Lord Skye - Spring: Sunny Meadow

Hear The Track Here

Know what gives me nightmares? Yes, I know the list might stretch out into days but lets talk about the musical variety, cos there's only really one of them. Games Soundtrack is a garanteed cert to both raise my blood pressure and cause me to babble incessantly as you are now witnessing. Therefore, it should follow that Lord Skye belongs in that category. Having spent the last three years wrestling with tracks from this genre, the terror of facing another one never really abates. So why is this? Usually I'd have to say it was the tendency of the genre towards the overblown and pretentious and/or the sound of amateur musicians pretending that they have a 1,000th of the skills of John Williams, Danny Elfman and all... As if.

Meaning there is probably an Everest of predjudice for Lord Skye to climb.

Not only does the guy have to make the music, now he has to fekkin please people with it too. Imagine, he writes in this tracks comments, 'you're in a meadow, sun is shining, a gentle breeze ruffles your hair' and I tried that method but an acoustic guitar and a full band with piano kept interfering with that vision so I decided to listen to the music instead. And very nice it is too, in a sound track kind of way, and if that sounds like being damned with faint praise, it isn't meant to be. I actually enjoyed the musical content of this track a lot, Lord Skye has a few tricks up his sleeves that will raise some eyebrows.

And highbrows come to that...

Spring Sunny Meadow borders on the classical in arrangement and style and this is probably where the track scores most with me because - to be honest - I found some of the sounds used a bit cringeworthy. I think that a lot of this antipathy has to do with the 'factory' sound of them which is particularly evident with the brass samples. More XG that Xtc if you see what I mean. Still, despite that small(ish) downside, Spring Sunny Meadow is a tidy enough - and in some ways - clever enough production to be worthy of a listen or two. Especially if classical arrangements interest you. It's certainly an interesting introduction to this artist because - had the sounds been more precise - I may have enjoyed this more than I actually did.