One last Barnbellow's Estate track to close out the season- and a remake of one of the oldest BE tracks ever produced. Technically, this is the third version of the song- I'd already done a remake once before, but it wound up not quite fitting the direction I wanted to take the ambient tunes for the project, so I'd been itching to take another go at it for a while. As a refresher, these ambient pieces I do for the project are what would play when there is no Pursuer active, and you're able to freely explore and investigate the Estate; this one in particular is the first "walkaround" pieces to play, when the player first enters the Estate and gameplay begins in earnest, were Barnbellow's Estate a real game you could play.
I'm much happier with this version, in terms of it fitting "the vision" better. A lot of the little details have changed or morphed even further then they already had during that initial rework, but a lot of stuff has carried over- in particular the idea of having the ambient atmosphere temporarily break for a big, dramatic organ chord progression followed by a synthy section has been around since the track's inception, ostensibly as a reflection of the estate's former glory (and also because Spooky™). I also liked the slightly tonal industrial hits from the second version, as well as some of its melodies, to carry them over. I even sampled myself and brought some of the "madwoman laughter" back from the second attempt. In the metafiction, I like to think that first remake was the version of the song used for a teaser demo of the game, before it got swapped out for this take in the final release (whereas that initial version from all those years ago was an early demo from the very beginning of the game's development).
I love doing ambient soundscapes like this; its very freeing to do something with looser rhythmic and progression "rules", where the idea is less to make a "song" and more convey an atmosphere with sounds.
~ Decon Theed (24/10/2024)