We don’t often cover game music news on RPS, because there’s always the terrifying risk that it opens the door to more people sending us press releases about their chiptune albums inspired by Zelda. But I’m flexing the informal rule today, partly because No Man’s Sky remains so much of an unknown quantity even just two and half months from release, and partly because I really like what I’m hearing of 65daysofstatic‘s OST so far.
I’ve dissed so many musicians without ever intending to. It’s not that I don’t consider them talented, and it’s often not even that I dislike their work. It’s just that I can’t bear to anything that many times. There are very, very few games in which I’ve not dragged the Music slider all the way to zero after an hour or two, desperate to hear something, anything other than what the title’s creators wanted me to.
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In all honesty, I’m not especially on fire with passion at the news of free Dragon Age Inquisition song downloads, but I don’t often get to use the phrase “sheet music” in this line of work, so carpe diem.
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RPS Feature Music and movies and games, oh my
I love end of year lists. They’re reductive and arbitrary, usually ignore anything that happened before March, and even though I claim I read them to discover the things that I might have missed, I’m usually much happier when I find a best-of collection that confirms my own beliefs about the months gone by. There’s something very silly about critics accepting a start date and an end date and attempting to construct a cultural narrative. “This is what happened and this is what mattered.” Here’s my year in music, film and maybe a game or two.
A Diary of Whispered Truths is a tool for creating images like the one above, which would be all very well and groovy, but as you paint, it sings. Well, in my case it coughs out rugged reams of chorduroy, unfashionable and about as smooth as sandpaper bog roll. It can make quite a racket. A Diary is controlled with mouse and keyboard, with the former ‘conducting’ the on-screen activity and the latter providing percussive punctuations. I did not conduct the images and sounds below. My compositions are much more erratic, experimental and ahead of their time.
Do you remember a time when msuic games were so rugged and wild that they required the use of a tiny plastic guitar peripheral? I certainly do. Some people formed bands during their university years and frittered away precious hours creating melancholy joy, entertaining the tune-hungry populace of bee-soaked university bars. Other people – people like me – perfected I Wanna Be Sedated on Guitar Hero while jumping up and down on a bed with a cig in my mouth. Health and safety be damned, this was rock ‘n’ roll and I liked it.
Rhythm games have moved on since then and Sentris, launched into Early Access seconds ago, looks and sounds absolutely delicious. And you can play it while sitting comfortably at your desk.
The pill is disintegrating, lodged in my throat like a swollen seed, sprouting dry and ticklish as it reaches back toward tongue and lips. I need a drink, to sluice it out, wash it down and carry myself away. The lights pulse like a migraine and the music is a song I recognise. Stumbling toward the stage, I grab at the singer, trying to tell him that I know the lyrics and how important it is that I know the lyrics, trying to drink him dry. And then it hits me – I just invaded Nick Cave’s personal space.
No Wave is short, free and noisy.
