The Valleys Are Alive With The Sound Of Music: The Bends

The Bends is short, free, pleasant, and even playable in your browser if you want. There, that covers the list of excuses you might have to not play it. It's a walkable song, I suppose - a pretty little valley filled with megaliths that build a chilled-out song piece by piece. After a busy week, it might help you unwind or get pumped for the weekend. I don't know what you're into. I don't know what you get up to. Please, don't tell me.

Each megalith we activate in The Bends adds a layer to its song, flashing as they spit out bits from a snappy drum snare to warbling synth. They're all synchronised so it doesn't descend into a cacophony. I enjoy building the song, toning it down by turning certain parts off, wandering around the landscape to hear how it changes with distance, and ambient sounds contributing to it all. My favourite spot to stand is near that first megalith, the bass drum, where you have the rushing waterfall, a calling bird, and have a good dose of that main synth line.

Running and jumping all over the place is good too, though.

It's by Svblm, the group behind "Rogue-like-like-like" Jet/Lag, which we gave a good sniff in the Freeware Garden last month. While that was noisy noisy noisy, The Bends is certainly not. Here, watch this video. I would apologise for the muddy quality (my encoder chews up flat colours sometimes) but I suppose it's more incentive for you to go wander around yourself, isn't it?