SimCity 4
This is another big one. 25 songs, over 2 hours of music. Jerry Martin’s here again with a bunch of collaborators - hard to tell who did what but we’ll just assume it’s all a team effort.
This often falls into the Meditative But Energetic camp of music, and it’s really really good at what it does. A great example of this is By the Bay
That really lovely repetitive vibraphone (?), the atmospheric oboe (?), and the restraint it takes to introduce an electric guitar three minutes in…it’s just such a good tune. And almost all of it is this good! There are no stinkers.
I really like Re-Development as well:
It just kind of builds and builds but never really goes anywhere in particular - it stays in its lane, right? Like, it’s not trying to be EPIC MUSIC TO EPIC TO, it’s more like a building being erected over time. It is what it is at all times, it’s just more of itself as time goes on.
Or it’s Street Sweeper:
Which gets really close to being a drum n bass track. I think I actually included it in the VGDNB set I did last year. Maybe. Anyway this track kicks ass too.
So yeah, it’s a great great great OST. Just tremendous stuff.
Weird thing about this collection is that it lumped in the Rush Hour expansion music as well, so let’s talk about this now:
SimCity 4: Rush Hour
This one is slightly weirder to talk about, but it’s so good. 12 songs, over an hour of music. This one oscillates between electronic tracks similar in vibe to the base game, and some of the most incredible atmospheric orchestral music I’ve ever heard. Four of the tracks are clearly performed by a live orchestra, and they’re incredible. Fucking listen to this:
This is beautiful. Like, eye-wateringly gorgeous. I don’t usually have this reaction to orchestral music but something about this gets to me. Listen to this one!!
It’s weirdly foreboding and wandering but something about it is just so god damned good.
I feel like you could package the orchestral music alone and ignore all the more standard stuff and it would just be like, 21 minutes of gorgeous music. In fact, I made a playlist just of these 4 tunes because they’re so good:
The rest of the songs in this are good! But they don’t blow me away. I think these four tracks might be the best music totally on their own that I’ve yet heard (in this thread). I don’t think you need any context for these whatsoever, they’re just beautiful.