Game music is, pleasingly, getting increased recognition and appreciation for its role in the industry. So many of our favourite experiences are enhanced and in part defined by the soundtrack, and we can see this in the love shown towards iconic tracks. Fan-made performances and arrangements are easy to find, and some of them do brilliant things with the source material.
One upcoming album that looks likely to do just that is 'Hyrule Highlands II' - it's the work of Tim de Man, a one-man Celtic and Folk band. The first album in this series is above and is fantastic, and for the follow up they've teamed up with ZREO: Second Quest, which helped with the new mixes and promotion. Hyrule Highlands II launches on Bandcamp on 24th May, where it can be purchased for $10USD or more, before dropping on all major streaming services on 7th June. Picking it up on Bandcamp gets you a "music video featuring Tim de Man, high-resolution front and rear cover art, wallpaper with and without logos in 6K resolution, mobile wallpaper, and a complimentary photo of Tim."
You can listen to two full tracks as a preview ('Ballad of the Goddess' and 'Deku Palace') below:
We like the Celtic / Folk twist of the arrangements, with ZREO: Second Quest adding some orchestration. As you can see in the video of the original album above, almost all of the instrumentation is the work of Tim de Man, a skilled musician who now devotes himself to his favourite game music.
A pianist and music teacher by education, Tim de Man is a Dutch game music composer and multi-instrumentalist. He plays piano, drums, accordion, guitars, mandolin, and tin whistle, and has a vocal range of more than 3 octaves. Tim finally embraced his passion for old-school melodic game music in 2016. After seeing the first Breath of the Wild trailer, Tim took the plunge into making YouTube videos. Since 2020, he's focused only on game music, both on his channel and in his composing practice.
Take a listen and let us know what you think in the comments!
[source bandcamp.zreosq.com]
Comments 15
Celtic and the guy’s called Tim de Man? Only a few people on here will understand why that’s hilarious 😂
Nice relaxing stuff while I sip my morning coffee.
Thanks for the heads up, I wouldn't mind if y'all reported on more of these music releases.
Celtic always has a hard C, just sayin
@Mando44646 Fans of a certain football club would disagree, so my tagline was for them
@nessisonett Haha, he's Dutch so we don't need to worry about that...
@nessisonett 😂 Great spot.
I like this track that reminds me of Celtic music:
https://youtu.be/wJ2SGH5_zKk
but unfortunately it is not in so high quality. I haven't found it better. Also, there are some other tracks that worth listening to in this album, eg Between the Pages - Page Two, The Orchards, The Lab, Lament & Hornpipe, etc.
@nessisonett Der's more ta Oireland dan dis.
@ThomasBW84 ah. Thought maybe it was a reference to the American basketball team that also mispronounces its own name
Sounds great.
@Mando44646 Actually, it’s correctly pronounced ‘Sell-tic’. The hard C dates to the 18th century.
@nessisonett Its from the Latin, which is always a hard C (Latin doesn't have a soft C sound). The Latin came from the Greek Kelt, which was coined in the 400s BC.
"also Kelt, c. 1600, from Latin Celta, singular of Celtae, from Greek Keltoi, Herodotus's word for the Gauls (who also were called Galatai). Used by the Romans of continental Gauls but apparently not of the British Celtic tribes. Originally in English in reference to ancient peoples; extention to their modern descendants is by 1830s, from French use in reference to Brittany" https://www.etymonline.com/word/celt
@Mando44646 Not necessarily. The modern word equally comes from the French/Breton ‘Celtique’ which uses a soft C. After the Norman Conquest, a soft C before E was standardised in the UK. So the reason the football team is Celtic with a soft C is because that’s exactly how it was pronounced when it was founded. It’s both entirely correct for the teams to use a soft C and correct to use a hard C when referring to other contexts. I meant more that the use of the hard C was adopted by the UK in the 18th century rather than in general.
@ThomasBW84 Non native English speakers also expect to pronounce words as they are spelled. I'm not sure why I still expect that. There are so many exceptions.
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