{"id":356,"date":"2017-10-26T11:16:06","date_gmt":"2017-10-26T15:16:06","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/?p=356"},"modified":"2019-02-11T15:35:15","modified_gmt":"2019-02-11T20:35:15","slug":"thematic-thursday-grim-fandango","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/2017\/10\/26\/thematic-thursday-grim-fandango\/","title":{"rendered":"Thematic Thursday: Grim Fandango"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a>Welcome back to Thematic Thursdays: where I share from my collection of soundtracks suitable for writing or working! Today’s feature is in honour of Halloween: Grim Fandango.<\/p>\n

Composed for the 1998 LucasArts game by Peter McConnell, the Grim Fandango soundtrack is just an eclectic a mix as the game, mixing jazz and big band tracks (‘Casino Calavera’ is great to Charleston to, I can say with some experience) with traditional Mexican instruments and samples–such as on the very sweet track ‘9th Heaven’ or the gently spooky ‘Temple Gate’.<\/p>\n

Grim Fandango is a point-and-click adventure that goes for big story telling and a very cinematic experience; it would almost work on its own as a movie. As such the soundtrack is much more noticeable than many games of its type, which makes sense as some tracks were designed to underscore cut-scenes, not just remain in the background–whereas others were composed to loop endlessly and mindlessly as literal elevator music.<\/p>\n

So the album as a whole doesn’t glide gently from one song to another (as in, say, Riven<\/a>). For me it lends itself more to tasks with a sense of urgency rather than setting a mood, so it’s great for writing blogposts or design work. Steam released in 2015 a remastered version of both the game and the soundtrack, and I recommend both. For the re-release, Peter McConnell redid all the tracks with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra, giving the Steam version a much rounder, fuller sound, as well as longer versions of the songs themselves. But I still have a soft spot for the original so I am including links to both.<\/p>\n

YouTube: Original soundtrack<\/a> | Remastered soundtrack<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A review of the soundtrack to the 1998 LucasArts game<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,10],"tags":[25,23,12,22],"class_list":["post-356","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","category-thematic-thursday","tag-action-scenes","tag-complex","tag-soundtrack","tag-upbeat"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=356"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":929,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/356\/revisions\/929"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/309"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=356"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=356"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/victoriafeistner.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=356"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}