Soundtrack Saturday: Machinarium

In this weekly feature, I recommend game soundtracks. I share a few of my favorite tracks, talk about why everyone should listen to the soundtrack, and a little bit about the composer. This week's choice is Machinarium by Amanita Design.

THE STATS

Name: Machinarium
Developer: Amanita Design
Publisher: Amanita Design
Release Date: October 16, 2009
Genres: Graphic adventure
Composer: Tomáš Dvořák

MY FAVORITE TRACKS

(The titles link to YouTube videos... and I highly recommend some good headphones to best enjoy all of the subtle elements of the music!)


The Sea
(Length: 3:45) The in and out rhythmic feel of this, the rise and fall, it definitely emulates waves of an ocean. It's altogether beautiful to listen to even with all of its little quirky noises (necessary to the soundtrack).


Clockwise Operetta
(Length: 3:47) The composer says of this track: "I don’t like operetta too much. The irony is there's a robot singing in this song. The sound is made by an old Apple speech synthesizer. Nowadays you have speech synthesizers that sound very clear, but this one is very old. I like it because it really has this robot feeling. I made up some imaginary text and gave it to the speech synthesizer to sing. The tune was then totally re-composed." You can hear the synthesizer kick in at 1:39. This track definitely has some of the most personality of any of the tracks.


Mr. Handagote
(Length: 3:17) The well-placed distortions and sycopated rhythm are what make this one my favorite of the bunch. It really comes to life at :57, and I just get lost in the music for the next half minute or so. The end has a nice segue into the following track (Gameboy Tune).


The Castle
(Length: 3:37) If you only heard this track and didn't know the game was about robots in a robot world, I'm guessing you might peg it for something mysterious and/or creepy happening in a potentially upscale location because of the plucked strings, harpsichord, and scratchy ambiance. My favorite kind of castle has epic fantasy tones, but I'd settle for this style in a pinch.


The End (Prague Radio) by Vojtech Zelinsky (with Petr Tichy)
(Length: 2:34) Super awesome comment on this video clued me in that if you listen to it at 1.25 speed, it's a fantastic salsa. The mellow pace of the normal speed is great, too. It reminds me a little bit of Peanuts music.

You can listen to the full soundtrack on YouTube:

Machinarium OST

WHY I RECOMMEND IT

I played this game back in 2011 or 2012, and while it wasn't a game I felt compelled to gush about, it was cute and fun in its own way. One of its better features was definitely the soundtrack. If you enjoy mostly laidback music with lots of subtle (or not so subtle) mechanical distortions to remind you it takes place in a world of robots, then you should definitely give this soundtrack a listen!

THE COMPOSER: TOMÁŠ DVOŘÁK

Known professionally as Floex, Tom is a contemporary Czech composer, clarinetist (you can hear it in a few of the tracks), producer, DJ, and multimedia artist. He had worked on several projects for Amanita in addition to this track -- namely Samorost 2 and 3. That's really all I know about the guy -- that and he was born on Valentine's Day. Also, I'm only ever going to refer to him as Tom or Floex. Do you see all of those letter accents? This lazy American has other things to do -- like play more games!