Sounds like…
The cinematic soundtrack to your own nature documentary.
The review
AWAY: The Survival Series has had me intrigued since its first trailer and I plan to pick it up in the usual holiday retail therapy plunge! It is a game that puts you in open spaces as various creatures to play out a nature documentary. As you can imagine, scoring this could be a daunting task but Mike Raznick rises to the occasion with some beautifully evocative music.
The centrepiece of this soundtrack is without doubt ‘Sugar Glider- Training Day’. It is a seven-minute orchestrated character piece. From the quirky steel drums and woodwind that gives a curious ‘gotta climb a mountain’ steely ambition, the music builds and builds over time into a mechanical wheel of percussive glassy tones. It isn’t about out and out power or dramatic strings but it puts me into stealth drama and a focused mode perfectly. It’s fascinating because a lot of the other seven tracks on the release are far more cinematically bombastic and have real scale and scope to them but I kept coming back to the quieter moments. That doesn’t mean that ‘Soaring in the Clouds’ and ‘Bearded Vulture – VR Flight’ in particular aren’t superb cinematic treats, mind. It’s just that the sound palette for ‘Exploring the Biosphere Dome’ really paints a sonic picture to let your imagination run riot. A creature dancing here, something lurking under the foliage there. It’s really cleverly done. My only complaint is it’s just 26 minutes and I wanted more of this diverse character-driven score.
Mike Raznick has a degree in environmental sciences and is clearly having great fun bringing nature to life through music. His ability to give animal actions a sound motif is top tier. It’s also worth noting all proceeds of AWAY: The Survival Series Soundtrack will go to The Audobon Society. The Audobon Society help protect birds and their habitats. As a standalone soundtrack, it is short but very sweet. I’d love to see it synced with gameplay footage of the animals to create an Anima Mundi styled audio-visual movie too. I think it’d work really well. Well worth taking the flight for.
Recommended track: Sugar Glider – Training Day
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AWAY: The Survival Series Soundtrack