A Soundtrack For Your New Life: SoulEye’s “Adventure”

So there’s this guy, Magnus Pålsson. He’s from Sweden, and he’s pretty excellent. And you probably know of him, even if that name doesn’t look familiar.

His online handle is SoulEye, and he wrote the music for VVVVVV, one of the best chip-ish soundtracks in the past few years, which helped the indie/retro movement explode onto XBL and Steam.

As you might expect, the writer of such awesome music is not content to rest on the laurels of one soundtrack. In “Adventure,” SoulEye offers up a whole mixture of tracks. New original works, music for the soundtrack to rhythm game Pulsen (which includes some reworked VVVVVV themes), new tracks for VVVVVV (2.0 and 3DS exclusive music), B-sides and arrangements he’s had released on other soundtracks, and even some covers of other peoples’ work. It’s all kinds of stuff put into one amazing adventure.

After the jump, you’ll see the best way to almost die and why this music is perfect for that kind of activity. You’ll also get my take on this album.

Watch this trailer. Do it now.

Okay, I have to say this: you really have to believe in yourself to imply that your music would make a decent soundtrack for awesome base-jumping squirrel-men psycho-times. And yet, it does. Did you not watch the above video? Get on it! You will laugh, cry, and have the sudden urge to narrowly avoid death in your favorite mountainous locale (Malmo, Sweden for the win).

Magnus is right to take pride in his musicianship, and I’m happy to bolster the praise cries a little louder. The VVVVVV tracks (arranged ones and new ones) are great. I don’t know what this rhythm game “Pulsen” is all about, but the music for it is killer, and I love rhythm games, so I should probably look into it. The rest? It’s sort of silly, and I could’ve lived without it, but it fills out the album well.

The opening track “A Hero’s Destiny” has that awesome vibrato-heavy chiptune style that you’ll remember from VVVVVV (and, for that matter, the Famicom import Final Fantasy III). “Piercing the Sky” is insanely catchy. And then there’s that bass-heavy groove track, “Pacing Energy (Max Confidence).” That voice sample: “gotcha!” from a guy that is either very sexy or very creepy (i.e. – Johnny Depp characters all rolled into a ball), it gives me shivers.

The best tracks on the whole album, though, appear right smack in the middle. Tracks 9 and 10 are more VVVVVV tracks remixed for Pulsen: “Positive Force” and “Pressure Cooker.” Every time I hear Positive Force, my mind is sent into this wildly happy sugar-epileptic fit. This is my new favorite version of said song, so I’d say this is my favorite thing to yet come from SoulEye’s PC to my ears.

Now, the latter half of the album, I really could live without. It’s a great place for SoulEye to collect and publish his other works (a Super Meat Boy arrangement, a Cobalt arrangement, a Zelda arrangement, etc). Among these tracks, the most interesting of them is an arrangement of Jonathan Holmes’ “Talking To Women About Video Games.”

While I am most excited to see where Mr. Pålsson’s next big soundtrack will pop up, this collection of “others” from all over the spectrum is sure to satisfy myself and others for … about a year, give or take a few weeks.

The album is available directly from SoulEye’s site for $10 USD (digital) or that price + shipping (physical).