How a triple j presenter developed the soundtrack for one of 2018’s most-anticipated video games

Today, triple j and Double J host and musician Tim Shiel announced the release of his forthcoming album Glowing Pains: Music From The Gardens Between. The album is a soundtrack to a Melbourne-made adventure game The Gardens Between, which became one of the most highly-anticipated global indie games of 2018.

Glowing Pains: Music From The Gardens Between boasts an impressive roster of contributors. It features Australian Music Prize-nominated composer Luke Howard on piano, Wally de Backer (Gotye) on ondioline, Liam McGorry of Dorsal Fins and Saskwatch on trumpet. With vocal contributions from Lonelyspeck, Researcher, KAIAR, Eric J Dubowsky (producer for Flume and Chet Faker) and many more.

When discussing the creation of the album, Shiel has detailed “I wanted this album to reflect on the game’s bittersweet themes of memory, time, and childhood friendship.” He continued “Similar to the game, the album does this largely without words.  I also wanted the album to exist as a distinct experience to the game itself – this is much more than just a collection of the music that was written the game.”

Shiel worked in cahoots with Melbourne-based development team The Voxel Agents for over four years on the product. It’s since garnered impresssive hype. It has already scored itself pre-release awards at a selection of prestigious games events.

Glowing Pains: Music From The Gardens Between Album Artwork

The album’s artwork was illustrated by fellow triple j colleague Stacy Gougoulis, who re-interpreted the game’s main characters Arina and Frendt.

We asked Shiel how the opportunity to score a video-game arose to which he explained

“I actually first met Henrik from The Voxels at a games awards night called the Australian Game Developer Awards in Melbourne in 2014.  I was there with Kumobius, the creators of Duet which was the first game I worked on.  We were lucky enough to pick up a couple of awards that night including Best Audio. 

I remember that Henrik actually was running around that night with his iPad, trying to get other local developers to give him feedback on a super early prototype of the game – at that point it was just one level with Arina and Frendt climbing a mountain, and no music at that point.  I remember peeking over the shoulder of Tom from Kumobius while the two of them were running through the demo. Even at that very early stage I thought the game was absolutely stunning both in aesthetic and in its core idea – being able to control time with your hands.   It was probably about six months later that Henrik and I properly connected over a coffee and realised that it was going to be a pretty perfect fit for me to join the team for the game – and that was almost three and a half years ago.”

Glowing Pains: Music From The Gardens Between will be released on October 12th. The Gardens Between video game is out now on PS4, Nintendo Switch and Steam. You can listen to lead single ‘Are You The Same’ now.

This article originally appeared on The Industry Observer, which is now part of The Music Network.