"Welcome to the Lost Road across the Empire of the Daggers of the Dead"
[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
One thing I mentioned back on volume I of this mix was that most of the music there came from just a few sources: those first albums I discovered which were specifically designed for D&D or other TTRPG gaming. Another thing I mentioned was that gaming music is much easier to find these days, primarily due to the explosion of actual play D&D shows. I still have a great fondness for the journey I put together on volume I, but in many ways volume II is the better set just because I had so much more variety to draw from.
Of course, many things are the same: Midnight Syndicate and the Shards of Eberron album are back, as are zero-project and Nox Arcana, and there’s a Renn-Faire-sounding bridge from Dead Can Dance. Still nothing with any real vocals to speak of, so we’ve got another volume title cobbled together out of song titles, and once again I’ve tried to arrange the tracks so as to suggest an adventurous journey. But there are differences as well: we stray from Midnight Syndicate’s Dungeons & Dragons album for the firs time, for instance, and Shards and zero-project give us one fewer track each. And no V Shane this time around: oh, I’m sure we’ll see him again eventually, but there were just many better options this time around.
Part of that is because I discovered shows like The Adventure Zone and Critical Role. The former mostly features music composed by Griffin McElroy, a lot of which is synthy and yet still works in a fantasy setting. However, it is Australian musician (and also a fan of the show) Rachel Rose Mitchell who provides our TAZ track here: it’s the iconic “Voidfish (Plural),” where she takes a relatively simple tune from Griffin and elevates it to something ethereal and wondrous. But it was really CR that gave me the biggest push musically: “Welcome to Wildemount,” an utterly amazing track by Irish PhD student (in music composition) Colm McGuinness is the song they play during their breaks, and “Elmshore” (from the videogame Pillars of Eternity) is one of Matt Mercer’s favorite tracks to play during quiet moments of the game. And, once I started searching for music related to Critical Role, I found more tracks by Colm McGuinness, as well as some by Ian Peter Fisher. McGuinness is one of those artists who plays all the instruments himself and then mixes them all together to form tracks that sound like they were produced by a full orchestra. Fisher is a bit of a traditional electronic composer, and I suspect that he’s merely renamed some of his compositions to use Critial Role placenames,1 which no doubt increased his visibility; still, that doesn’t mean the tracks aren’t fantastic. The explosion of popularity for D&D also means that even more people are explicitly writing music to game to, such as Adrian von Ziegler, whose Bandcamp page contains hundreds of such tracks. V Shane has a lot of competition these days.
I was also inspired to branch out into other cinematic music. I’ve included here selections from The Lord of the Rings, Game of Thrones, and the televison show Grimm. Howard Shore’s score for the first of these has a tendency to slide into the operatic,2 but there are some good choices; the score for the last of these (by moderately well known composer Richard Marvin3) has just a very few gems among a plethora of decidedly average television background pieces. On the other hand, the problem with Ramin Djawadi’s excellent Game of Thrones music is just that it’s too iconic: I’m taking a risk here with the main GoT theme (as I’m doing with the main Grimm theme, and the well-known-to-CR-fans “Welcome to Wildemount”) that listeners will be jarred out of this journey and into other worlds, if they’re at all familiar with the originating shows. But I’m hoping that I’ve managed to recontextualize the tracks, at least partially; you, the listener, will have to be the judge.
For other cinematic choices, I’ve picked a track from Epic Soul Factory as well as another pick from the orchestral remix of Legend of Zelda songs. We last saw ESF on Mystical Memoriam, where I discussed their cinematic music as possibly being a portfolio for soundtrack composing; this track (“The Lost World”) is an obvious nod to Jurassic Park. As for the 25th anniversay Legend of Zelda CD, there’s something about giving the full orchestral treatment to a Ninentendo soundtrack that just gives it a depth that is nearly breathtaking.
The journey here is titled in a similarly whimsical fashion to our first volume; this title didn’t come out to be quite as long, but you can expect future volumes to get longer and longer to the point of silliness. Or even more sillierness, as the case may be. I’ve always loved the way “Welcome to Wildemount” just explodes into being, so it was the natural choice for an opener, unrolling the promise of fantastical vistas before our eyes. From there, we begin traveling to “The Lost World,” perhaps camping overnight where friendly natives play us the local folk tune “Kecharitomene.” Then, early in the predawn light, we set off on “The Road to Zadash,” arriving finally on the quiet and mystical “Elmshore,” where something wondrous seems just around the corner. After another fiddle-laced interlude (“Mephisto”), we cautiously enter into an expedition “Across the Talenta Plains,” a tense and exotic affair where danger seems imminent even as we marvel at outposts with many strange wares.
Then we get to our first real battle, providing us with some “Alternative Therapy.” Then a quiet, restful moment (“Kamimukae”) bridges the conflict with the arrival at “The Age of the Empire,” which seeks to impress us with its military might. But we move on from there to “The Blooming Grove,” an enchanted place which is merely a “Prelude” to the barren, wintry “Structure.” But this is where we learn “How to Kill an Ogre,” which starts out soft and slow and eventually builds to a confrontation with the “Orc Hunters of the Shadow Marches.” Of course, that just leads to a stealthy flight and explosive encounter “At the Sign of the Prancing Pony.” But then, from the darkness, a light appears: the kaleidoscopic pulsing of “Voidfish (Plural)” that lead us “Aboard the Stormcrow,” where the dark, echoey strains signal an uncomfortable journey into more danger, which is brief but explosive (Grimm’s “Main Title”).
The cello-fueled calm “Before the Storm” is dramatic and uplifting, but then the celloes turn dark and take us across more sweeping vistas (Game of Throne’s “Main Title). But it’s the martial march across “The Devil’s Daggers” to fight an “Army of the Dead” that is the true climax of our adventure. After some quiet reflection on “The Final Battle,” the “Ballad of the Goddess” provides an uplifting and emotional release, until our next adventure.
[ Welcome to the Lost Road across the Empire of the Daggers of the Dead ]
“The Lost World” by Epic Soul Factory, off Xpansion Edition
“Kecharitomene” by Loreena McKennitt, off An Ancient Muse
“The Road to Zadash” by Ian Peter Fisher [Single]
“Elmshore” by Justin Bell, off Pillars of Eternity [Videogame Soundtrack]
“Mephisto” by Dead Can Dance, off Aion
“Across the Talenta Plains” by David P. Davidson, off Shards of Eberron [RPG Soundtrack]
“Alternative Therapy” by Midnight Syndicate, off Gates of Delirium
“Kamimukae” by Faith and the Muse, off :ankoku butoh:
“The Age of the Empire” by zero-project, off Fairytale 2
“The Blooming Grove” by Ian Peter Fisher [Single]
“Prelude” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“Structure” by Love Is Colder Than Death, off Teignmouth
“Game Ogre: How to Kill an Ogre” by Richard Marvin, off Grimm: Seasons 1 & 2 [Soundtrack]
“Orc Hunters of the Shadow Marches” by David P. Davidson, off Shards of Eberron [RPG Soundtrack]
“At the Sign of the Prancing Pony” by Howard Shore, off The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring [Soundtrack]
“Voidfish (Plural)” by Rachel Rose Mitchell [Single]
“Aboard the Stormcrow” by Adrian von Ziegler, off Fable
“GRIMM: Main Title (Season 2)” by Richard Marvin, off Grimm: Seasons 1 & 2 [Soundtrack]
“Before the Storm” by Colm McGuinness [Single]
“Main Title” by Ramin Djawadi, off Game of Thrones: Music from the HBO Series [Soundtrack]
“The Devil's Daggers” by Nox Arcana, off Carnival of Lost Souls
“Army of the Dead” by Midnight Syndicate, off Dungeons & Dragons [RPG Soundtrack]
“The Final Battle” by Dark Sanctuary, off Royaume Mélancolique
“Ballad of the Goddess from Skyward Sword” by Koji Kondo [Single]
(Note that there a number of links to YouTube videos this time around; there’s just several tracks here where that’s the only place you can find them.)
As far as the unlikely candidates go, I was very pleased to find quite a few tracks that, while not designed for use in gaming or as cinematic backdrops at all, they just seemed to work perfectly here. The dark neoclassical songs of Dark Sanctuary4 are a natural fit, and “The Final Battle” provides just enough Renaissance feel to work well here. Goth masters Faith and the Muse often provide useful little bridges, such as the one I used on Fulminant Cadenza I,5 and “Kamimukae” is no exception: it’s a contemplative, string-driven piece that abuts perfectly up against the more expansive selection from zero-project. Love Is Colder Than Death is a German darkwave band (named after a German film) who, just as their name suggests, produce wintry, goth-infused ambient and ethereal; “Structure” is one of the tunes that most epitomizes their sound.
But the real find here was realizing that when Canadian dreampop virtuoso Loreena McKennitt produces an instrumental track, it inevitably sounds like it belongs on the soundtrack of a fantasy film. My first pick of hers, “Kecharitomene” is a mostly string-based track (Discogs tells me that it’s actually not a fiddle, but rather a hurdy-gurdy), with some tablas for percussion, and some sort of piping. The combination is half Romany, half Arabic, and half Celtic. Best yet, it starts out very sedately, but each round gets a bit louder and more dramatic, until the penultimate one, which easily conjures images of frenzied dancing around a campfire, and then slides effortlessly back into the original slow burn, which are now the dying embers. It’s a beautfiul track that fits gorgeously between the opening dramatics of “Welcome to Wildemount” and “The Lost World” and the mystical beauty of “The Road to Zadash” and “Elmshore.” I suspect we’ll see a selection from McKennitt on every volume of this mix from here on out.
Next time, it’s time to get to back that upbeat brass that kicks so much ass.
1 For instance, you might find the same song of his with two different names, one of which contains the CR reference, and the other of which has a generic name such as “Fantasty Travel Theme.”
2 Specifically, that Carmina Burana/The Da Vinci Code territory that we talked about last time.
3 Marvin also scored Six Feet Under, one of the early triumphs of showrunner Alan Ball.
4 First encountered on Shadowfall Equinox II.
5 For a full-length demonstration of their prowess, see Penumbral Phosphorescence.