Don’t you just love media companies?!
First they take my order, then they lose me in their systems and then don’t bother with me until I phone up and complain.
So they’ll be no definite updates until 2nd of December however if I can jump on a PC this week, I have reviews of Assassin Creed II’s OST and Tori Amos’ Midwinter Graces.
Apologies!
Just a heads up to let you know I am moving to my first flat (bye bye parents!) and that I will have no internet access until the 23rd. Therefore, they’ll probably be no updates during that period and as I’ve been packing, that’s why there’s been a lack of new content!
Moving house is stressful!
See you on the otherside!
Lisa Gerrard has a triple bill release! Firstly, her latest album “The Black Opal” is released digitally on Lisa’s website. Also available on the website now is the soundtrack to “Balibo” and her tour CD with Klaus Schulze “Come Quietly”. The samples for all three sound fantastic and we’ll be picking them up shortly for reviewing and general enjoyment. What a month for music!
Be prepared to be amazed and excited. Brendan Perry’s album “Ark” is completed and ready and due to be released early 2010. Brendan has kindly put together a fantastic video showing behind the scenes footage and beautiful landscape cinematography along with a narrative.
Brendan reveals there are eight tracks, including Crescent and Saffron and you can hear samples of them all. HPM are so excited for this release already, just from the samples we feel right at home with it already.
Vib Ribbon is a PlayStation game (that needs a re-release in my opinion!) from madman Masaya Matsuura who created the Parappa franchise. Demented and genius in equal parts – you play your CD collection to make Vibri blossom into a winged dancer!
The Premise
You are Vibri – a kind of cute 2-D drawn rabbit. You must navigate an obstacle course of loops, pits and jumps that your CD track as generated and make it to the other side. Get it right, Vibri survives. If not, he de-evolves into a limp worm! I kid you not…
The Gameplay
As with most rhythm action games, the gameplay is simple yet tricky. You use four buttons, one assigned to each type of obstacle. The obstacles fly at you down a single wave line and you need to press the buttons at the right time to get over them. The speeds and angles can change and then obstacles combine themselves so you must press two buttons together. The only downside is sometimes it doesn’t always recognise you’ve pressed them together and you lose points and energy. If you get about 20 passes in a row you grow wings. If you get several wrong, you’ll end up with a line that shakes like crazy and eventually de-evolve back to a privative form. You can choose just one track from a CD or if you’re game, you can do the whole album.
The Graphics
These are plain, black and white with 2D single lined drawings. It is a line – no more and no less.
The Sound
The game comes with a couple of tracks from Laugh & Peace but after that its all down to your own CD collection.
The Replay Factor
Again limited to you CD collection and your patience (you will need it) this rhythm action game is fun but is best in short sharp bursts, like taking it in turns for a high score in a group.
The Positives
~Random gameplay
~No two tracks will give you the same game
~Vibri is just so cute for a scribbled character
The Negative
~Long gaming sessions can frustrate, especially if you play an album and it all goes wrong on track 12 of 12…
The Verdict
Vib Ribbon is a fantastic game. Original, stylised and full of raw gameplay that’s ready to burst. It may not appeal to the gun totting crowd with their FPS’ but quite frankly I’d rather be bashing buttons with Vibri screaming at me when I’ve made him fall into a pit by accident anyday.
The title says it all, Assassins Creed’s composer is back for the sequel and with the new game set in the Renaissance era I’d expect to hear a mixture of orchestral rousing themes and neat acoustic tracks too. Capitol Studios have confirmed an orchestra and choir have been used and several A-List musicians too. The soundtrack will be available to download from 16th November.
October saw HPM have three distinct leaders in the race for top spot and despite only being a listen-to-the-samples post, Lisa Gerrard topped the bill for October while we all wait in anticipation for “The Black Opal”. Christoper Tin and Winifred Phillips followed closely behind with their interviews and reviews while Anonymous 4 was quickly catching all three at the end of the month. The top 10 are listed below:
01) Lisa Gerrard (^)
02) Christopher Tin (v)
03) Winifred Phillips (RE)
04) Anonymous 4 (NE)
05) Brendan Perry (-)
06) Imogen Heap (v)
07) Tori Amos (RE)
08) Hiroki Kikuta (v)
09) OverClocked Remix (v)
10) Yasunori Mitsuda (RE)
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Game Reviews
01) Battle Tanks (PS3)
02) Shatter (PS3)
03) .detuned (PS3)
04) Trash Panic (PS3)
05) Numblast (PS3)
Silent Hill 4 -The Room- once again see’s Akira Yamaoka throw himself and the kitchen sink at a bizarre mix of ambience, noise, haunting melodies and rocked out beats. This time round the ambience and noise have been put on a back burner however as we gear up for the most melodic assault yet.
Mary Elizabeth McGlynn returns with her achingly emotive vocals. They are first showcased with “Tender Sugar”, a slow but climactic almost darkwave piece with haunting guitars and a very low-res production – a trait that stays with us for the rest of soundtrack. At first I found the low-res approach a turn off and in some respects it still is – but if you listen to the whole thing all the way through, you don’t notice it after a short while. “Tender Sugar” is a stunning opener setting a new darker tone for the vocal pieces and sets up the listener perfectly for what’s to come.
“Waverer” is one of the more abstract tunes. A minimal drum, bass and warped echoing piano/guitar feedback hybrid swirl throughout the piece enticing you in further. “Fortunate Sleep -noone disturb her dead-” then slides in after a small noise interlude with a song that reminds me of “Forest” from Silent Hill 2 for some reason. It’s not very similar sounding but its in the same tone for me.
“Melancholy Requiem” begins the first real instrumental “song” with arpeggios of piano and some distorted keyboards and string implements. The whole piece has a dirty, edgy and uncomfortable feel to it – it encapsules the essence of Silent Hill completely especially as the song degenerates into discorded ambience – a trait again carried in many songs.
“Confinement” has a mean guitar and percussive edge to it and brings you back to the old guitar sounds of the original Silent Hill songs before “Drops of Shame” takes you on an eerie trip-hop ambient climb around the echoing room. “The Suicidal Clock Chime” is a short piece of humming noises and discorded clangs of a very broken organ by the sounds of things before “Silent Circus” returns to the trip-hop beats for a quirky tune that is actually quite funky and chilled out.
“Traversing the Portals of Reality” then returns to the more grungy guitar riffs of earlier tracks with a very b-movie stabbing organ sound that lends itself very well to rock music, as does the out of tune violins! Great work! “Into The Depths of Self Discovery” then gives us an unnerving “new age” track of keyboard delights that pulsates with echoing soft screams flying through the piece. It’s probably the closest the soundtrack comes to a properly laid out melody too in an instrumental song.
“Cradel of Forest” sees the return of Joe Romersa on vocals for an excellent song. His vocals came under a bit of criticism in Silent Hill 3’s Soundtrack however here they fit the song perfectly and actually made me appreciate “Hometown” much more. Mary gives us some backing vocals too in this catchy rock song.
“Resting Comfortably” is the only sub minute song but I adore it. Its just a circle of synthesized vocals (it sounds like it anyway) but my goodness I could listen to it for ages on end. Eerie and subtle it leads straight into “Nightmarish Waltz” with distorted vocals and drum loops before the essence of “Resting Comfortably” returns for “Pulsating Ambience” where the songs non-vocal parts are accompanied by disorientating percussive booming bassy boings, almost like an Indian Udu Pot but Silent Hill style!
Onto vocal track three “Your Rain” with Mary on full song with heartbreaking weariness before the anthemic chorus pounds through your heart. This one took a few listens before I really appreciated it but now its a firm favourite.
“The Last Mariachi” is a completely carefully mucked up song and shows genius is how to make something likeable out of non-tune before my favourite instrumental song appears. “Wounded Warsong” is all about building tension as the chords pull up further and further with grinding padded synths crawling you up with it. It gets me going every listen – pure class.
“Underground Dawn -Never Come-” is similar to the second track, trip-hop drum beats and random guitar ambience flows throughout before “Fever Chill” takes away the guitars for some banging around on vibraphones and keyboards. “Remodeling” is the last of the official instrumentals which takes you off on a fun paced tour de force of random sampling and noises which is what the series does best.
To finish the real soundtrack off we have two stunning vocal tracks. The first “Room Of Angel” is easily the most downbeat original vocal track for a game I’ve came across to date and for that it deserves a mention. The bond between piano, vocal and ambient background is electric and you can feel yourself losing your strength. Some may think its too miserable – I think its superb! Finally “Waiting For You ~Live at heaven’s Night~” is a bonus track that’s not live at all. Its unreleased and they have simply and somewhat pointlessly popped a cheering crowd in it – thankfully it doesn’t sound fake. The song is catchy and have great hooks – a good rock out grunge style with Mary giving it some welly!
The second disc features a spoken story in Japanese called “Inescapable Rain in Yoshiwara”. The reader speaks gruffy and performs voices for all the monsters leading to some quite bizarre and unnerving screeching and moaning! Of course it would be no fun it wasn’t set to all the noise that characterises the Silent Hill series.
Each chapter is given a note of the music scale and each one works in harmony with the next. The atmosphere is tense and I’m sure if it were in English, you could appreciate the disc a whole lot more. However even in Japanese you can immerse yourself as the reader gets well into the story and the ambience unnerves you.
So does it match the previous three soundtracks? In a word – Yes! This soundtrack took an awful long time for me to really appreciate. I instantly fell in love with 2 & 3, and the original soundtrack I believe deserves status purely on its bold statement of noise. It didn’t feel like collectively it held together as the balance of melody overcame the ambience and therefore lacklustureness random noises couldn’t hold their own.
Now however on a relisten while writing this review, I can safely say it deserves its place up with the first three soundtracks. A fine collection, a fine series – Well done Akira Yamaoka!
Does she not have a sit down?! Ayumi Hamasaki is back after the fantastic Next Level album (I really need to review that don’t I?) with her 47th single! “Ballad / You Were…” is a AA side single with a third track “Red Line – for TA” as an extra. There’ll be two versions, one with optional DVD. That must mean another album is coming – the singles out 16th December.
Charlotte Martin’s instrumental album Piano Trees will be released digitally on 10th November. Two of the gourgeous songs can be heard on her myspace page. With Tori’s album out the same day, its a great day for HPM! Also Charlotte’s rarities.6 will be released on the same day. There is talk of getting all the rarities together for one big CD release and that would be relished by her overseas fans (like HPM!)
Congrats to Danny Oldgrove from Liverpool, UK for guessing 39 of the 40 songs correctly! A copy of Kingdom Heart’s Piano Collections is on its way to you. Here are the answers for those who took part:
01 – angel’s fear again – hiroki kikuta – soukaigi
02 – promenade concerto – akira tsuchiya – atelier elie unknown origin
03 – guided by the wind – rio hamamoto – soul calibur 2 ost
04 – flux – otograph – pixeljunk monsters ost
05 – to you – mayuko aoki – ffx-2 vocal yuna
06 – star shape – yoshitaka hirota – shadow hearts
07 – hopping sun – noriyuki iwadare – radiata stories
08 – cyber dance – tenpei sato – disgaea 2 arrange tracks
09 – vamps dance – norihiko hibino – mgs 2 other side
10 – amerthyst caverns – module – shatter ost
11 – amidatti and also elenor – kumi tanioka – ff cc
12 – takiyuki nomura – spirits – lumines remixes
13 – sega sst band – space harrier theme – sega game music vol 1
14 – stuart chatwood – reverse the sands of time – prince of persia sands of time
15 – masaharu iwata – alice in – baroque ost
16 – yu miyake – hex – tekken 4
17 – illreme – kuru kuru rock – we love katamari
18 – yuzo koshiro – the shinobi – yuzo koshiro best
19 – yasunori mitsuda – termina another – chrono cross
20 – naoshi mizuta – sanctary of zi’tah – final fantasy xi visions of jilart
21 – jesper kyd – arabian dance – hitman 2
22 – takami asano – losa angeles – chase hq
23 – nathan mcree – tomb raider main theme – tomb raider 2
24 – motoi sakuraba – in the beginning there was light – valkyrie profile ost
25 – akira honda – ardjet – zoe 2
26 – naoyuki sato – the night is coming – the smile of you ~ theme from elebits
27 – jack wall – the forest and the swamp – myst 3
28 – shin-ichirou satou – bamboo thicket – onimusha buraiden
29 – miki higashino – the even more b.golden city – genso suikoden 2
30 – akira yamaoka – theme of saber dance – silent hill homecoming
31 – winifred phillips – absolutely positive – sim animals
32 – kenji ito – gurgu volcano – chocobo racing
33 – bjorn arve lagrim – winterland – the longest journey
34 – hirokazu tanaka & keiichi suzuki – 8 melodies (toy piano) – mother 1+2
35 – masaharu hamauzu – bt ver.6 – unlimited saga
36 – pierre esteve – rheas garden – atlantis 2
37 – robin beanland – sad bees bad bees – conker live and reloaded
38 – nubuo umatseu – dear friends – ff5
39 – jerry buckney * andy garcia – ode to a centipede – pacman fever
40 – zunata – puchi carat – puchi carat
The demo scene has really just one title on PS3 and it really left people a bit confused and wanting for more. The team that gave us “Linger in Shadows” now give us “.detuned” – a funked up demoscene project.
The Premise
Well I’m not sure there is one! Basically you control a poor guy in a chair and to the music of your choice, manipulate him into all kinds of objects and get him to dance. That’s it – its just a demoscene afterall.
The Gameplay
What little gameplay there is, is basic and uninvolving. You can zoom the camera about and choose four different objects to inflate the man’s up into and once you’ve inflated them all and made him dance around his chair you’ve seen it all. It’s a step back from at least the look and find effort with Shadows…
The Graphics
The graphics are fluid but less impressive than Shadows (I keep comparing the two but as the only demoscene games on the PSN, it is inevitable). As there’s not a lot to do, I found myself looking at the surroundings which are nice but I wished there was more to it and maybe some animation to it.
The Sound
Well, the one track included is a good funky floor stomper so I can’t complain there to be honest, but the game wants you to use your own mp3 collection to see what happens but I’ve not seen any changes.
The Replay Factor
Literally, grab the trophies and come back to it for a post drink cheap laugh in a few weeks and it may seem fresh but you couldn’t get away with more than that.
The Positives
~Good single track of music
~Elephant heads!
The Negatives
~Not enough variation of the theme
~Lacking visually and in terms of gameplay
~For an extra pound of money you can have some absolutely fantastic PSN titles instead.
The Verdict
Shallow, limited and containing no element of fun after five minutes, “.detuned” is a missed opportunity. A big combo system to get new moves, unlock new characters and even change environments could have seen this become a niche game that I’d have come back to. As it is, it feels completely unfinished and not worthy of your money when for less than a pound more, you can have a blast on Noby Noby Boy or Trash Panic or pay £1.50 and have Numblast. Now those are real games that take a concept and run with it…
Freezepop are this weeks Video vault with the brilliantly silly video to “Parlez Vous Freezepop?” You can watch them in action here.
Tori Amos’ much discussed Christmas album “Midwinter Graces” now has 30 second samples available and someone has kindly popped them into one clip. Take a listen here – what do you all think? I’m excited – come on snow!!!
While we wait for Magic Neighbour to arrive on my doorstep, here’s a great live performance of Cry Wolf from Lisa Germano. There is not enough love for this ladies work.
After reviewing their excellent new compilation album, HPM managed to get five minutes with the fab quartet in between tour dates. Here’s what they had to say…
Why are you called Anonymous 4? You all have such beautiful voices, it must be hard to stay Anonymous!
It was a musical joke, a rather esoteric one! Anonymous 4 is a designation by a modern musicologist for one of many treatises about music and musicians that were written in the Middle Ages, all of them unsigned. This particular treatise describes music from around 1200 in Paris, and names composers who wrote (but also didn’t sign or take credit for) some of the most brilliant vocal music of the day.
When going through hymns to choose to be recorded and arranged for yourselves, how do you pick which hymns to do?
We do concept concerts and concept albums. Each of our programs comes from a certain time and place, like 13th-century France, or 15th-century England. Sometimes, a program is drawn from a certain musical manuscript (Montpellier Codex). Other times, it’s based on a certain personality (the Virgin Mary, St. James) so we choose music with texts focused on that person. And yet at other times, a program follows a certain liturgy or service (e.g. a Mass or Vespers service) which requires certain types of pieces to follow a specific order.
Each of these ways of organizing a concert or a recording guides and limits our choices of pieces to include – and that’s a good thing, as there’s so much great music to choose from! Within those limits, we still sing through lots of relevant music, looking for fabulous pieces and seeking a balance between continuity and variety in musical style and texture.
Do any of you have any particular favourites from your compilation CD “Four Centuries of Chant” or favourite hymns in particular?
Every time we work up music for a new recording, the music for that recording becomes our favorite music. And the pieces we chose to include on the Four Centuries of Chant compilation are some of the most-loved works from all of that favorite music. So it’s very hard to choose one piece in this compilation over another. But one of the hymns that we do love to sing as a magical way to end a show is our English version of “Ave Maris Stella” (track 2), an incredibly beautiful hymn to the Virgin Mary that dates back at least to the 9th century. And one of the most deeply moving pieces, with incredible intertwining of text and melody, is the English lament of Mary, “Stabat iuxta Christi crucem” (track 5).
How are all your lovely pet’s doing? Do they come with you on tour?
Oh, don’t we wish they would! Nora, the piano-playing cat, made her first TV appearance this afternoon. She seems to be starting her own touring career! So why should all our wonderful kitties (and one dog) not come along…
How do you find going on tour? Do you find your music hits a more emotional place when performed live?
We find that it works both ways. So many people who come to our concerts tell us afterward that they have been transported as we’ve sung our seemingly otherworldly music. But we have also had wonderful reports of our recorded music being used to usher in new life, to accompany people out of this life, and to ease and enhance the healing process after injury or during treatment for illness.
Where else chant-wise would you like to explore next?
We’ve just premiered Secret Voices, a new program of music from the 13th-century Spanish Las Huelgas Codex. We’re really enjoying the diverse styles we’re able to explore in this manuscript, including varying types of 2-part, 3-part, and 4-part polyphony, and some very beautiful chant. We’ll be recording Secret Voices in November, for future release on the harmonia mundi label.
We thank Anonymous 4 for their time and we recommend you see them on tour!
Having discovered Anonymous 4 via Christopher Tin’s “Calling All Dawns” album, I picked up the quartet’s latest album which is a kind of retrospective over their career taking segments from each of their previous albums.
To review “Four Centuries of Chant” is very difficult as the album is a completely fluid being. One song envelopes you into another and is done so in a way that transitions softly and almost without notice. What I can tell you however is how the experience is quite profound in a way and the vocal talents of these four ladies really touch something that is rarely touched upon.
The open trio of songs is taken from “An English Ladymass” and are 13th and 14th Century chants. They are sparse, elegant and humbling. There is a certain stillness to them almost Buddhist like, in a meditative state of being and just channelling positive energy out. A beautiful start the album.
The next trio is taken from “The Lily & The Lamb” and is a chant from medieval England. The three pieces continue to send you away to another world, particularly the rousing middle section where some higher vocal sections show some fantastic precision and execution by being both powerful and serenely angelic at the same time. Three chants for St. James from the Codex Calixtinus appear next from “Miracles of Sant’lago” and continue to ascend to audio heaven with some beautiful scales and pitch changes.
“Te Deum: Isten, tegad” from “A Star in the East” is from medieval Hungary but continues the same vein of vocal restraint while “Responsory: Spiritui sancto” from “11,000 Virgins” effortlessly spins a yarn of heavenly soars and magical calm sections.
As the album continues through the rest of its 20 tracks, you’ll have floated so far away from home you’ll almost forget you’re listening to four distinct voices travelling with you. The music never really deviates from the first track to the last and there is just one style of chant performed.
Anonymous 4 are fantastic. “Four Centuries of Chant” is perfect for the end of a busy day to relax, as a meditative album to drift off to or even as an album to feel at peace. There is something unique about the quartet’s voices that harmonize as one and therefore despite singing in an old tongue, they carry a message all of their own and you’ll be captivated until the last breath. Magical.
Winifred Phillip’s latest soundtrack “Spore Hero” was released this week and we gave it two thumbs up! We were lucky enough to get to ask a few questions about her processes when writing a soundtrack and you can read them below…
When you first started work on the Spore Hero Soundtrack, how did you manage to find the music concept that finished up with? There is definitely a very specific style to the music.
My music producer Winnie Waldron and I spent a lot of time thinking about what musical style would best suit Spore Hero. Since the game is set in the primitive ‘creature stage’ of the Spore evolutionary timeline, it made sense to employ musical techniques that were evocative of an ancient world. The landscape of Spore Hero is also a very friendly place, so the music needed to reflect that. But, while keeping all this in mind, Winnie and I knew that the creature creator was at the heart of the game. It allows the player to constantly reconfigure the anatomy of his or her character, adding levels of complexity that turn a previously simple creature into a more capable and heroic adventurer. Winnie and I focused on the idea of evolution and increasing intricacy as a central theme for the music of the game. The music of Spore Hero begins in a very cheerful and primitive place, and then introduces more sophistication and magnitude as the game progresses.
You used some fantastic instruments in the soundtrack – did you have any favourites that you placed in a song anywhere.
I had a great time experimenting with instrumentation that I hadn’t had an opportunity to use before. A favorite instrument on this project was actually a bowl full of water – it could produce some amazing sounds. I had a lot of fun with percussion in this project. Rainstick had this great tribal quality that I liked a lot. For some tracks I used a plastic jug in the drum section. The flexatone was super for adding quirkiness and humor. Also, I loved the spring drum for those rumbling sounds it can make.
Had you played the original Spore game previously and if so did it have any influence on how your soundtrack for the sequel was formed?
When we found out we were going to be working on this project, my music producer Winnie Waldron and I started playing the original Spore game right away. Our takeaway was that musical content in the creature stage of the PC game is pretty sparse. This works well for the simulation-style experience that Spore PC offers, but the Spore Hero development team at EA wanted the music in their game to be persistent and knitted continuously into the experience. So Winnie and I had to develop a completely new approach.
Your musical scores are always very cinematic and fluid instead of being a straight hook-repeat-second hook-repeat style. Is that something you purposely do and do you think writing in a rigid style requires a different type of musical ability to your more fluid style?
I think it’s good to be comfortable writing in traditional song form, which is something I’ve done for a number of my projects. But song form has a fairly static feel; it expresses a particular mood or state of mind and then re-expresses that state, maybe in a heightened way towards the end. It doesn’t morph and change very much, and when you’re playing a videogame, things are likely to be changing pretty rapidly. Song form tends to feel pasted on top of the action, rather than integrated into the experience. Lately in my composition work I’ve been using gestural techniques – in which the music creates a sense of movement reminiscent of a pair of hands gesturing during a conversation. I’ll combine that with more thematic, melody-based composition, and the rhythmic structures that I’ve always experimented with. I think that the Spore Hero soundtrack has some of the most aggressively rhythmic composition work that I’ve done so far.
As always Winnie Waldron worked with you as producer. Were there any particular problems or goals Winnie had for this specific soundtrack?
The Spore Hero project was challenging in a lot of ways. I was very fortunate to have such a talented and inspired music producer working at my side. Winnie Waldron contributed immeasurably to all aspects of the creative process during work on Spore Hero, but I’d say that continuity was one of her biggest goals. She wanted the music of the entire game to feel well knitted together with a consistent style, which was a difficult task to achieve. The game jumps quickly between picturesque exploration, comedic minigames and epic combat. Creating a musical structure that could support all three activities and still feel unified was a daunting task. Winnie’s vigilance and artistic vision kept the score within the framework of a cohesive style, and I’m very grateful to her for that.
A lot of the tracks on Spore Hero have so many different things going on at once – how on Earth do you start to score things on such a huge scale?
I had to start simple. Some of the tracks were written for piano first. That gave me the opportunity to create all the counterpoint and gesture lines in a sort of laboratory setting. I could experiment and see if things worked before I expanded the instrumentation.
Will you be involved in any more Spore related music in the future (if you’re allowed to say) or if not, after having a nice rest of course, what’s next for Winifred Phillips?
All I can say is that I’m looking forward to the next big challenge, and I’m very excited about the future!
HPG would like to thank Winifred Phillips for her time and insight – and it looks like another big projects on its way!
Last time we spoke to Winifred Phillips she dangled a carrot over a possible secret EA project – well that carrot has blossomed into the wonderfully theatrical Spore Hero OST. The 18 soundtrack is out now and it’s a charming collection of music.
Opening with “Spore Hero Main Theme”, the mood is set with a playful, inquisitive but fully fleshed piece which is instantly listenable and ever evolving whilst not really having a big hook to keep you held. It’s the comical bumbling bass line that does it for me. “Home World” is rich with strings and tuned percussion. The way how it sways from warmth to potential troubled waters and then back again.
“Haven” is where the soundtrack really starts to stretch its legs. The theme is beautifully choreographed and effortlessly envelopes you into its various states of being. One thing that Winifred is able to do is to seemlessly blend all kinds of sensations and feelings into one piece. “Haven” is a perfect demonstration of a fantastic song that doesn’t sit still and has the cutest of embellishments.
“Sporeable” is dramatic in a cartoon fashion. You could just imagine Tom & Jerry playing out a chase with this music overlaid. It’s very cinematic in its tone and scope. “Sporaging” is similar in feel but with more pace and gusto. There’s a nice galloping beat in the second half that really pushes things forward.
“Spore Zone” is a beautiful six minute symphonic suite that combined with electronics and an eastern fusion set the tone for a quirky but atmospheric piece. I especially like how the drums sound like an animal walking through grass. The whole track has a moonlight feel to it too.
“Monster Mayhem” is the first fully fledged ‘battle’ track in the loosest of terms. The brass and timpani really give a great sense of urgency and demise yet the woodwind still keeps everything under a certain umbrella of quirky cartoon sound that the soundtrack carries through as a whole.
“Sporexplore” is a great mood track. It’s got the bumbling animal feel down to a fine art due to the fantastic use of tuned percussion and various instruments from different corners of the globe. The use of instruments from different countries is something that Phillips has really integrated perfectly. “Beast Brawl” is another action packed track that sounds like it should be on Yasunori Mitsuda’s “Box Garden” soundtrack. Anyone that uses a jew’s harp on a dramatic track gets my vote!
“Wanderment” is full of lush sweeping string sections interspersed with more pensive sections and Irish undertones of whistles and horns. This is the majestic track of the album. “Sporeward” is a more mystical track with an ethereal background that shimmers to the foreground in the latter part of the track. It’s strangely compelling to listen to on repeat and has become a favourite of mine from the soundtrack. It just has an understated beauty to it.
“Creepy Things” is no horror. In fact the track is just as much playful as it is pumpkin scary. It reminds me of the PS1 Medieval games scores – very cinematic and children friendly thus its full of charm and oozes a quirky personality. The harp deserves a special mention on this track. “Evolvable” which really needs to be put in the dictionary as a new word from…now… is a great track. It’s full of twists, turns and dramas. Nothing is left out of this track and the whole musical kitchen sink is thrown in and its all the better for it.
“Sporeabilities” is a warming track with lots of wood blocks, marimba’s and Irish flutes it leads nicely into “Nemesis” which is and out and out battle track. The orchestration here is superb as it really bounds out everything with big stabs of brass and bass. Your blood will be bumping at 130bpm by the end of the track. “Critters” then gives you a breather with a spacious track with the wobbliest bass line I’ve heard in ages.
This then leads into “Spore War” which is completely different to the rest of the soundtrack. This track stands out with its electric guitar undertones and choral samples layering what is already a fully fleshed string and bass accompaniment. It more of a battle cry to rouse you up and get fighting – a fantastic track. The soundtrack closes with “Hero Theme” which is a militant style track but with hooks a plenty and all the brass you can shake a conductors wand at. It has a large scale to it that really pays off and sees you finishing the soundtrack ready for another go.
Winifred Phillips is great at crating soundtracks that are more like cinematic scores than game scores. “Spore Hero” falls firmly into the cinematic animation category. It has charm by the bucket load and some really interesting uses of world instruments and tuned percussion. The battle tracks are really something special and there some great clumsy comical tracks here too. Winifred Phillips continues to blur the line between cinematic scores and computer game soundtracks and does it with aplomb with “Spore Hero”!
This week’s live vault is Christopher Tin with his fantastic “Baba Yetu” taken from his album “Calling All Dawns”. The sheer power of the track can be felt even in this amateur recording. Fantastic.
