The record I’d love to recommend you this time is absolutely timeless. You probably haven’t heard much about American composer Mark Morgan although he was quite important figure in 90s even beyond his relative obscureness. Morgan made his impact on what we call «sound design» nowadays. Hired by Interplay Corporation, he made series of soundtrack for RPG games which instantly became immortal classics. And «Vault Archives» is probably the highlight of Morgan’s contribution to the worldwide acceptance of ambient music.
I used to play Fallout 1&2 back in the days when the games were released (1997-1998) AND of course I was hardly able to remember the soundtrack. But I strongly suppose that the gaming hours (weeks or maybe even months) of Fallout 2 has made huge impact on me and the way I comprehend sound art in general. I realized it only when I decided to shake off the rust and walk through the game 10+ years later and was absolutely stunned by only one thing — the soundtrack.
«Vault Archives» is work of art made by strong and consistent composer who came up with melodies, noises and echoes of post-apocalyptic deserted land, dried, filled with dust, rust and x-rays. Perfectly doing the purpose of backing the visual arts and gameplay, this record can be fairly considered as blend of early days dark ambient, tribal ambient and heat of American southern music so you can easily find here pretty much of Lustmord, Rapoon and Earth but only as glimpses of reminiscence, because Morgan’s style is very unique and district.
So listening to this record hardly can be described as entertainment at least in the conventional sense, because «Vault Archives» is very dense and moody piece of music, especially the first part which is taken from Fallout. All the way your ears instantly witness metallic swirls, quite scary drones and lots of uncategorizable various sounds that pictures hot radioactive wind crawling upon the poisoned desert. You can hear all that immediately with the opening track «Radiation Storm» – just 10 seconds and bam – you already there.
But my personal favorite part of this record is second one which is related to Fallout 2. This part has bigger duration and contains more different colors. It has Morgan’s trademark one-tone less track and more colors there with trademark thick and monotonous drones at the back of the mix, profusely supplemented with patterns of proto-indian woodwinds, shamanic percussion, fragments of symphonic orchestrations and some artificially synthesized instruments of imaginary folklore which I personally tag as «another world music». It’s hard to explain what kind of feelings the old-school gamer have when he listens to the crazy tribalism of «Moribund World» or «Beyond the Canyon», false-bottom calamity of «Dream Town» which is reminds me another 90’s cult tune of «X-Files» or taking a brief glimpse into traveller distorted blues with that haunting guitar pattern «My Chrysalis Highwayman».
Just grab this album and dive into the marvelous fiction right now. Mark Morgan is the man!
Also you can check some of tunes from «Vault Archives» in my badass mixtape here.