Ambient Soundtrack Review: "Sacred Runes" by Logan Sky
Sacred Runes by Logan Sky is the soundtrack to an adventure game that he developed with his son as a lockdown project. The individual tracks all blend into one long composition full of soft, flowing and drifting sounds. As such, it makes most sense to review it as a unified piece of music.
There are a few tracks on Sacred Runes in which delicate, light melodies with a feeling of sadness drift through. There are fascinating percussion sounds, ancient-sounding instruments that drift in and small snatches of more melodic material along with a full soundscape of ambient noises and a sonic backdrop that lends a cave-like feeling of reverberation to the album.
There is something ethereal and lost in the sounds of Sacred Runes. It creates the sensation of being carried through ancient, forgotten landscapes. Sometimes the sounds are eerie and weighty, dark bass moving through the cavernous spaces of the album. There are deep rumbles, ambient drifts of sound and organic noises like wind and dripping water.
This is highly atmospheric ambient music. It’s imbued with a wide variety of sonic textures which are sometimes organic, sometimes computerized. Overall this album isn’t melodic but some tracks do have gentle, warm and delicately melancholic melodic lines in them.
Logan Sky has been making electronic music for a long time and it shows in how he balances all of the sonic elements to weave textures, images and sensations out of ambient electronic noise. As a functional soundtrack, it works well to create an in-game atmosphere, but it also works as ambient electronic music on its own. Images of strange landscapes abound in what amounts to a textured series of ambient paintings for the mind.
I would consider listening to Sacred Runes as a standalone work, even without the in game context. It has a dark, intense and sometimes very lovely feeling about it. I can imagine how it would create powerful feelings in the game, adding tension and emotion to the overall gameplay.
