*Press A* 2023 - The Year’s Best Videogame Soundtracks

A Closer Listen

In a year full of horror and tragedy, the videogame industry was not spared. Great websites went dark, forcing journalists to move writing homes, and countless studios were shuttered or forced to endure substantial workforce reductions while executives and investors demanded (and usually saw) continued growth. We also had investigations into bad labor practices, an echo of last year’s reports of the VGM industry’s problems with uncredited work (mostly affecting women). We can no longer romanticize the videogame world nor divorce its excellent output from this internal strife.

Speaking of romance, it is striking that this year once again we have no entries in our Retro category. Nostalgic visual aesthetics might keep selling, but the corresponding musical field no longer attracts much interest ~ or at least noteworthy art.

In this sense, the big-budget productions of this year’s list, all sequels in very established franchises, opted to consolidate around renovation of older styles. This is not a “retro” approach as such, but a reformative current that underlines the need for new generations of musicians and composers to dialogue with the past without becoming consumed by it. Significant attention was put to recent musical developments without losing sight of contexts outside of VGM; games like Bomb Rush Cyberfunk and Hi-Fi Rush led this year’s charge of licensed music mixed up with an original score, and games like Fire Emblem Engage sought to engage with 2010s rock ‘n’ roll as much as with classic JRPG music.

As usual, however, it was indies that spearheaded innovative and thought-provoking VGM this year. There was a lot of experimentation with the orchestral format, as with Arcadian Atlas and Helvetii, but this year’s stand-outs are perhaps the genre-bending works of Thirsty Suitors, Clash and Gunbrella. They represent a recently articulated wave of eclecticism that we hope the scene maintains in the coming years, mixing techniques and styles in surprising ways. If this mutation-based approach comes to replace retro music, we’ll be happy to embrace it; it would signal an equally experimental trans-media approach to videogames themselves.

Two final notes: First, we’re extensive but we can’t possibly cover everything. We’d love to know which of the smaller soundtracks captivated you this year! Second, if any composers and musicians are reading this, please make your music as accessible as possible for audiences beyond the gaming world! Of course, bandcamp is still our favorite platform, but Spotify and YouTube Music work well too. Please don’t restrict yourselves to Steam or GOG to sell or stream your work ~ there’s an entire world of music enthusiasts out there ready to listen.

And now, by genre and in alphabetical order, we present the *Press A* best videogame soundtracks of 2023!

Ambient

Aslak K.H. ~ That Which Gave Chase

The way in which the sound of an alarm parallels that of the wind in a tundra’s soundscape in “Siren/Speaker”, thanks to the very texture of electronic strings, is representative of the old-school spirit that infuses That Which Gave Chase. Like a 1970s electronic soundscape, this short album crackles and creaks with uncanny sounds that highlight its artifice, turning it into one of the most interesting videogame drone soundtracks of recent times. It falls, of course, within the horror tradition, and the fact that the composer is also the game developer allows for a John Carpenter comparison in terms of mobilizing the idea of a meaningfully hostile sound horizon in gaming – instead of cinematic – terms: a progressive drone build-up, a repetitive dynamic that underlines “scenes” as something you can spend a lot of time in, an open character that will welcome you back right into the thick of the tension even if you left for a while. One of the year’s surprises – don’t miss it. (David Murrieta Flores)

fingerspit ~ The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood

‘It’s impossible to separate myself from my work, and how everything I’ve been through has reflected on this soundtrack.’ fingerspit makes a welcome and clearly very personal return to our pages, having last featured back in 2019. In another world, pre-pandemic. Part of a small narrative-focused developer, Deconstructeam, the Valencia-based composer again shows flair for drawing you into quiet, contemplative worlds ~ although in this case the “world” is about as large as the imagination can conjure, given the game’s cosmic setting. Our home planet is electronic ambience, but through a generous three-and-a-half hours of music we drift into the orbits of several adjacent genres. Quiet beats introduce trip-hop through their shuffling grooves, while acoustic drums and simple piano refrains veer us towards dance and post-rock (most notably in the splendid “Sisterhood”). But often drums are absent, and we are guided either by layers of pulsing synths (of course we were obliged to delve into kosmische!) or by the barest of piano lines. Tracks such as “Emotion” and “Strength” achieve so much with so little ~ a few delicately played chords, diaphonous string sounds and the mere suggestion of beats. For all its inviting externalities, The Cosmic Wheel Sisterhood does transmit an innate coldness, a sense of isolation that the pretty melodies only partially obscure ~ both befitting of its celestial setting and perhaps revealing of its author’s inner turmoil over a protracted development cycle. ‘I tried my best, but there were many times in which that wasn’t enough … But it truly was all I could give,’ she confesses. Given the scores of everything Deconstructeam has produced since our inception have featured on a *Press A* list (Essays on Empathy, The Red Strings Club and now this), we think it’s fair to say the output is more than enough! We look forward to hearing more. (Chris Redfearn-Murray)

Guillaume Ferran ~ Jusant 

Proving the fertility of the VGM industry, Jusant is absolutely one of the year’s finest from what appears to be Ferran’s first score for the medium. Coming with a discography of TV and short-film scores as well as being part of an electro-pop band, the French composer teamed up with developer (and *Press A* favourites) Don’t Nod to score a cinematic game about scaling a vast, natural-looking edifice. Rather than the sweeping, orchestral majesty you may imagine for such a musical brief, Jusant is more intimate, preferring to inspire connection with the wordless boy who players control and the vestiges of the long-lost civilization he comes across. Piano and electronic keys form the backbone, and such is the quietude of some tracks (“Amer”, for example) that you can discern the very pressing of the ivories amid the stillness. Beneath the tranquil surface, human hands labour. More minimalist ambience comes from the sober, droning “Mouvement” and cello-dominated “Adret”, whose interweaving lines convey not only the imposing physicality of the structure and the lighter presence of winds that engulf the climber, but also the history of that structure ~ the presence of life that long ago seeped into the rock, imparting indelible memory at last perceived again, after so long. A sense of scale and intensity does in time arrive ~ piano lines quicken, rudimentary percussion or even full drums enter and the volume builds (“9C+”, “Ballast”). But like the climber for whom a rush of blood could be fatal, control is maintained throughout and the moments soon pass. The French word jusant conveys an ebbing tide, disclosing life otherwise hidden beneath the waters. This is a score centred on the meditative and self-illuminating aspect of its conceit, not the dramatic, and by its close we feel something approaching rejuvenation. (CRM)

Spencer Doran ~ SEASON: A Letter to the Future

An “end of the world” kind of soundtrack in which there is no dramatic bombast – Season dwells in the sweet, slow process of fading away. As a dispersed apocalypse of dissolution, it is apt that the album features a recurrent set of sounds of Balinese gamelan and subtly stylized ragas. They are often framed within lullabies, suggesting that the harmony and slightly droning quality of the music turns sleep into death, and that the game’s themes about memory and collapse mirror the day’s passing. For Season, the end is not a rupturing event, but a quiet erosion in which the reverb that affects all the instruments across the entire album makes the music remain, hauntingly and in ethereal fashion, only to be lost. (DMF)

Electronic

Adrien Larouzee & COLORSWAP ~ The Wreck

The Wreck offers something a bit different in the world of VGM: a tight collection of five songs apiece from two separate artists, each bearing a distinctive compositional style. Despite the bleak premise of this visual novel ~ a woman forced to relive a harrowing day over and over until something changes ~ Parisian composer Larouzee offers a bright and shiny tonal palette reminiscent of Four Tet. Each of the five tight tracks offers electronic layers that envelop, melodies and arpeggios that sparkle, beats that pulse neatly through the mix. Despite the clean production, the warmth is provided by a sun that’s on its knees, bruising the skies and imparting a heavy atmosphere in the air. We’ve been here before. This only thickens in the murkier synthwave sound of COLORSWAP, to something approaching foreboding but keeping it at a distance. The beats that enter “Memories” are muddied and laboured, the bass line in “I Feel Nothing” emerges from the mist on the gloomy morning, as the day repeats again. These even shorter but more nuanced pieces are less like tracks and more compositional, charting a camera’s pan, a character’s trudge across a stark frame. The fuzzy melody of the final piece slows to a crawl before relenting, without resolution, and we are left wondering whether the hero was able to alter her fate after all. (CRM)

Britt Brady & Hyperstepp ~ Gunbrella

Gunbrella dips its toes into a variety of styles and genres in a way that could be described as noir-ambient-jazz-fusion-DnB. It really takes advantage of all of them, as in “Baby”, where a propulsive drum n’ bass beat sometimes swerves into drone ambient territory, then moves into rock-like breakdowns, all the while accompanied by sax riffs straight out of a free jazz set. It is a great, fast track, representative of the kind of work that Brady and Hyperstepp do across the entire OST – “Battlelock”, for instance, sounds like they put Colin Stetson and Eric Dolphy in a blender. Still, a good majority of the album is composed of jazzy ambient pieces, all of them crafted with great attention to detail, often filtering the eclecticism of the style through a dissonant, modernist lens. Interestingly enough, where in most OSTs there’s a focus on the melodic side of the equation, here the primary element is rhythm, with which the artists play around constantly to great effect. Imagine if Koji Kondo, who emphasized rhythmic integration of play and music, had heard Venetian Snares: that’s Gunbrella, a hectic, multiple collage of musical gaming, brilliant and utterly creative. (DMF)

Listen to an unofficial upload here.

Buy here.

Modern Composition

Dale North & Emi Evans ~ Helvetii

The ever-prolific North has proven, time and again, that he’s got unbound creativity for soundtrack work. Out of the three (!) releases that bear his name this year, however, Helvetii is definitely the most interesting, a game about ancient Gaul mythology that includes his signature style, built upon orchestral JRPG traditions. The collaboration with singer Emi Evans, who has a renowned soundtracking trajectory of her own (you’ve heard her in NieR and Dark Souls, just to begin with), enhances the album with dramatic flair, and her experimentation with the extinct Gaulish language seems to be matched by North’s compositions in a new, exciting direction. While the composer usually prioritizes melodic forms, Helvetii is led by percussions and dissonant harmonies often produced by electronic effects and the subtle introduction of an electric guitar. This gives North’s classical-romantic approach to melody a welcome quality of propulsive urgency that makes the grand orchestral gestures of this score shine brighter – and sound more daring – than ever. (DMF)

Manaka Takaoka, Maasa Miyoshi et. al. ~ The Legend of Zelda: Tears of the Kingdom

2017’s Breath of the Wild presented such an unexpected and triumphant deconstruction of the Zelda oeuvre that its direct sequel ~ the only direct sequel in the franchise’s history ~ was perhaps fated to struggle with its identity. Tonally, mechanically and geographically, Tears as a game is more playful and adventurous than its melancholic, lonely predecessor, and its score matches that diffusion. Aside from the good chunk that’s reused exactly (which makes sense given a core tenet of the game is revisiting the known), some of the new material cleaves to more conventional, thick orchestration for the game’s plentiful narrative moments. But just as with BotW, where Takaoka and team find this score’s essence is in attuning it so artfully to the key landmarks of Hyrule ~ as though the environments themselves are exuding music as much as they do possibility. Each carries a voice quite distinct from the carefree piano that wanders the grasslands: the Sky Islands release a langourous harmony of clarinet and sax that perfectly befits the aureate, breezy environment; the Caves conceal abstract, gong-like percussion that echos and unsettles; and each of the four temple themes build and build to reveal grandeur and history like an ancient scroll slowly unfurling (“Water Temple” being the pick of the bunch). Most impressive of all are the sounds of The Depths ~ a wholly unique environment to the series with distinct sound composition to match, whose introduction is punctuated by an exquisite, droning sting as we dive lower and lower … and lower. Once there, we are swallowed by minimalist sound design ~ gnarly synth throbs, percussive interjections and melodic stubs, the only respite from which is an “Abandoned Mine” theme, whose lukewarm, Rhodes-esque piano evokes a beneficent civilization long perished. TotK ultimately overcomes its shortcomings to affirm Takaoka’s position as not only astute curator of Zelda’s aural history, but modernist explorer to musical realms untrodden. And I haven’t even mentioned that main theme! (CRM) 

Listen to an unofficial upload here.

Masayoshi Soken (with additional music by Takafumi Imamura, Daiki Ishikawa, Saya Yasaki, Justin Frieden) ~ Final Fantasy XVI

Like many other ongoing, decades-long series of Japanese games, Final Fantasy has enough entries to allow us to conceive of it as having its own musical tradition. There are themes and forms canonically instituted since the 1990s (in this case by the legendary Nobuo Uematsu), creating a unique set of challenges for newcomer composers, who have to make something different and yet repeat and respect the history they’ve inherited. Masayoshi Soken has successfully risen to meet this difficulty by opening up a distinct traditional path derived not from the wellspring of FF’s classic, romantic “Main Theme” (the approach of most FF composers since XII), but from its quiet sibling, the more impressionistic “Prelude”. Across the many, many hours of music, the “Prelude” forms the basis of all the main pieces, with as many orchestral and choral variations as you can possibly imagine, creating an entire corpus that sounds both new and canonical. It is an impressive feat that results in some of the most exciting FF music in years – I’d venture to say that, perhaps, with apologies to Uematsu himself, even decades. The “Prelude” serves as a more flexible compositional ground, opening the field not only for more of the grand Romantic gestures that characterize the series, but also for more modern styles: one listen to “Stillwind” should be enough to turn over canon listeners to the side of renovation, its main percussive piano riff an innovative, almost minimalist reinterpretation of the soft delicacy of the “Prelude”. All in all, I believe we can consider the slowly fading musical relevancy of FF is no longer – it’s time to pay attention again. (DMF)

Buy here.

Yasunori Nishiki ~ Octopath Traveler 2

Another sequel, another triumph. Unlike Zelda though, the sequel to Octopath Traveler (which made our 2018 list in that stellar year for VGM) sticks rigidly to the winning, timeless formula of its predecessor, even recycling that wonderful main theme. In the tradition of the Japanese-developed RPGs the series honours, Octopath 2 is built on foundations of forceful, immediate melodies delivered on orchestral and folk instrumention. Strong character motifs abound, from the strident, flute-based melodies of “Ochette” through the brooding cello of “Osvald”, while equally enticing regional themes are shorter yet switch between Day and Night variants to broaden the timbres and textures, the latter typically introducing light vocals in place of violins, brass, flutes … even flamenco guitar. These strong melodies persist during combat encounters, littering the battlefields like pixellated corpses. Trumpet and viola melodies are especially prominent, soaring above crunchy guitars, drums, and occasional synths and vocals (the crescendo of “Torrent of Evil” is a particular highlight). Cleaving to the long runtime that is another mainstay of JRPGs, Octopath 2 allows you to gorge on a feast of melodies and tokenistic genres (how about some big-band swing or Gaelic folk? It’s all here!) that offer equal parts thrill and comfort. Indeed, it is with more than a touch of irony that we can now celebrate Nishiki as a worthy successor to Final Fantasy’s Nobuo Uematsu, who has spoken of the creative stagnation he sees in the VGM industry. For as we alluded to in 2018, sometimes the emotional pull of nostalgia outweighs the cerebral yearning for novelty. (CRM)

Listen to an unofficial upload here.

Rock, Pop & Eclectic

Austral Music ~ Clash: Artifacts of Chaos

A slightly off-key soundtrack for a slightly off-key game about surrealist brawling, Clash is a multiform orchestral work that in a way reflects the uncanny qualities of the game’s art: here’s a classical quotation that resolves into a VGM quotation (“The Boy Calls”); now here’s a massive choral melody in a made-up language resolving into a prog-rock riff (“Adventuring”); then here’s a grave military march reminiscent of that old X-Men cartoon show theme tune (“Moon-Sun”), which seamlessly transitions from electric guitar to brass and then to percussions… the list goes on. There’s a subversive spirit to it, in the sense that Austral Music seems to be toying with listeners as well as taking themselves quite seriously, developing each track through a prog fusion of popular and classical. This makes Clash somewhat unique among this year’s soundtracks, truly living up to the moniker of eclectic and weirdly unclassifiable music. (DMF)

Beícoli ~ Laika: Aged Through Blood

Here’s a rare one for ACL readers: a soundtrack that’s mostly songs. The instrumental pieces build up the atmosphere the rest of the music then effectively springs from; a perfectly complementary relationship in which the melancholic ambient pieces constitute the raw material from which Beícoli crafts sweet, sad folk pop. Think 2010s indie folk, like Bon Iver, Hanging Valleys, or Novo Amor, all of which explored quiet ambient interludes, but what sets Beícoli apart is her additional use of R&B and trip-hop beats to give the album a sense of meditative desolation, a quietude that’s not just a desert of the mind, but one in which the body feels like dancing, if only for a little bit. The artist also often subtly introduces little twists, like the flamenco percussions of “The Final Hour” or the post-rock development of “Lullaby of the Dead”, making Laika one of the most engaging OSTs of the year, and also one of the most “album-like” musical collections across this year’s VGM – a success whether you’re into the scene or not. (DMF)

Marskye ~ Thirsty Suitors

The opening theme mixes raga and trap, a carnatic rhythm and song overlayed with hip-hop electronics, setting down the tone for the rest of Thirsty Suitors’ cool and brash series of mostly instrumental Indian takes on various genres. Every track holds a surprising turn, breezily moving through acid jazz, electropop, drum n’ bass, funk rock and more with impressive skill, making the album one of the year’s most refreshing soundtracks. While the lens of classical and pop Indian music through which all these songs are filtered is the source of its innovative quality, it’s also important to note that the compositions and arrangements themselves are perfectly fit for purpose within the genres that they intervene. This makes a raga track like “Cat Battle” find its hip-hop tread mid-way seamlessly, or a dance pop banger like “PolyGalactic” find in an accompaniment of Indian percussions the perfect rhythmic complement. Is it a syncretic music, or does it keep all of its musical identities intact? The answer might be relative, but it definitely points at something new and interesting, at least in the field of game soundtracks. (DMF)

Mika Pikazo, Takafumi Teraoka, Hiromi Tanaka ~ Fire Emblem Engage

Whatever the musical equivalent of the kitchen sink is, Pikazo, Teraoka and Tanaka threw it at Fire Emblem Engage. Historically a franchise of well-rounded orchestral scores, 2019’s Fire Emblem: Three Houses (shamefully overlooked in our list for that year) increasingly deployed electronic and rock elements to help spin that game’s chronologically complex, multi-stranded yarns. A more vibrant game in comparison, Engage takes that baton and sprints full pelt ~ starting with a 90-second pop-rock assault straight out of an anime before moving swiftly into symphonic prog. But as much as it advances, the score also reflects. The game is something of a celebration of the franchise’s history, meaning Engage is replete with musical nostalgia, reworking themes from games, heros and battles past across myriad genres. Most variety is found traversing the overworld themes, which exude the bright colours of each kingdom. Acoustic-based lounge jazz offers delightful respite even in its funkier guises (“Camping in Solm”), while the game’s whimsical caricatures are brought to life in jaunty pieces such as “Hiya Papaya!”. The serious business starts in the battle themes of course, which all have different flavours of intensity to account for different combat scenarios. Upon these tracks is the true bombast unleashed, and with tracks such as “Trial of Blazing” does Engage reveal its core as fusion of orchestral monuments atop prog-rock foundations, replete with double bass drums and harmonized guitar lines straight out of 80’s power metal (or its 2000s revival with the likes of DragonForce). And Engage has plenty more to offer beyond this across its over six-hour runtime. If Octopath 2 is a facsimile of 90s JRPGs and Tears of the Kingdom a thoroughly modernist reinterpretation, Engage is somewhere between the two: an interpretation of the past through the lens of something more recent, but certainly not current. Somehow, it works wonderfully. (CRM)

Listen to an unofficial upload here.

Nicolas Bredin ~ Under the Waves

This soundtrack wears its influences on its sleeves, explicitly alluding to the likes of Sigur Rós and Ólafur Arnalds. Post-rock has always been billed as a cinematic subgenre, with its narrative arcs and intensely developed dynamics, and while its collaborations with film have been relatively consistent, those with videogames have been rather occasional. Thus, the work of Nicolas Bredin – who has a post-rock band of his own, called Hanging Fields – feels special, inasmuch as it is a classic guitar-led post-rock OST, from a musical style that is “naturally” resistant to interactivity and intervention, which however ends up lending its emotional and dramatic power to a game. The game itself seems to follow a set narrative path in which the loneliness and grief of the main character is the work’s center of gravity, so it would make sense to pair up the (storytelling) rhythms of play with those of listening to an album like this one. The ecological theme becomes a unifying engine for the music – a good part of the subgenre has always been concerned with this sort of disaster – mapping an emotional geography alongside the effects of world-ending human activity. This grants the OST an album quality and coherence rarely achievable for most soundtracks, of which this year’s other great example is Laika. So put it on, close your eyes, and let yourself be washed over the receding tide. (DMF)

Honorable Mentions

Alpha Something ~ Venba

It’s a great year for South Asian music in videogames, with Thirsty Suitors and Venba leading the charge. Venba is a cinematic anthology of Tamil songs that will make you feel like you’re right in the middle of a Kollywood marathon. It’s lovely music for a warm, fun afternoon. (DMF)

Eli Rainsberry ~ Saltsea Chronicles

A classic Rainsberry album – beautifully crystalline drones, sweet, sweeping ambient pieces, and impressionistic, emotionally moving melodies. It’s similar to their past works, so you know exactly what you’re getting into. Enjoy the journey! (DMF)

Maclaine Diemer ~ Firmament

An expertly-crafted drone album that includes synths and found sounds, Firmament creates an uncanny soundscape that will equally please and puzzle your ears. As one of the most experimental OSTs of the year, it’s sure to capture the attention of ACL readers and drone fans everywhere. (DMF)