Borderlands Original Soundtrack

For the last ten years a release of a new franchise has been quite a responsible and high-profile mission reminding of a space probe launch somewhere to Saturn – much investment, long flight and no guaranty of finding anything useful on the planet. New universes are reluctant to take roots, are often whimsical and naughty, and it takes a long way for them to rise from the dunghill. One can just look at the bunch of sequels and prequels released this year so as to realize this simple truth. So a postapocalyptic shooter with cel-shaded graphics (hey, comics!) and RPG elements like in Diablo couldn’t be more unexpected. One can only envy courage of 2K Games sponsoring the project. Welcome the winner of the Innovation Award!

Several colonization ships journey to Pandora (Hello, Avatar!) to lay a foundation for the future civilization. To the colonists’ disappointment there appears to be nothing useful on the planet, just interplanetary garbage and a legend about “The Vault“ (a supposed mysterious treasure trove), which is worth only of being told to little children as a bedtime story. Those who have money without much ado leave this cute minor planet. The rest try to create a society and rob the weak ones. So it’s our turn to show up, settle in and find The Vault.

Strong plot is definitely not the main best part of Borderlands. Weapons of all type, calibers and freakish colors rule the day. It’s not even the size of gun arsenal that impresses – it’s quite standard by the way – but the modifying system luckily borrowed from Diablo. By the wish of a random number generator an astonished player can receive a gun with an extended clip, sniper zoom, speed firing of an assault rifle, and if to go on dreaming with a possibility to roast an enemy to death with a successful shot. When gathering such toys becomes the main objective of the game then the plot fades into the background.

Right balance, adequate realization of the gameplay, awesome graphics and never tiring music are a recipe for Rogue RPG success. Borderlands is interesting like a FPS – every new gun evokes crazy excitement and demands to be brought into action. A mix of cartoon cel-shaded graphics with naturalistic canyons full with rusty junk, lopsided fences, slimsy but still working wind generators and other staff obviously shows that the authors have a good taste. Setting together with the seamy side of life makes you remind of unforgettable Fallout. Though here attempts to add seriousness are quite short-term. The main difference is in the atmosphere and the latter depends on music, we know it well.

Gearbox Software didn’t scrimp on the atmosphere and gathered a wonderful star crew under its wing: Jesper Kyd, Cris Velasco, Sascha Dikiciyan, and an actual audio producer and sound designer of Borderlands Raison Varner. Tim Larkin, an author of several Myst soundtracks, was spotted in a bonus section and percussion by MoozE can be heard in some Kyd’s tracks. You willy-nilly will expect some wonders from the album but don’t cherish illusive hopes – the music was originally designed for the game and first of all it performs its direct duties.

In one of his interviews Raison said that despite the constant game changes on the development stage as for the music everything was quite clear and understandable – he wanted to get ethnic tracks with electronic pads and a thick accent on percussion – a sort of aboriginal tribal dances with a touch of modernity in form of aggressive synthetics. The resulting cocktail really perfectly matches this description, at times reminding of dirty and urban inFamous OST. The similarity is particularly strongly emphasized by almost the same distortion-cello – a hallmark of inFamous.

Nevertheless if project by Sony was a composite of clanking, grinding, and booming sounds – which can be produced in urban area, whether it be drumsticks kicking the trash cans or sounds of auto glass breaking into pieces – here there’s an obvious incline towards ethnic. The opening track entitled Prelude by Jesper Kyd with MoozE’s percussion and minimum of electronics clearly proves it. There’s not much of Kyd in the album at all. That’s why, perhaps, he was brought to the frontier with two longest of his 5 tracks in the very beginning of the tracklist. Despite such a tiny length Prelude and Welcome to Fyrestone are key compositions and they set the overall tone of the game. The first track is played in the game intro and the second one with a viscous guitar, well-known beats (a la chewed-up tape) and unexpected (and very appropriate, damn) change of dynamics somewhere in the middle meets the player in the first town and is played in wastelands. The most interesting thing is that Kyd almost doesn’t use synth pads in his tracks – only polishing and coloring some percussion beats. Jesper’s music is definitely not enough on the album and his line with ethnic here is a bit nonstandard, so we’ll go further and switch to the people who made the main contribution to Borderlands.

Since Prototype times we recognized Sonic Mayhem (a creative tandem of Cris Velasco and Sascha Dikician) love of strings. Here they show all what they can do with cello to the full extent. This instrument with a highly expressive and liquid and melodious sound recently has been used almost everywhere in some mad processing. In inFamous cello bow was drawn here and there except solely on the throat; in The Dark Knight cello performs Joker theme sounding impressively scary and unusual. In Borderlands cello is at least somewhat similar to itself.

Cris and Sascha got mostly action tracks. A bit less ethnic, more dirt and distortion – surprise, but this combination works. The above-mentioned cello raising the intensity at times extremely successfully superimposes over this mess. As a rule, tracks of such a sort are rarely played on repeat in a player, but Fighting Sledge’s Minions and Burning Rubber and Shooting Bullets will definitely be. Intentionally “dirty” tracks by Sonic Mayhem offer a nice contrast to Kyd’s compositions. It’s a pity that there’s too few Jesper’s works on the album, as I’ve said before.

The rest of the album lies on Raison and I should say that his tracks are the darkest on the CD. If it is ambient, then it necessarily contains depressing, gloomy pads of cold synth and some ethnic insertions. If we’re talking about action compositions, then from the mad eastern pipes and demonic rhythms you’ll want to break something with a leg kick crying “This is Sparta!!!”. Raison’s tracks lie accurately in between the pure ethnic by Kyd and dirty outrage by Sonic Mayhem. The only exception is an ethnic theme Travelling to the Vault, which starts like an ambient but then under a pressure from the wind section and female vocal gently flows into a solemn and pompous hymn. If such a largo mix can be classified as a hymn, of course.

At last I should say about bonus section with 6 tracks from which Tim Larkin stands out with his dreamy-meditative The Old New Haven and Exploring the Mine as if they got here from some eastern tale. The rest of the tracks could be easily put in a heart of the album without the “bonus” prefix – nobody would see the difference.

The album turned out to be a solid one. It won’t set the charts on fire but no doubts it’s quite pleasant to listen to. Despite almost the complete absence of contrast in the melodies here you can find a decent amount of interesting and catchy tracks. It’s definitely one of the most enjoyable albums of the last year.