The Daily Spin, September 15
Laurence Chapman | Heaven's Vault OST
Welcome back to the Daily Spin, the series in which I review 365 albums during 2023.
Each album will be given a rating on a scale from 0 to 10. You can look at the entire set here. Additionally, you can check out a list of my favorite song from each album right here.
Album: Heaven’s Vault OST (2019)
Artist: Laurence Chapman
Link:
This is the rare video game soundtrack that I’m willing to throw onto the Daily Spin - most of them veer uncomfortably long for a daily review series, even if I do love them, and others aren’t on Spotify or don’t quite fit into what I look for in a review.
Firstly, I must say - you have to play Heaven’s Vault. I’m someone with a little hobbyist passion for linguistics, so a game whose primary plot device is through an ancient language you have to decode is right up my alley, but even then, it’s a truly remarkable little adventure. Beautifully drawn, wonderfully thick in the plot, and gorgeously scored, it’s comfortably in my pantheon of great games, certainly among indie studios.
It’s a testament to the beauty of this score that it’s the highlight of a game, one I love, no less. It’s a rare class where I love the game and the score almost equally, but Heaven’s Vault joins Firewatch and possibly Persona 5 Royal as games in that class. Few games have scores that so brilliantly add atmosphere to the worlds as Heaven’s Vault does, though, with Laurence Chapman an absolute superstar in curating tone.
Despite using only the barest of instruments - a piano, a cello, and the occasional synth pad, there’s a truly joyous depth to each song on this score, all the eerie wonder of ancient places left to naught but time and wind the same way the piano babbles as you fly the rivers to each planet. With each new environment, the base never changes, and the motifs throughout remind you that you are under the watchful eye of Iox and a part of the universe, the Nebula - but as you wander ever closer to each new find, there’s an anticipatory build flavored by the world you’re on at the time, the slightest echo of something new and unknown.
In a game so fixated on finding the beauty in things past, it is a score flexible enough to create beauty in the here and now that puts the emphasis on the central meaning of that statement.
Rating: 9.3/10
Best Tracks: An Ancient Language; Fantasia on One Good Moon; Under the Eye of Kibenya
Worst Tracks: A King Had Three Daughters