Wednesday, August 16, 2017

MIDI Week Singles: "Little Inferno Titles" - Little Inferno (NS, WU, PC, Lx, OSX, iOS, And)


"Little Inferno Titles" from Little Inferno on the Nintendo Switch, Wii U, PC, Linux, Mac, iOS, & Android  (2012)
Comoposer: Kyle Gabler
Label: Tomorrow Corporation



Maybe it was intentional or not, but the opening titles, as well as some of the other songs from Little Inferno, have a bit of a Christmas vibe to them.  Be it the semi-angelic "ahh'ing" choir coupled with the chimes (which I personally immediately associate with "Carol of the Bells"), and even the visual of a roaring fireplace as well as the game world help to cement the wintry holiday atmosphere.  And now that I think about it, also in part because composer Kyle Gabler said that he was inspired by 1990s Danny Elfman, but "Little Inferno Titles" is fairly reminiscent of Danny Elfman's score for Edward Scissorhands, which also contains a fair amount of ethereal vocals in songs like "Ice Dance" and "The Grande Finale."  What I love, is that you can detect enough homage to Danny Elfman without feeling that there has been theft of themes or melody.

In the liner notes, Kyle Gabler says, "Little Inferno is a quiet introverted art project masquerading as a loud extroverted shopping game. For a long time, we weren’t sure which face of the game to portray in the opening sequence, but eventually decided on this one."  

I wholeheartedly agree with this as the theme for the game because it is a great introductory song containing a lot of the atmosphere and musical elements that help to make up the world in Little Inferno.  I ultimately decided on "Little Inferno Titles" for today because I felt that there were other great songs from the soundtrack, but I thought that they relied a bit on the emotional impact of the scenes they were used in.  Yes, the songs themselves were beautiful alone, but it would be like listening to "The Throne Room and End Title" from Star Wars without ever having seen the movie.  There was also the issue of some song titles that I felt gave a little bit away as far as the story in the game goes, and I would like to try to avoid spoilers because this game is pretty awesome (Game EXP article for Friday most likely).



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian


P.S.  I highly recommend picking up the soundtrack (or any/all of Kyle Gabler's soundtracks) which is available for free from The Tomorrow Corporation's website for each respective game that they have released.  But again, there could be spoilers in the song titles if you care about that sort of thing; or maybe they're just spoilers in hindsight.

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