ambient

monolithic. perhaps no other album invites that description more: at over 150 minutes of pure texture, with barely any rhythm or momentum, saw2 looms where other albums get in and get out. it begins as a monumental, immersive experience and never leaves it. no time to ease in. soothing, pastoral, haunting, smoke-like from the start. minimalism to the point of gigantism.

its predecessor is the better aphex entry point, pairing beautiful soundscapes with james’s inventive rhythms, but this album shows just how beautiful and layered those soundscapes are, presenting 24 of them without accompaniment. james would never do this again, and its length and unrelenting commitment make it his most fully realized concept.

plenty of great ambient music exists, but this takes the original concept, theorized by popol vuh and klaus schulze and refined by brian eno, to its logical conclusion, stretching it to the breaking point. while avoiding the new age conceits of harold budd or steve roach, it solidified this cold, vast style as a genre. it’s the big, massive sun around which all the others revolve. the most important album of its genre, and brilliant from back to front.

the best indicator of a song’s effectiveness in a game is whether it triggers a different emotional response at two points in time, despite being the same song.

when i first booted up outer wilds, i was brimming with curiosity, since everyone i know swears by it and i knew nothing about it. the main title theme was a plucky guitar tune that seemed to invite me on a wonderful adventure.

when i beat it, the credits rolled over a tear-jerking ballad before fading to black. then came a flickering campfire and that familiar guitar tune, now feeling completely different, as if saying thanks for playing. after the grandness of the solar system, it all led back to a humble campfire song.

i’ll miss it all, except dark bramble. fuck that place.

for 41 minutes, this green world is yours

disco elysium is one of the most personally important works of art i’ve ever experienced, and a big part of why is the incredible soundtrack by sea power. the band became entwined with the game, providing the music while the game references lyrics from their older albums and even their polar bear mascot. every track is part of the world, and hearing each one brings me back to specific places in the game and the emotions i felt there.

there’s the immense despair of tiger king, the calm of the whirling-in-rags themes, the unnerving darkness of the doomed commercial area, and the devastating sadness of live with me, during which i wept like with no other game, movie, or book. every track ends at the right time, like the thumping your body betrays your degeneracy.

but one stands above the rest: la revacholiere, the most beautiful piece of soundtrack i’ve ever heard. it changed my outlook on life. after years of depression, this game broke me, then rebuilt me with new hope. “after life, death, after death, life again.”

i keep returning to this soundtrack since discovering the “esper mk. ii” bootleg editions, and vangelis is now my most listened artist because of it.

i own the official 1994 cd, having fallen in love with the movie on first viewing, but the esper version sheds a whole new light on it. it collects every piece of vangelis’s music and incidental atmospheric sound that clever people have extracted from all the film’s versions, on every format, and even video games. i know there’s since been an official “blade runner trilogy, 25th anniversary” 3cd release doing something similar, but i haven’t heard it yet. the esper edition is easy to find online, and you can cut the pointless bits, like short background noise fragments, to build your own ultimate version of this immersive experience.

one highlight is ‘one more kiss dear’, which has a distant transistor radio sound, complete with interference and breaking-up moments. it feels even more evocative, always on the verge of collapsing and revealing the edges of the false reality that is part of the movie’s theme.

other great pieces missing from the official cd include ‘spinner ascent (los angeles november 2019)’, ‘deckard meets rachel (rachel’s voight kampff test)’, ‘morning at the bradbury’ and ‘the prodigal son brings death’. i’ll never tire of slipping into the world this music creates. vangelis shows absolute genius in composing, building atmosphere, and making a soundtrack as expressive and important as the movie itself.

рано или поздно наступает момент, когда ты взрослеешь: по-другому смотришь на привычное, находишь новые увлечения, берешь на себя ответственность. но кое-что проходит с нами сквозь детство, юность и взрослую жизнь. например, майнкрафт. песочница превратилась в огромный открытый мир, а потом в мир понасыщеннее. всё это время нас сопровождала музыка дэниела розенфельда. если альфа-альбом это ностальгическая поездка по лучшим временам, то бета-альбом те же времена, но возмужавшие. треки по восемь-пятнадцать минут отрывают от земли и несут над горизонтом. aria math доказывает, что бета ничем не хуже альфы, хотя нравится мне меньше. альбом заметно вырос: тридцать треков, почти два с половиной часа. не бойтесь взрослеть.

twin peaks is the greatest tv series ever: the seamy underside of small-town life, lynchian in all its glory, spread across a wide canvas of characters, all echoing from one young woman’s murder. funny, touching, disturbing, deeply strange, and utterly unique.

angelo badalamenti’s lush score is central to its atmosphere. the opening theme, with its huge reverberating guitar and synthesized melody, feels like an epic romantic soap opera. warm synthesizers drift between moods: laura palmer’s theme moves from brooding passages into tragic piano crescendos, while “audrey’s dance” is whirling, disorienting lounge-jazz. the vibraphones are intoxicating, “the bookhouse boys” is savage and dark, and “night life in twin peaks” hums with low-level nausea. david lynch wrote lyrics sung by julee cruise, whose ethereal voice gives them a little-girl-lost eeriness. “into the night,” with its whispered “now it’s dark” and one startling orchestral strike, is chilling.

smoothly atmospheric, eerily calm, and ear-ringing. genius, necessarily.

perfect soundtrack, perfect game, every track recalls its scene

it may be just me but this is a great