MIDI Week Singles: "Trace of Riddles" - Resident Evil: Revelations (3DS)

"Trace of Riddles" from Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS, Wii U, PC, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, PlayStation 4, Xbox One, and Nintendo Switch (2012)

Composer: Takeshi Miura

Album: Resident Evil: Revelations Original Soundtrack

Label: Suleputer

Publisher: Capcom

Developoer: Capcom

Since I appear to be on a Resident Evil kick, I was rereading some of my articles and came across the paragraph in my review of Resident Evil: Revelations on the 3DS where I apparently gushed about how much I enjoyed the music.  So this week I went looking for the soundtrack which was surprisingly easy to find considering the game started out as a 3DS exclusive back in January 2012 with the soundtrack being released the following month.

Nailing down a specific track was a little difficult since like a lot of music from the Resident Evil series is there to create a feeling of dread and does not always translate well to a song that you can sit back and listen to.  And with recent games in the series involving a lot more action than you would normally find in a survival horror game, I still wanted to choose a song that felt like it came from a Resident Evil game and not a Michael Bay / Paul W. Anderson collaboration; I still think "Ride on Sea" is a great track, but it does not scream RESIDENT EVIL in the way that I was looking for.

This is why I chose to use "Trace of Riddles" by Takeshi Miura.  Now, I cannot specifically recall where in the game this music played, maybe it was as the name suggests, played when you are taken to a separate screen to solve one of the in-game puzzles?  What I do like about this track is its use of what sounds like a combination of a sonar ping and melancholic whale songs, and how it incorporates those sounds with the piano and other ambient percussion and the rest of whatever instrumentation is being used.  To me, this is very much Resident Evil music since this game takes place on a cruise liner, something kind of soothing if you are not paying too much attention, but when you are, you know that something is now quite right in Raccoon City.  Or in the Mediterranean Sea.  Your choice.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian