Top Tracks - Setting Sail, Coming Home

Top tracks, home to many a good tune.  This time I come bearing the track 'Setting Sail, Coming Home' by Darren Korb.  To be honest I would love to do a musical discovery feature on Darren Korb but I only know one album that he's composed for.  Instead you get this post which is more than just about 'Setting Sail, Coming Home' but is about the entire album it comes from.

'Setting Sail, Coming Home' is the second to last track from the 2010 game Bastion.  In relation to the game, it is the ending theme for when you complete the game.  However, back to the music.  The male singer is Darren Korb while the female singer is Ashley Barrett.  If you previously listened to the rest of the soundtrack, you'd know that the track 'Mother, I'm Here' features Darren Korb's vocals as well and that 'Build that Wall' also features Ashley Barrett.  As a song, 'Setting Sail, Coming Home' is composed as a mixture of both of those songs along with a unique intro and percussion that is unique to the other tracks.  That fact is actually what I find really interesting as each theme is separate and distinct and yet they mesh very well with each other to create a completely different song from the individual parts.

Overall, the album evokes more of a movie soundtrack to me.  With really pronounced guitar and percussion sounds the entire album brings a kind of western feel to it that just seems to be lacking in a lot of recent music.  This kind of sound is epitomized in 'Slinger's Sound' and 'Spike in a Rail', which makes use of some interesting instruments like the banjo and harmonica, both of which have fallen out of favor in recent pop music.  However with tracks like 'The Mancer's Dilemma' you get a more electronic vibe mixed in and the effect is a really rounded out and well produced track along with a no longer one dimensional album.

As for the game, I personally found Bastion to be a really enjoyable game only made better with good music.  The plot can pretty much be boiled down to a post apocalyptic world where you are trying to return the world to the way it was.  In the process learning what happened and how the world got to the way it is.  Not the longest or most replayable game, but I definitely think it was one of the best games to come out in recent history.  Regardless I hope you find yourself enjoying the soundtrack regardless of whether you decide to play the game.  As always, look forward to new things in coming posts and until next time.

--CsMiREK