Game info: Steam
Listening: Bandcamp
Info
Here’s the latest game soundtrack by SIGNALIS composer 1000 Eyes, the music-making alias of German musician Tom Schley. Though apparently he contacted VGMdb a couple of years ago to have the 1000 Eyes artist page changed to a group? Even though there’s no one else listed anywhere, and the 1000 Eyes social media accounts all post using singular pronouns, and all the 1000 Eyes tracks on iTunes have Tom Schley specifically listed in a performer role, and okay you probably get the point I’m making. Maybe the other person’s just shy.
So anyway, here’s the latest game soundtrack by 1000 Eyes, with a few tracks by fellow German musician Konstantin Schimanowski, who looks like he’s working on his first video game here. VHOLUME is one of them first-person parkour games like Mirror’s Edge, though this one takes place in brutalist concrete dystopia instead of bright minimalist dystopia so it’s totally different. The music is largely similar to the calmer, non-industrial ambient tracks from SIGNALIS by Schley: warm, swirling pads; metallic sounds and other noises; vague, melancholic melodies; and a veneer of haze over the whole thing. The most significant differences in the sound are that VHOLUME’s soundtrack is a little glitchier and incorporates more in the way of acoustic instrumentation here and there, most notably acoustic guitar in a few tracks. There’s also some deep synth bass here and there that sometimes gave me the feeling that the music might switch to a less ambient and more dance-y style, though it never actually did; this soundtrack is 100% ambient all the time.
There are some occasional darker tracks and strange, glitchy noises, but it’s overall a much, much less evil-sounding score than SIGNALIS. And since the evil parts of that soundtrack were pretty much all of my favorite parts, in terms of both audio design and composition, I didn’t really like this as much. But it’s more than two hours of music in a very concentrated vibe, and that’s respectable.
I’d never heard of Konstantin Schimanowski before now, but his tracks fit in right along with the rest. There are some slight differences in some of the sound design, and his tracks generally feel a little bit sparser in their effects and frequency range usage, but I wouldn’t say I’d feel completely confident in guessing who wrote what if the pieces were anonymized. That sparseness meant I generally found his contributions to be a little less interesting, but there were some nice tracks in there.
Recommended tracks:
All selections by 1000 Eyes, except where noted.
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“conapt09 III” has some of my favorite random noises in it
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“sewers00” has a wind lead that’s the most organic, “played” lead in the soundtrack
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“dreamland” at the start reminds me a lot of Planet Laika with the fluctuating choir pad and abstract percussion
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“mechanisms02 II” (Konstantin Schimanowski) has a little bit of a mechanical feel in its effects and the repetitive figure that comes in later, though I’m not sure the level this plays in is especially mechanical in its design
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“jungle02” is the track that I most expected to randomly bust out into DnB because of its bass though of course it doesn’t, maybe I was primed by the title a little…
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“foire” was one of the tensest tracks to me, love the plucks in this at 0:26 and elsewhere
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“apogee00 II” is one of the glitchier tracks in how a lot of the sounds are randomly cut or looped
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