Sunday 8 July 2018

Soundtrack Sortin'

John Miller - Heat And Dust


It's hot and humid still. Turns out houses designed to trap heat spectacularly backfire when summer comes so I haven't been doing much of anything. So I took the opportunity to sort out my soundtracks folder and found some good stuff while diving in there. Starting with a slightly interesting tale of Saki Kaskas' Callista, which I'd first heard on the (in hindsight, actually banging) Need For Speed IV soundtrack, only to be nostalgia bombed with it some 10+ years later when it made an appearance as club music in Mass Effect 2. I could go into more about how EA put a some other in-house electronic stuff into the club music of ME2 but that's a tale for another day. Long story short; as someone with an affinity for early 00's electronic vibes, sci-fi settings and making up cyberpunk soundtracks I most definitely approve.



Jesper Kyd has also been a long time recurring member of my soundtrack collection; having going from a demo scene to a mainstay of soundtracks you'll find his name in all sorts of credits these days, from Borderlands to Warhammer. I'd not really given the soundtrack to Codename 47 much thought, but it's chock full of lovely quasi-industrial electronic pieces that set the atmosphere well. The demo version of the Hotel theme takes a little while to get going, but when it does it's super sweet, it's electronics laced with a subtle hint of menace that fits right into a Hitman game. I haven't kept up with his more recent soundtrack work, but after this dive I'm thinking maybe I should.



The soundtrack to Silent Hill 4 is in the same boat, being one I hadn't played of the PS2 games. After digging out the soundtracks to 1-3 not too long ago I thought I'd scratch my itch for more Yamaoka by checking it out. And I wasn't disappointed, keeping on track with the progression of the 1-3 soundtracks there's not a lot of the metal-on-metal industrial noises this time around either. I haven't spent as much time with it as I would have liked, but Fever Chill is one of my favourites as of now, as is to be expected if you've seen me write about the other Trip-Hop style offerings from Yamaoka's soundtracks. The thing I love the most about it though i the almost muzak-like feel the sounds have, if I hadn't already said where it was from who would've guessed this comes from a Horror soundtrack of all places?



-Claude Van Foxbat

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