To coincide with the latest issue of the Cane and Rinse podcast (Volume Three, number 135: Borderlands 2), here are some tracks – including those well-selected opening themes and some of those effective in-game ambient pieces – from Gearbox/2K’s brace of FPSRPGs.

Away from headliners Guns N’ Roses and Avril Lavigne (pronounced La-vig-knee as far as I’m concerned) the selection of ‘EA Trax’ that make up Burnout Paradise’s extensive playlist features a smattering of quality tunes that I’m happy to have as mainstays within my own music collection, and that I actually enjoy tearing up the streets of Paradise City to. Except when DJ Atomika feels the need to interject...

In the latest issue of the Cane and Rinse podcast dedicated entirely to Rare’s bear and bird we feature some of and celebrate Grant Kirkhope’s wonderful Banjo-Kazooie music.

Music plays a huge part in that game’s atmosphere, charm, theme – you collect 100 musical notes (well, technically 200 I think as each is a quaver) on each world for a start – and title.

Oh yeah, and the lead characters are named after musical instruments. If you can call the kazoo a musical instrument. Which I suppose you can.

Anyway, I loved the B-K OST from the minute I started playing the game back in 1998 and still love it to this day having just been back through it on Xbox Live Arcade and done everything – and I mean everything – all over again in 2014.

I wasn’t the only one and where I lack the skill (and equipment) to express my affection for Kirkhope’s jolly, funny and eminently catchy tunes, plenty of talented people out there have performed terrific covers for us to enjoy.

Even if Tony and I weren’t quite as enamoured as Jay and Sean with Media Molecule’s Tearaway (definitely not to be confused with the Sonic-esque antics of Tearaway Thomas on the Amiga) in our recent podcast, one thing that the entire panel were singing from the same hymn-sheet about was Kenneth Young and Brian D’Oliveira’s videogame-atypical folksy music.

As ever you can hear a few snatches during the course of the podcast, but let’s use this week’s Music Monday to explore Tearaway’s rich musical tapestry a little further.

Firstly a video from the Official PlayStation Channel which sees Mr Young explaining how sea shanties and other traditional forms of music provided the source for much of Tearaway’s uncommonly earthy audio palette...

Keita Nagahashi’s (Katamari Damacy) suggestive plaything Noby Noby Boy will most likely be remembered for – if anything – its surrealist planetscapes, all-but unachievable cooperative end-goal and its cheeky concept of, ahem, reporting a boy’s length to a girl.

Aside from its mystifying gameplay, confusing menus, pernickety cameras and obtuse controls, the 2009 PSN exclusive (which has since stretched its way onto iOS) amused me greatly with it’s deleriously ‘pointless’ play (not really gameplay), freewheeling ideas and absurdist sitauations, but mostly with its surprisingly eclectic (embellished with further tunes through a free update some months into the game’s life) soundtrack.

Namco veteran Yuu Miyake’s (Tekkens, Ridge Racers, Katamari Damacies) original score features over 30 tracks of mostly mellow ambience but still a range of subtly different moods across a wide variety of instruments including melodica, ocarina, ukulele, vibraphone and kalimba as well as more (perhaps) traditional stuff like blues guitar and cello...