Pump up the jams in Forza Horizon 2’s enormous soundtrack

By Will Fulton August 28, 2014

pump jams forza horizon 2s enormous soundtrack 2 — Image used with permission by copyright holder

Read our full Forza Horizon 2 review.

Renowned British DJ Rob da Bank has returned to curate the soundtrack to Forza Horizon 2. The Horizon spin-off to the Forza Motorsport franchise has embraces classic combination of blasting good tunes on the road with an open world setting built around a music festival. With nearly 150 songs spread over seven stations, Horizon 2 has more than twice as much music packed in as the first game.

Rob da Bank, a DJ for BBC Radio and the brain behind England’s Bestival, one of the world’s largest music festivals, has handpicked a wide range of songs, from classic hits to unreleased tracks, that will suit anyone’s taste on the road.

You begin the game with three stations programmed in to your cars: Horizon Pulse for laidback pop (e.g. Architecture in Helsinki, Chromeo, and Little Dragon), Horizon Bass Arena for house, electro, and techno to get your toes tapping (e.g. Nero, Kidnap Kid, and Eric Prydz), and Horizon XS for a mix of classic and new indie and alternative bands (e.g. Pixies, The Clash, and The War on Drugs).

Related: Forza Horizon 2‘s garage includes a hippie bus and an army Jeep

As the game goes on you’ll unlock four more stations. Three are specific to indie labels (Hospital Records, Innovative Leisure, and Ninja Tune) and the fourth is all classical music, if you want to kick it really old school with some Vivaldi as you cruise the European countryside. You can check out the whole list on Xbox Wire or listen to a sampling of the playlist here.

As games become an increasingly mainstream industry, it is interesting to see the emerging collaborations with artists in other disciplines. Whether it’s high profile actors doing voice work, famous producers and singers curating soundtracks, or Hollywood directors collaborating with developers from the ground up, games are losing their stigma as a nerdy niche and increasingly opening up to exciting bridges across media. This can only serve to strengthen all of the media involved as boundaries between the arts become more permeable and new forms blossom.

Forza Horizon 2 comes to Xbox 360 and One on September 3o.

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Will Fulton is a New York-based writer and theater-maker. In 2011 he co-founded mythic theater company AntiMatter Collective…

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