional arc, with a clarity that the games don't always provide. It often accomplishes this with character-specific medleys that intimately showcase the core musical themes associated with that character, but which also organically intertwine additional themes representing other specific characters, locations, and events that have been a prominent part of this character's unique journey. Personally, the piece "Xion" in the Darkness album might be my favourite example of this! A commenter on the YouTube release of the track puts it into words really well, where they describe two major character themes as "dancing" with each other during a section of the track meant to represent an emotionally pivotal and bittersweet scene between the characters. Pieces like these can be excitingly dense with narrative detail, with some musical references almost feeling like secretive Easter eggs for listeners to notice. Layered with rich textures of both instrumentation and narrative meaning, each song really feels like a unique journey. Listening to certain songs and realizing why specific motifs or a particular character theme is showing up in another piece of music has certainly deepened my understanding of things like the extent to which some characters are connected, and their impact on each other. In short, the music directly strengthens my understanding of the overall narrative.
Music like this could only be made by people who hold so much sincere respect and love for a work that they can completely unravel it and seamlessly stitch it back together, all without losing any — and, in fact, while expanding upon — the heart of its emotional essence. A full heart of appreciation for Project Destati and their music!