Our friend Rich Vreeland, aka Disasterpeace, has been the official soundtrack to Glyos since we first discovered him years ago. We've used his music exclusively for the Passcode videos and games, and had the amazing opportunity to work side by side while he scored The Soul of the Traveler back in 2010. Not only a top notch composer, he is just great company to be around.
Rich was recently involved in a fantastic game released last Spring called FEZ. The game itself is a very fun and inspiring title that made a lot of buzz considering there are no enemies, no weapons, no motor vehicle theft and no upset avians. But I feel it was the original soundtrack that truly separated this game from the rest of the pack (I won't get into the controversy surrounding the game's creator Phil Fish).
The gameplay promotes exploration and discovery to the highest, challenging players to basically figure out the game themselves as they navigate a vast 2D-turned-3D world (we like that sorta thing around here...). Vreeland's OST compliments this perfectly, as he manages to capture the wonder and curiosity while blending retro sounds with modern production. Reoccurring themes of light and dark make this album stand alone even without the visual cues. I could go on and on about this release- but probably better to just listen for yourself if you haven't yet.
The soundtrack's cover art (also designed by Phil Fish) is interesting and somewhat unexpected, as it does not feature any artwork or characters from the game- just color and shapes. What seem like simple gradients are actually noisy, pixelated color splashes that reveal another layer of depth to the image. The Album Artifact version has a funny way of simultaneously degrading these effects while also making it seem more up to speed with how the game actually looks. I guess the weirdness and unintentional commentary of these pieces are part of what fuels me to keep making them.
Thanks again for checking this out. Next week I'll be posting even more weird/freaky albums in honor of Halloween!
Posts
You're wrong about the cover art. The cover art depicts Dot, the four dimensional hypercube that follows Fez around during the game.
ReplyDeleteBut it's understandable that you missed it considering how much esoteric stuff is hidden in Fez. The Fez Logo itself has the same dimensions as the monolith from 2001...it's a truly fascinating game, I am so surprised that a game like this comes from someone with controversy surrounded his somewhat juvenile behaviour.
DeleteIs it Dot the Tesseract? Not doubting, just hard to piece together from the angles on the official cover.
DeleteOh, I hadn't realized that, thanks for pointing it out. Unfortunately I haven't had a chance to play the game much! Now that it's available via steam I'll hopefully have time to dive in.
DeleteI've read about the images that can be found in the music's spectrograms, too. Neat stuff!
As I said to you at NYCC: this is great. Simply great.
ReplyDeleteAnd now, I've got to go boot up FEZ. Thanks, Marc... :P
Thanks Roy!
DeleteKeep it up bud! Some day I'll look back and say 'I have his early work.' ;)
ReplyDelete