[This is one post in a series about my music mixes. The series list has links to all posts in the series and also definitions of many of the terms I use. You may wish to read the introduction for more background. You may also want to check out the first volume in this multi-volume mix for more info on its theme.
Like all my series, it is not necessarily contiguou
My opening line for the the last installment of this mix was this:
Can you believe it’s been just over 3 years since we last saw an installment in my LittleBigPlanet-inspired mix?
And that was, ironically ... almost three years ago. So I guess we can believe it, eh? Look for PSW VII sometime in early 2026, I suppose.
This is just one of those mixes that started strong and has slowly petered out. My middle child, for whom this was always their favorite of my mixes, has moved on to other music, and, honestly, my tastes in mostly wordless electronica run way more towards downtempo: basically, this music, entirely designed to make you feel like you’re in a happy little videogame like its inspiration LittleBigPlanet, is often just way too upbeat for me.
Still, there’s a time and place (and mood) for nearly all types of music, and I still reach for this mix every now and again. You might think I’d be running out of actual music from LBP to seed the volumes with by this point, but the truth is that there’s 3 main games, plus the two portable versions (PSP and PS Vita), and, the one that I lean most heaviy on this time around, LBP Kart. Kart gives us a whopping 4 tracks this time out, so let’s start there.
LBP Kart is exactly what you think it is: the LBP version of Mario Kart. It’s a driving/racing game, so it’s quite different from the cute little platformers that comprise all the other installments in the franchise. And the music is different as wel
One of the consequences of that is it’s given me a chance to include a few tracks that I had had slotted for this mix but just never seemed to work on any of the other volumes. Probably the best example of that is Finland’s Nightwish, whose metal tune “Whoever Brings the Night” was used in LBP2. As boss battle music, it was okay for it to be a bit more intense than the other tracks in that game, but it meant that it really stood out in my other volumes (which, you know, don’t really have boss battles embedded in them). Now, Nightwish is often described as “symphonic metal”—
Another track which fit nicely here was “Toccata” by Canadian electronica artist OVERWERK (the stage name for Edmond Huszar). OVERWERK was introduced to me by another coworker, who is more into the EDM and techno side of electronica. A lot of OVERWERK’s stuff isn’t my bag, but this take on Bach’s famous Toccata and Fugue in D Minor is pretty awesome. As is “Best Fish Tacos in Ensenada,” another track from LBP Kart, this time by British DJ Freeland. It’s a hard driving EDM tune that makes a nice lead-in to “Odessa Dubstep.” Finally, Chicago’s Tortoise is usually described as “post-rock,” but to me it mostly sounds like a 2000’s update of prog roc
There’s also a fair amount of music from other LBP bands that we’ve seen on this mix before. You may remember Ochre from their track “Sosacharo,” which was the opener for volume V; well, I actually discovered them after hearing their song used in LBP2, “Infotain Me,” which I planted right in the opening third this time ‘round. I followed that up with Ratatat, a band who I now can’t remember how I discovered, but it surely must have somehow been related to LBP, because their music is so perfect for this mix. We heard “Flynn” last volume; this volume’s track is “Dura,” which starts out with a sort of synth harpsichord riff, then explodes into happy electronic tones. Likewise, we’ve seen Plaid twice before on this mix,1 but the first time I ever heard them was LBP2’s use of “New Family,” a mellow yet still upbeat piece of electronica that I felt worked nicely into our closing third. Röyksopp I also discovered via LBP;2 “In Space” is a very mellow, almost spacey, track which leads us nicely into our closer. Ugress is appearing here for the fourth time; after discovering the Norweigian wonder via his track for the PSV,3 I’ve sort of fallen in love with him. “Apocalypse Please Wait Buffering” is exactly the sort of non-bridge bridge track that he’s so good at: with a slow build for a nearly a minute, it then bursts into a percussion-heavy thrash-adjacent groove that’s the perfect lead-in to Nightwish.
As for other artists who don’t derive specifically from LBP but that we’ve seen on this mix before, probably the most obvious is Bonobo. I honestly can’t believe this brilliant British DJ and purveryor of amazing downtempo has never been featured in an LBP game: so much of his music seems perfectly suited for it that I’ve already used him twice so far,4 and here he takes the honor of closer. “Nothing Owed” is a sax-driven, meditative but not sad, mellow track, puncutated by an acoustic guitar riff which is just a perfect way to close out this volume. And the only other band to appear on this mix 3 or more times (including this one) without ever appearing in an actual LBP game is Combustible Edison, the lounge-exotica-electronica band who we’ve heard multiple times on other mixes5 as well as twice before here.6 “Solid State” (like much of CE’s output) sounds like it’s from a 50s sci-fi show. It makes a nice transition from the center stretch of more intense songs into the gentler closing third.
For artists just appearing for the second time, you may recall my speaking of Monster Rally before; I discovered them via my old cable company’s “Zen” music channel, and had had “Panther” down for this mix forever before I finally managed to work it in last volume.7 This volume’s pick is a short but happy little bridge called “Paradise”: it makes a nice lead-in to the Ochre/Ratatat pairing. And finally Smokey Bandits have appeared all over these mixes8 before they finally showed up last volume. I squeezed “Revolucion Valiente” in between Apollo 440 and Fishbone because its strong, brassy, spaghetti Western feel could take it.
[ I Can Dream the Rest Away ]
“Egg Nog” by Luna [Single]9
“Neopolitan Dreams” by Lisa Mitchell, off Wonder
“Paradise” by Monster Rally, off Return to Paradise
“Infotain Me” by Ochre, off Lemodie
“Dura” by Ratatat, off LP3
“Fresh” by DEVO [Single]
“Toccata” by OVERWERK [Single]
“Apocalypse Please Wait Buffering” by Ugress, off Reminiscience
“Whoever Brings the Night” by Nightwish [Single]
“Main Title” by Xcyril, off StarGate Odyssea
“Best Fish Tacos in Ensenda” by Freeland [Single]
“Odessa Dubstep” by Apollo 440 [Single]
“Revolucion Valiente” by Smokey Bandits, off Debut
“Skankin' to the Beat” by Fishbone [Single]
“Solid State” by Combustible Edison, off Schizophonic!
“New Family” by Plaid, off Double Figure
“Prepare Your Coffin” by Tortoise [Single]
“In Space” by Röyksopp, off Melody A.M.
“Nothing Owed” by Bonobo, off Dial 'M' for Monkey
I wouldn’t want to imply that there’s anything too surprising here, but I will note that hearing Australian Idol contestant Lisa Mitchell show up in an LBP game was surprising to me; I mean, generally speaking, her music is more suited to, say, Sirenexiv Cola.10 But “Neopolitan Dreams” is a jaunty 3 minutes that, once stripped of vocals, you could imagine popping up behind Sackboy’s adventures (which it did, in the PSP version). The use of a celesta (or similar toy-piano-adjacent instrument) just gives it that extra layer that makes it fit in so well here. (Plus it handily provides our volume title.)
And I decided that the Mitchell tune should be the culmination of a very happy opening triad, sort of the bridge to past volumes. I absolutely had to start with “Carefree” by Kevn MacLeod; because of MacLeod’s habit of releasing his music royalty-free, it gets used in an amazingly large number of YouTube videos, and “Carefree” is so close in sound to Lullatone’s iconic “Race Against the Sunset” (which was used in LBP3 and was the opener for volume IV), “Carefree” is used in a metric shit-ton of fan videos about LBP, because creators know they won’t get demonetized for using LBP’s actual (copyrighted) music. So it’s an obvious choice for opener here. That flows nicely into “Egg Nog,” by Luna, also known as “what the founder of Galaxie 500 got up to in the 90s.” “Egg Nog” is theoretically a Christmas tune, but it’s not overtly seasonal (aside from starting with the shaking of some sleigh bells), and is probably not particularly typical of Luna’s output. But it’s a happy little tune that slots beautifully between “Carefree” and “Neapolitan Dreams.”
And that just leaves us with Xcyril, a French composer who does the occasional soundtrack and otherwise releases neoclassical works that feel like they ought to be soundtracks to something. So far we’ve only heard from him on Phantasma Chorale, but his “Main Title” for what appears to be a Stargate fan-film series is short, sweet, and very videogame-y. I’m not entirely sure why I thought it would fit between the Finnish goth-metal and the British EDM, but I actually think it works.
Next time, let’s dip our toes back into that pool that is the 80s.
1 Once on volume II and once last volume.
2 “Vision One,” their track from last volume, was used in LBP2.
3 “Ghost Von Frost,” which we heard on volume IV.
4 Once on volume I and once on volume II.
5 So far: Salsatic Vibrato V, Phantasma Chorale I (twice), Phantasma Chorale II, and Snaptone Glimmerbeam I.
6 Specifically, volumes III and IV.
7 Besides “Panther,” Monster Rally has also showed up so far on Gramophonic Skullduggery I and Apparently World I.
8 Specifically, Salsatic Vibrato VI, Shadowfall Equinox II and IV, Gramophonic Skullduggery I, and Snaptone Glimmerbeam I.
9 As usual, I hate to link only to YouTube, but there doesn’t seem to be anywhere else to get this track.
10 In point of fact, “Clean White Love” does appear there.