MIDI Week Singles: "Neptune's Glory" - Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide (PC)

"Neptune's Glory" from Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide on the PC (2015)

Composer: Geoff Knorr

Album: Civilization: Beyond Earth - Rising Tide (Original Soundtrack from the Video Game)

Label: 2K

Developer: Firaxis Games

Publisher: 2K Games

"Didn't we just have a song by Geoff Knorr from Civiliation: Beyond Earth?" I can already hear you saying.  While somewhat true, this is from the DLC Rising Tide which has completely different and new music, so there is that.  Also this music is awesome, so that negates anything you have to say about reusing composers.

Maybe it is because I have this picture in my head how Civiliation: Beyond Earth is played without having playing a second of the game, I am imagining this music playing during something exceedingly epic.  Perhaps the first discovery/establishment of an underwater colony?  The survival of an existing colony that, against all odds, survived some kind of massive water-based disaster?  I do not rightly know, just as I did know about how "Our New Home" was used in Civ:BE, but in my head it needs to really be during a beautifully blue-tinged cut scene.  Definitely something heroic and epic.

And at 3:35ish, just when you think that the song is ending because of the resolution, nope!  It continues one for another 1m25s before the (almost) inevitable fade out.  I am typically not one who is big on fade outs, but it does kind of work here.

Someone at the BBC needs to get in contact with Mr. Knorr and have him score the inevitable Planet Earth 3 which, according to my calculations, should be coming out sometime in 2026.



JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Instrumental

MIDI Week Singles: "Our New World" - Sid Meyer's Civilization: Beyond Earth (PC)

"Our New World" from Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth on the PC (2014)

Composer: Geoff Knorr

Album: Sid Meier's Civilization: Beyond Earth - Original Soundtrack from the Video Game

Label: 2K

Developer: Firaxis Games

I really was not quite sure what I was expecting when I first put on this soundtrack.  Having only booted up Civ. V a couple of years back, being the only game in the Civilization series that I have had experience with, I think I was half-expecting this music to be your standard ambient science fiction fare.  You know, music that would play in the background while you build your colony outpost on some backwater planet, strategizing (sp?) your civilization to greatness.  What I was not expecting was music that was as full of hope and fanfare that I found with a lot of the tracks here.

Composed by Geoff Knorr, of whom I apparently have not heard before did an amazing job with his portion of the soundtrack, composing 14 out of the 42 tracks.  I decided on "Our New World" because it reminded me of both John Williams (not just Star Wars, but John Williams' style when it comes to fanfares), and Gustav Holst, but at the same time it did not sound like Geoff Knorr was ripping off any one particular composer.  I guess, to me at least, it sounds influenced by Williams and Holst, but without sounding like the Star Wars soundtrack or an excerpt from "Mars: The Bringer of War" or "Jupiter: The Bringer of Jollity."

Now, I have no context for when this song is played during the game, but I feel like with all of the grandeur involved, that it is during a cut scene.  Perhaps after the colonizing ship sets down on a planet (maybe after some harrowing event because overcoming hardship makes accomplishments seem all the more memorable), the housing units are set up, the solar power generators are working.  Then the leader(s) of the colony climb up to a cliff/bluff/mountain/hill that overlooks the surrounding valley to look out on their accomplishment and their new world.  Or, the ship comes out of hyper space and this music is played as they begin their decent to the planet.  Either way, if I ever discover a new world, there is a pretty good chance that I will have this song playing in the background.



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
Won't You Come

Book Review: Blood Merdian: Or the Evening Redness in the West

This week, yesterday in fact, I finished listening to Richard Poe reading Cormac McCarthy's Blood Meridian: Or the Evening Redness in the West.  This was my second time starting this book, with the first time being a few years back, but I stopped because I was feeling that I was lost in the story and that I wasn't able to focus as much attention as I felt the book deserved.  So the middle-end of last month, while at work, I decided to get back into Blood Meridian.

I first acquired the audio book through, surprisingly enough, or perhaps not, the "Humble Audio Book Bundle featuring Recorded Books" back in February 2014.  I picked it up mainly for The Satanic Verses by Salman Rushdie, True Grit by Charles Portis, Junky by William S. Burroughs, and of course, Blood Meridian.  At the time I had never listened to an audio book, but I had listened to both the Star Wars and The Lord of the Rings radio dramas a number of years back when I was helping Delaños in the archaeology lab sifting through bins of mid 19th century garbage; this was seriously a lot of fun.  So with that in mind, I thought dipping my toe into the realm of audio books would be a good idea.

Just a word of warning before I go much further, I should say that there might be spoilers, although I genuinely feel that there is not a whole lot to spoil in this book.  I also want to say that I only looked up information about the plot after I was finished with the story because I was worrying that there was something very significant that I was missing.  At this point I would like to say that for the most part, I was apparently able to follow along with the story a lot more than I had thought.

One of the reasons why I felt that I had a hard time tracking the events, were because there seemed to be no central plot.  The story follows an unnamed main character simply called The Kid, and events that happen and around him during his life in 1850s, primarily in the southwestern United States.  There is no, "The Kid sets out trying to discover why his Mother never named him," or "The unnamed kid sets out to make a name for himself," or "The Kid, wronged by one Ernest Griswald, sets out on a path of revenge."  There is The Kid, and things happen to and around him.  It is almost like he is a passive observer in his own story.  It is definitely not a way of storytelling that I am used to, and while it did give me the feeling that I was missing something important, by the end of the book, I did not really mind.

All of that being said, Blood Meridian was far from boring or uninteresting.  During the first handful of chapters, I could only digest a chapter or two at a time before I had to step away and listen to something else.  The writing and the delivery were so powerful and equally disturbing in parts that I felt a sense of sensory overload, which, at least for me, is a good thing.

Now, I could probably come up with something that sounded like drivel compared to, what I would assume, are hundreds of analyses of Blood Meridian that were the basis of literary dissertations.  Also, not having actually read the book, I feel like I have only experienced a few facets of the book.  As pointed out in the Wikipedia article, as well as Conklederp reminding me about how Cormac McCarthy wrote The Road, in Blood Meridian, there was no quotation marks to designate when people were speaking, and there were no apostrophes for contractions.  As this was a conscious decision, there is no way I could have known this listening to the book being read to me.

And let me tell you, Richard Poe did a fantastic job narrating the book and slightly changing his voice to suite the various characters.  Granted there were times when the voice he used for The Kid and Toadvine sounded pretty similar, but only if they were not talking to each other or in the same scene.  I do not know if there are other professional recordings available of other people reading Blood Meridian, but if you have the chance, I highly recommend listening to Richard Poe read this.  Just a word of warning though, this is a pretty violent book in many definitions of the word.  There are also more than a few utterances of racial slurs which I do not feel the need to put into words here.

I definitely want to actually read this book after having listened to it one and-a-half times.  Presently I have only read The Road by Cormac McCarthy, but from this audio book alone, I can feel the power of how he writes.  I had considered starting another audio book at work after finishing Blood Meridian, but I am sure that most will pale in comparison.  Either way, I am now a fan of Richard Poe and eagerly look forward to hearing another book read by him, preferably a western, or anything else written by Cormac McCarthy.  Or Joyce Carol Oates now that I think about it.  Hell, Stephen King's The Stand: Complete & Uncut!



~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian
I Should Have Known That It Was Coming To This

P.S. Nacogdoches

MIDI Week Singles: "Battle - Large" - Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark (PC)

"Battle - Large" from Neverwinter Nights: Hordes of the Underdark on the PC (2003)

Composer: Jeremy Soule

Album: No Official Album Release

Developer: BioWare

By now, it should be no surprise that the music that we are featuring on MIDI Week Singles is by Jeremy Soule, but this might (?) be a track you happen to not be as familiar with.  And despite having played the main game and the first expansion pack (Shadows of Undrentide), it was not until Hordes of the Underdark that I actively began looking for who wrote the music to this series.  That was the first time I came upon Jeremy Soule's name, although admittedly, it was not until The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim that I discovered that I was already a fan.

It was one of the large battles in the Underdark, during what Neverwinter Nights considered a cut scene that this music played.  I was blown away by the size of this song and I feel that if I were to ever be so lucky as to see it performed by an orchestra, that I would be watching the percussion section the whole time. I mean, those drums that run the entirety of the song scream war drums!  

For years afterwards I tried locating this soundtrack and only recently discovered that no official soundtrack was released.  Because this track runs six and-a-half minutes (the actual song runs roughly two minutes and seven seconds), it is one of my go-to tracks for playing during battles with our local Dungeons & Dragons group.

So if you happen to need some intense battle music for anything, "Battle - Large" (so titled until Mr. Soule reaches out and corrects me and the rest of the internet) is a great choice.

~JWfW/JDub/Jaconian

They Rode On