Uncle Nert’s Wacky Pick ™ of the day is...
Guacamelee!
Composers: Peter Chapman and Rom Di Prisco
Album Information
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I'm going to start this post off with a word that many people may roll their eyes at: "personality." It's an admittedly vague word, and it's one that could be reasonably used when describing almost any game. Having said that, it's the word that I keep coming back to when I fire up this soundtrack. This game's music features a wholly distinct blend of of sounds, a highly cohesive feel from song to song, and more often than not, a truly exuberant vibe.
Oddly enough, I think that the best way to demonstrate what I mean by this is to dive into one of the remixes included on the full album:
Desierto Caliente (Remix). Barreling forward at a breakneck pace, this song presents a boisterous blend of whistles, horns, guitar, yelps and synths that is eminently catchy. Putting together so many disparate sounds could have resulted in a jumbled mess, but Rom Di Prisco has managed to wrangle it altogether in a thoughtful and methodical way. I love how the song is pared down to just its percussive core in the middle passage before it once again adds on the rest of its layers, snowballing into a killer finish.
This remix also serves as a great introduction to the game's split between The Living World and The World of the Dead. Reminiscent of some other video games with "dark worlds," Guacamelee! provides two different takes on almost all of the game's songs. Generally speaking, the dark versions of each song strip out some of the instrumentation, slow down the pace a bit, and some notes linger a little longer.
Pueblucho (World of the Dead) exemplifies this, taking the festive and airy town theme and making it sound more akin to
Diablo II's Tristram theme. Other World of the Dead songs, like
Forest del Chivo (World of the Dead), lean more heavily on the soundtrack's electronic elements. This song also gets some kudos from me for its tastefully restrained use of "wubwubwub."
Back on the lighter side of things, we have
Caverna del Pollo. In what I find to be an incredibly charming touch, this song fully commits to its title by incorporating synths that *really* sound like a chicken. In particular, the passage beginning at 1:38 and ending at 1:52 is something to behold. Quirky gimmick aside, the song as whole is propulsive and memorable.
Temple of Rain also crackles with unique flourishes, including what sounds like a DJ scratching some records.
Just about every song on this album is worth a listen, but I'll bring this post to a close by giving a quick nod to
Leaderboards. This song is way more fun than any leaderboards theme has any right to be, playing a particularly acrobatic sounding acoustic guitar against some lovely bass.
I wouldn't confuse a single song on this soundtrack for a song from another game.
That's personality.
