16th July 2024
C418 - Minecraft - Volume Alpha
Ambient, Videogame Soundtrack, German, 2011
(Link to the rest of the album. If you don't want the cuts between each individual track, there are full album videos you can find, but no official ones to my knowledge.)
After the discussions on soundtracks that we've had on this thread, I chose to listen to this one in particular because of how iconic and conventionally album-like it is.
This is probably the first time I've ever listened to an entire soundtrack album while giving it my full attention. This is also probably the first time I've listened to an ambient music album, which is a style far from the albums that I've listened to that contain more conventional songs.
However, even though there were a lot of new things and a lot of unfamiliarity about this experience, what trumped everything was that these sounds might be the most familiar out of all the sounds I've listened to in this thread, not just for me but probably a majority of you reading this.
Maybe it's unfair to talk about an album while taking into account that it's connected to a larger piece of media and so in a way feeds off of it, while other albums have to stand on their own two feet. However, I don't like looking at things in this way. I think it's better to acknowledge that art isn't a standalone thing, it's often intertwined with many other things, like how for me the albums I listen to are primarily for the purpose of continuing this thread. And I think this is something we should celebrate and fully appreciate, not take away to try and level the playing field. So yeah I'm gonna talk a fuckton about Minecraft.
Minecraft for me is a game deeply ingrained in my psyche, for the lack of a better word. It's a game that I grew up around. I used to voraciously consume Minecraft youtube videos and still enjoy them to this day, and I also really enjoyed playing survival. One thing I didn't do a lot of was play multiplayer, but this wasn't just a Minecraft thing, I barely ever played videogames with my friends outside of Smash Bros. And I think this connection I have with Minecraft is not something that's unique to me, but something that many people from my generation and beyond share, many of them to an even greater degree that I do.
And I think this also goes the other way. It's not just that everyone played Minecraft and developed a special connection to it, but also that Minecraft was a game that was capable of forming these special connections. The atmosphere and vibe Minecraft creates, especially with it's single-player experience, feels special and unmatched with other games I've played. The feelings of serenity, freedom, peace, and loneliness that makes up the vast, green, blocky world. And I think this is in no small part due to the brilliant music.
For me and probably a lot of people, what stands out the most about this album is how nostalgic it is. You scroll through the comments of any track, and there are countless comments of people commenting this exact thing. But is it really just because we listened to these tracks a lot in our childhood and had experiences attached to them? I played tonnes of games during my childhood, some more than Minecraft, and yet it's only Minecraft, alongside Pokemon that have this magical, nostalgic feeling. I think there's something about this music, something that elicits these strong feelings of nostalgia.
Maybe I'm speaking out of my ass, but I think this is because of the nature of the music. Ambient music is not something which you groove to, relate to the lyrics, or feel intense emotions. Instead, I feel what ambient music tries to do is to explore softer feelings, without any other musical things and distractions in the way. Especially this album, which has many tracks that elicit a warm, comforting, calm feeling. And I think it is because of this warmness, as well as just the unique iconicness (apparently I just made up this word) of the music, the album is able to feel so nostalgic.
One thing that was kind of a question mark going into to this album was that this wasn't music intended to be listened to by itself, but as background ambience to complement a game. Then, how well would this work as a standalone album? Well, a lot better than I expected. You can tell that this isn't just the Minecraft OST slapped onto a CD, there was great effort in crafting this album.
First, the ordering of the tracks feels really good. Most notably I feel like the first two tracks serve as a great introduction to the album. The first track, Key, is soft and dreamlike with the underwater sounding instrumentals. After that, the second track, Door, sharpens the sounds, and feels like waking up, into the world of Minecraft where the possibilities are endless. The second track also introduces the main Minecraft leitmotif, which sets the table for the rest of the album. I can't really say the same thing about the ending of the album though, the last two tracks felt kinda random and haphazardly thrown in to me.
Second, the tracks are arranged so that often one track will flow straight into another. This effect is lessened by the hard cut between the tracks in the Youtube playlist, but you can still tell that there are many tracks which flow directly into each other. These smooth transitions serve as glue to really up the cohesiveness of the album, into one continuous experience instead of just a collection of tracks from a game.
Third, there is a surprising inclusion of many tracks that aren't present in the base game. Maybe they were rejects for whatever reason, but they don't feel out of place in this album at all, but as integral parts of this album. And then there's tracks like Door and Death, tracks that I'm not too sure were even intended to be in the game, but feel like they were tailer made for this album and perfectly capture the essence of Minecraft despite not even appearing in the game. Were these tracks really made just to be in this album? If so, they really show how much care was put into crafting this album.
And yet you can still hear how these tracks were made to be played in-game. Many of them start off quiet, slowly fading into existence, then become loud and full, before fading off again. In-game this allows the tracks to seamlessly flit in and out of existence without clashing with the silence which comes before and after, while effectively changing up and establishing the atmosphere of the game. And in the context of the album, this leads to a pleasant series of peaks and troughs as you listen to the music.
My favourite example of this was the track Dry Hands. It starts off with the piano kind of sporadic, like it's trying to play the song but isn't quiet able to. And then suddenly, the song comes together. I imagine it kind of like a bunch of waves. At the start, the waves are random and disorganised, in their natural state, no different from the background sounds of nature. And then, suddenly, they all harmonize into a single song for a brief magical moment, before drifting apart once again. It's truly beautiful.
The next track, Wet Hands, is probably my favourite track in the album. I feel like it perfectly encapsulates the feeling of playing single player Minecraft. It's just a single, lonely piano part, like the single, lonely character that you control. It plays a melancholy, yet hopeful and warm tune. Even with how vast the world of Minecraft is, the single piano makes it feel small and warm, which effectively makes it leave the scope of the game, and instead represent the comfy, snug feeling of being in your room, on your computer, playing Minecraft, instead of the in-game world.
And not every track has the same comfy, nostalgic ambient music though. There's actually quite a lot of variety in the tracks, with Thirteen being a personal standout, exploring how Minecraft can also be scary and intimidating when you are lost in a claustrophobic, dark cave with monsters around every corner. Cat and Dog were also standouts in this regard. I thought they would be jarring compared to the rest of the album because I knew they weren't ambient background tracks but music disk tracks meant to be brought to the forefront, but no, they're fucking bangers, and they don't feel out of place at all.
I was honestly worried that a full album of ambient background music would be boring, but this may have been the fastest an hour long album has come and gone for me.
Even though this is just videogame music, I feel like you could show this album to someone who has never played Minecraft but is a music enthusiast, and they'd enjoy the album. Yet, it is the experience of Minecraft that I think makes this album so special. And again, that Minecraft experience has a lot to do with the music on this album.
Truly an album of all time.
9/10
1535 words jesus christ I think this is my longest one yet.
C418 - Minecraft - Volume Alpha
Ambient, Videogame Soundtrack, German, 2011
(Link to the rest of the album. If you don't want the cuts between each individual track, there are full album videos you can find, but no official ones to my knowledge.)
After the discussions on soundtracks that we've had on this thread, I chose to listen to this one in particular because of how iconic and conventionally album-like it is.
This is probably the first time I've ever listened to an entire soundtrack album while giving it my full attention. This is also probably the first time I've listened to an ambient music album, which is a style far from the albums that I've listened to that contain more conventional songs.
However, even though there were a lot of new things and a lot of unfamiliarity about this experience, what trumped everything was that these sounds might be the most familiar out of all the sounds I've listened to in this thread, not just for me but probably a majority of you reading this.
Maybe it's unfair to talk about an album while taking into account that it's connected to a larger piece of media and so in a way feeds off of it, while other albums have to stand on their own two feet. However, I don't like looking at things in this way. I think it's better to acknowledge that art isn't a standalone thing, it's often intertwined with many other things, like how for me the albums I listen to are primarily for the purpose of continuing this thread. And I think this is something we should celebrate and fully appreciate, not take away to try and level the playing field. So yeah I'm gonna talk a fuckton about Minecraft.
Minecraft for me is a game deeply ingrained in my psyche, for the lack of a better word. It's a game that I grew up around. I used to voraciously consume Minecraft youtube videos and still enjoy them to this day, and I also really enjoyed playing survival. One thing I didn't do a lot of was play multiplayer, but this wasn't just a Minecraft thing, I barely ever played videogames with my friends outside of Smash Bros. And I think this connection I have with Minecraft is not something that's unique to me, but something that many people from my generation and beyond share, many of them to an even greater degree that I do.
And I think this also goes the other way. It's not just that everyone played Minecraft and developed a special connection to it, but also that Minecraft was a game that was capable of forming these special connections. The atmosphere and vibe Minecraft creates, especially with it's single-player experience, feels special and unmatched with other games I've played. The feelings of serenity, freedom, peace, and loneliness that makes up the vast, green, blocky world. And I think this is in no small part due to the brilliant music.
For me and probably a lot of people, what stands out the most about this album is how nostalgic it is. You scroll through the comments of any track, and there are countless comments of people commenting this exact thing. But is it really just because we listened to these tracks a lot in our childhood and had experiences attached to them? I played tonnes of games during my childhood, some more than Minecraft, and yet it's only Minecraft, alongside Pokemon that have this magical, nostalgic feeling. I think there's something about this music, something that elicits these strong feelings of nostalgia.
Maybe I'm speaking out of my ass, but I think this is because of the nature of the music. Ambient music is not something which you groove to, relate to the lyrics, or feel intense emotions. Instead, I feel what ambient music tries to do is to explore softer feelings, without any other musical things and distractions in the way. Especially this album, which has many tracks that elicit a warm, comforting, calm feeling. And I think it is because of this warmness, as well as just the unique iconicness (apparently I just made up this word) of the music, the album is able to feel so nostalgic.
One thing that was kind of a question mark going into to this album was that this wasn't music intended to be listened to by itself, but as background ambience to complement a game. Then, how well would this work as a standalone album? Well, a lot better than I expected. You can tell that this isn't just the Minecraft OST slapped onto a CD, there was great effort in crafting this album.
First, the ordering of the tracks feels really good. Most notably I feel like the first two tracks serve as a great introduction to the album. The first track, Key, is soft and dreamlike with the underwater sounding instrumentals. After that, the second track, Door, sharpens the sounds, and feels like waking up, into the world of Minecraft where the possibilities are endless. The second track also introduces the main Minecraft leitmotif, which sets the table for the rest of the album. I can't really say the same thing about the ending of the album though, the last two tracks felt kinda random and haphazardly thrown in to me.
Second, the tracks are arranged so that often one track will flow straight into another. This effect is lessened by the hard cut between the tracks in the Youtube playlist, but you can still tell that there are many tracks which flow directly into each other. These smooth transitions serve as glue to really up the cohesiveness of the album, into one continuous experience instead of just a collection of tracks from a game.
Third, there is a surprising inclusion of many tracks that aren't present in the base game. Maybe they were rejects for whatever reason, but they don't feel out of place in this album at all, but as integral parts of this album. And then there's tracks like Door and Death, tracks that I'm not too sure were even intended to be in the game, but feel like they were tailer made for this album and perfectly capture the essence of Minecraft despite not even appearing in the game. Were these tracks really made just to be in this album? If so, they really show how much care was put into crafting this album.
And yet you can still hear how these tracks were made to be played in-game. Many of them start off quiet, slowly fading into existence, then become loud and full, before fading off again. In-game this allows the tracks to seamlessly flit in and out of existence without clashing with the silence which comes before and after, while effectively changing up and establishing the atmosphere of the game. And in the context of the album, this leads to a pleasant series of peaks and troughs as you listen to the music.
My favourite example of this was the track Dry Hands. It starts off with the piano kind of sporadic, like it's trying to play the song but isn't quiet able to. And then suddenly, the song comes together. I imagine it kind of like a bunch of waves. At the start, the waves are random and disorganised, in their natural state, no different from the background sounds of nature. And then, suddenly, they all harmonize into a single song for a brief magical moment, before drifting apart once again. It's truly beautiful.
The next track, Wet Hands, is probably my favourite track in the album. I feel like it perfectly encapsulates the feeling of playing single player Minecraft. It's just a single, lonely piano part, like the single, lonely character that you control. It plays a melancholy, yet hopeful and warm tune. Even with how vast the world of Minecraft is, the single piano makes it feel small and warm, which effectively makes it leave the scope of the game, and instead represent the comfy, snug feeling of being in your room, on your computer, playing Minecraft, instead of the in-game world.
And not every track has the same comfy, nostalgic ambient music though. There's actually quite a lot of variety in the tracks, with Thirteen being a personal standout, exploring how Minecraft can also be scary and intimidating when you are lost in a claustrophobic, dark cave with monsters around every corner. Cat and Dog were also standouts in this regard. I thought they would be jarring compared to the rest of the album because I knew they weren't ambient background tracks but music disk tracks meant to be brought to the forefront, but no, they're fucking bangers, and they don't feel out of place at all.
I was honestly worried that a full album of ambient background music would be boring, but this may have been the fastest an hour long album has come and gone for me.
Even though this is just videogame music, I feel like you could show this album to someone who has never played Minecraft but is a music enthusiast, and they'd enjoy the album. Yet, it is the experience of Minecraft that I think makes this album so special. And again, that Minecraft experience has a lot to do with the music on this album.
Truly an album of all time.
9/10
1535 words jesus christ I think this is my longest one yet.
glad i was able to hear your opinion!