Jobie's Bite-Sized Music Reviews #51: Glitchhikers (soundtrack) by Devin Vibert

Recommended

Glitchikers is a 2014 soundtrack album created by Devin Vibert. It was created for the 2014 itch.io game of the same name. The soundtrack incorporates a variety of instruments and sound textures while still retaining the atmosphere that it tries to (and successfully) creates. A good bit of the soundtrack's atmosphere comes from the series of “Scanning” tracks, which take up 4 out of the 12 tracks on the soundtrack. These “Scanning” tracks are meant to emulate the experience of scanning the radio late at night, and finding strange music. This certainly works, as the snippets of songs that play in these tracks are short, but perfectly imply that whatever station that you landed on was playing some Weird Music. There are a variety of instruments used on this soundtrack; one minute you'll be hearing 70's-esque guitar instrumentation, the next you'll be hearing a triangle accompanying piano instrumentation. The soundtrack doesn't confine itself to a singular sonic texture, allowing itself to have tracks like “Circles” while also having tracks like “Mu Cephei Jam”. Though a few songs on the soundtrack are instrumental-only, this only applies to 3 of the 12 tracks on the album. The rest have some kind of vocals, performed by Vibert himself. Though all of the vocals he delivers are good, none of the vocal performances on this soundtrack can even come close to what the track “Circles” does. “Circles” is one of those tracks that sticks out on an album, but for really good reasons. As mentioned previously, Vibert performs his best vocals on this track, singing in such a skilled manner that you forget that this is a soundtrack for a itch.io game where you drive a car on the highway at night. The instrumental is also very good, with violins, a triangle, drums, and the piano all making an appearance at some point during this track. Although the entire song is great, the breakdown at around 3 minutes and 20 seconds is not only the highlight of this song, but the entire album. My favorite tracks from this album are “Turtles All the Way Down”, “Singularity”, “Find Me On A Whim”, and “Circles”. Overall, the Glitchhikers soundtrack is a great soundtrack album from Devin Vibert. With a variety of sonic textures, an interesting atmosphere, and good vocals (and in the case of “Circles”, great vocals), this is definitely a soundtrack worth listening to - if nothing else, one should listen to the track “Circles”, by far the best track on the soundtrack.

Bandcamp link:

https://devinvibert.bandcamp.com/album/glitchhikers