Entry 216 - Hyper Light Drifter

 

Hyper Light Drifter falls into a strange place for me. It's an excellent ambient album that combines both silence and synthesized instrumentation in a very pleasing and somewhat unique way. It also happens to have a game attached to it.

I heard the soundtrack to Hyper Light Drifter long before I ever played the game. As I alluded to before the album is nearly entirely ambient. It mixes in synthesized tones and instruments in ways that I had not heard before this album. It's like if synthwave instrumentation was used to create an ambient album... but its more than that.

It's the way that the synths are arranged, some of them more distorted than others, some more organic than others. It's the way they all come together at various volumes. So much of the album is nearly silent so that when the album does increase its volume it truly stands out.

Even though everything here sounds like its clearly created on a synth there is an organic feel to the music. It's hard to describe without listening to the album, but the way that the notes are played and executed its clearly a sentient being composing this and not an AI. Its a wonderful contrast.

Hyper Light Drifter is a great game, but even without the game this soundtrack is an excellent ambient album. Even if I had to wait a year for this to show up at my doorstep I'm glad to finally have it in my collection.