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One of the smallest frustrations that comes with writing for a living is that you really can’t listen to music with lyrics while you work. So for the last few years I’ve listened to all the “24/7 lo-fi jazz-hop rhythms to study and relax to” mix up what’s out there, a thousand variations of a Sisyphean student cursed to always turn them pages to the sound of cold and indistinct melodies. Ahead of the release of World Of Warcraft: Shadowlands next week, Blizzard released its own version of the form – commissioning four composers to create vibrating remixes of the MMO’s underworld soundscapes.
I had a friend who once joked that he could procedurally generate an endless loop of lo-fi beats, so generic started the form. Fortunately, Blizzard has taken a few steps further. The editors tasked musicians Josh Carter, Eevee, Casiio, and Bishop Nehru to hand-create their own version on four themes from the upcoming expansion. Take Bastion, for example, which has a true upbeat summer vibe.
On the other side of the tonal spectrum, Ravendreath, the lofty Gothic hell landscape, is aptly branded as a fancam for Dracula.
Ardenweald, meanwhile, has that very quiet, “organic” flow – the kind vibe you’d expect to find on one of those playlists whose album art shows a bear smoking a joint. It’s an oddly common thing in the lo-fi chillhop scene, sort of.
Finally, the demonic skeletal world of Maldraxxus is what I imagine the Doomguy listens to when he takes his break once a year to decapitate Cyberdemons with heavy metal.
It’s a bit of a shame that they’re only four or five minutes each, be careful. Great little unique tracks, but lacking the essential quality of being left on for so long, muffled drum beats become an immutable fact. I would like to think they would keep the ball rolling and get official remixes of some older, more memorable tracks – applying Stormwind or Dalaran themes in synths until they positively drizzle with vibe.
World Of Warcraft: Shadowlands itself will launch on Monday.