No, I’m not doing the Portal one again, sheesh, it was only last week.
Mirror’s Edge. An FPS game without a lot of S. Lisa Miskovsky. Tall, blonde, Swedish, hottie, fan of gaming, and she can sing a bit. Bring these two ladies together, and you get one sweet-ass game theme, “Still Alive”.
There’s a little piano riff and Lisa starts singing with the drums playing an urban-jungle type backing, synthy strings quietly harmonising in the background through the verse. The chorus kicks in, with the drums becoming heavier and the piano riff being repeated. The broken down bridge and instrumental adds a bit more depth to the affair. It’s quite atmospheric, too, and different to most theme songs we hear for things, so it suits Mirror’s Edge brilliantly, as one of the stand-out “different” games.
The song is simply beautiful; the music, written by Arnthor Birgisson and Rami Yacoub, and the lyrics, by Miskovski, work incredibly well together as a wonderful pop-rock ballad with an edge. Entirely ungeeky and infinitely serious, it suits the tone of Mirror’s Edge: the struggle between Faith and the totalitarian government: the vast and starkly white buildings juxtaposing to the human element: freedom vs. oppression. The lyrics seem to be Faith speaking to her sister, but it could also be singing to the oppressed city.
It speaks of hope, of faith and belief in the tenacity of humanity, a fitting tribute and accompaniament to the game proper. The freeing nature from the archetypal game music genres being classical or hard rock pieces feels pretty good and adds depth to the game too, given the freerunning that makes the game what it is.
For a sample, pop this into your browser. Go on, you know you want to: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SzmUde_EK5Y
Thanks to EA, DICE, Lisa Miskovski, Arnthor Brgisson, Rami Yacoub, YouTube and the gaming community as a whole for the fantastic music.
On a side note, if anyone likes dubstep, there’s a great Mt Eden Dubstep remix of it here. It’s pretty unique – LS
Not to overdub on LS’s sidenote, but there are a couple of good remixes by some top remix artists like Armand Van Helden, Benny Benassi, and Paul Van Dyk, which were released as B-sides with the original track. If you do a bit of digging, you can probably find them on YouTube, maybe iTunes, I dunno. You can tell I can’t be bothered linking, can’t ya? – SB
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