When you think of a single player side-scrolling racing game where you’re battling to take the lead, you have set expectations in your mind as to what kinds of music you mind expect. What you don’t expect is a riotous comedy gospel choir jamming away to African electronica. Yet the soundtrack to the game Harold is some of the best and uplifting music out there and it’s the perfect album for motivation!
Across the twelve tracks, there are four specific themes rearranged into three different versions. “Jungle” has a real percussive vibe, “Desert” is more like an Arabian dancefloor, “Arctic” veers slightly towards a stadium rock vibe but with guitars replaced by heavy bass lines instead and “Beach” is more like a ukelele party with trumpets aplenty. Across all these four themes, Leroy Steat’s Gospel Choir out do themselves. The lyrics are all entirely around cheering you on to win the race. They cry “goooo” and “don’t give up – you’re gonna win the race!” and so on but as the music swells and explodes into a bigger and bigger rapture you can’t help but get washed along with the ride. It’s absolutely phenomenal. The challenge versions of the track are instrumental and more like rock versions of each theme whilst extended versions of the four original tracks shows just how many variants and play on themes there are. In the game itself, the music crossfades over different themes to build up as you get closer to the finish line and when you are winning, so to hear it all merged together into a seamless song is beautiful. You really appreciate the varied instrumentation as its given much more time to breathe and change up every four bars.
So, if you ever feel like you want to have some gospel positivity but in a completely unique, dancefloor paced vibe – pick up the superb soundtrack “Harold – the Original Funny Songs”. Olivier Deriviere never does anything in a standard format and this is no different. He is a true pioneer in music.
Recommended track: Jungle Long Version