And rather than going for a more pure sound with the basic waveforms we’re familiar with-your square, sine, and saw waves that you see in most “retro” digital music-he went in a very unique direction. The developer created the sound system, “Organya”, from scratch. Sometimes you might get more straight synth stuff, like what you hear from Disasterpeace in Fez and Hyper Light Drifter. Play more than a few retro games and you’ll get used to hearing these categories.īut, Cave Story has a whole sound of its own-literally. You’ve got heavily arpeggiated chiptunes reminiscent of old Commodore systems or the demoscene sound. You’ve got music based on the NES or Game Boy sound chips. It wasn’t quite so obvious when the game first came out, but after more than a decade of playing retro-style indie games, it doesn’t quite fit the trends that have popped up. More often than that, though, I really just want to listen to the music.Īnd it’s not just that the soundtrack is great listening. More than 10 years after my first playthrough of the then-untranslated Doukutsu Monogatari, I still go back and play from time to time. Seriously, it has a great range of style and emotion, and every track suits the section where you hear it. There’s something different about the music of Cave Story.Īlright, I do want to talk a bit about how great it is. Today, I want to talk about the music…but not just about how great it is. Whether it’s the polished gameplay or the various endings or the history and development, there’s always something to say.
Cave assumes vocal duties once, on a scungy version of John Lee Hooker's 'Burnin' Hell', and Willie Nelson gets the last word with the heretofore unreleased 'Midnight Run'.It’s hard not to praise Cave Story. When Lanegan sings Captain Beefheart's 'Sure 'Nuff 'N Yes I Do', he sounds like Beezlebub luring innocent girls into his tricked out Cadillac Harris' lovesickness on the Cave and Ellis original, 'Cosmonaut' is almost palpable and Stanley's turns are authentically weathered enough to keep this soundtrack from venturing into O Brother, Where Art Thou? territory. version is a triumph by achieving the incalculable coolness factor promised just by learning of its inclusion on the album's tracklisting.Īs with song selections, the voices called upon for Lawless were picked with care. Although Stanley's turn is a novel one, the Lanegan et. Casey, composer David Sardy, and Groove Armada's George Vjestica. The latter song gets interpreted twice, once by Stanley accompanied by acoustic guitar, then again by Lanegan and The Bootleggers, a makeshift band comprised of Cave, Ellis, Bad Seeds and Grinderman bassist Martyn P. Grandaddy's 'So You'll Aim For the Sky' (delivered beautifully by Emmylou Harris) becomes a gauzy elegy and The Velvet Underground's 'White Light/White Heat' morphs into an ode to moonshine.
Although the Stanley inclusion may be lost on a lot of moviegoers and even Cave fans, coercing this living legend – who rarely performs songs outside of his chosen genre – to cover such anachronistic choices as Captain Beefheart and The Velvet Underground was a major coup.Ī number of films have gone for integrating contemporary tunes into period pieces, but few do it in a way that makes adequate sense.
Unlike Cave and Ellis' scores for Hillcoat's The Proposition, The Road, and Andrew Dominik's The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Lawless – about a trio of brothers embroiled in the bootlegging business – consists primarily of covers sung by the likes of Emmylou Harris, Mark Lanegan, and bluegrass great Ralph Stanley. Now, along with his MVP Warren Ellis, Cave has upped the ante on the pair's soundtrack work with Lawless, the latest release from director John Hillcoat. Take, for example, the The Bad Seeds mini-offshoot Grinderman producing two albums of material stronger than recent Bad Seeds releases. Musically, Cave is known for nailing endeavors that lesser musicians could only dream of accomplishing. True, we have never seen Cave try his hand at any of the sciences, but if the Krent Able's Stool Pigeon comic 'Doctor Cave, M.D.' is to be believed, the man can amputate like no other. That Nick Cave is master of all things is pretty general knowledge these days.
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