Assassin’s Creed -Revelations- Official Soundtrack

	Album Title: Assassin’s Creed -Revelations- Official Soundtrack
	Record Label: Ubisoft
	Catalog No.: N/A
	Release Date: November 15, 2011
	Purchase: Not Available

Overview

Most people agree that Jesper Kyd’s music has been a key component of the success of Assassin’s Creed throughout this generation of gaming. While most regard Assassin’s Creed II to be the pinnacle of the series, his unique experiments of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood were also notable. On Assassin’s Creed: Revelations, he developed many of the ideas from both games to offer a fascinating experience. For the first time in the series, he also worked closely with a cinematic composer — Lorne Balfe — to create the largest soundtrack in the series to date, suitable for capturing the title’s vast scope and three characters. The full soundtrack for the game is a three disc experience available through Amazon MP3 and other digital retailers. A downloadable digital soundtrack was also included in the Signature Edition of the game, exclusively featuring Jesper Kyd’s music. This review refers to this promotional release.

Body

Lorne’s take on Assassin’s Creed begins with the new and official “Assassin’s Creed” main theme which is most notable for its beautiful vocal work by the talented Madeline Bell who was handpicked by Hans Zimmer, and Jesper Kyd to be the new voice of Assassin’s Creed. The best thing about her voice is that it’s smooth and really elegant; she eases into different pitched notes seamlessly. With her voice and Lorne’s writing, the main theme is really given a soul. The main theme, although not used in Jesper’s work can be heard throughout the soundtrack which makes it very iconic. The best reinterpretation of the main theme is perhaps “Road to Masayaf”, which sounds both exciting and memorable, It’s lovely how the bass lines and cello staccato riffs slowly evolve the track and make it shine with its autonomous melody.

Jesper Kyd captures a sense of excitement in Assassin’s Creed: Revelations by blending hints of Hollywood with instruments inspired by the East. “The Wounded Eagle”, for example, thrusts players into action with its edgy Arabian string melodies and booming drum rolls. It sounds authentic enough to fit Ezio’s mission, but is still accessible and catchy thanks to its Western influences. “Fight or Flight” expands on these ideas to portray the busy Turkish setting with a unique assortment of woodwind, string, and percussion performances. Kyd recorded with a team of featured soloists to ensure that such performances are as authentic and impacting as possible. Since this is played when escaping the Templars, he also incorporates electronic beats maintain a sense of action and fortunately mix well with the acoustic instruments. In many ways, these tracks are developments of the stylistic ideas of track like “Venice Rooftops” and “The Madam” from the Assassin’s Creed II soundtrack and most will agree that is no bad thing.

But of the action tracks, “Ambush” is the most outstanding. It returns to the ideas of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood by incorporating haunting vocal chants that capture the sheer force of an unstoppable assassin. It’s also effective how Kyd mixes several melodic ideas in this game above the relentless percussion polyrhythms. The equally percussive “Street Fight” and “Crossed Swords” even hybridise some contemporary guitar riffs and electronic beats into the Middle Eastern textures; all the elements are hybridised convincingly, as might be expected from the artist behind Hitman. Even more strikingly, “Die by the Blade” features some of the most fascinating timbres ever featured on a video game. Rather than simply emulate Eastern aesthetics, Jesper Kyd incorporates a range of unusual features to accentuate the bustling feel. Most notable is the prepared use of double bass by featured performer Diego Stocco (of Sherlock Holmes fame), which is both effective in context and fascinating on a stand-alone level. The track also features vocals incorporating the Azan — the Islamic call to prayer. This is not intended to be offensive to the religion, but rather authenticate the regional feel and capture Ezio’s desperate situation.

Assassin’s Creed: Revelations incorporates several other unique beautiful ambient tracks that are played throughout while free roaming. In “Welcome to Kostantiniyye”, Kyd avoids stereotypical ambient approaches — such as using sound effects or whispers — in favour of subtle but affecting use of authentic instruments and vocals. This really gives the feeling of being in a lively world and helps to give the title its soul. A lot of fans will also notice similarity in the melodies with Assassin’s Creed II, which helps to connect the games and give the series a recurring theme. Another incredible addition, featured on the second disc of the release, is “Instanbul”. It really captures the image of a lonely Ezio roaming around a vibrant Constantinople. The vocal solo from the 1:47 mark, above the authentic solo instruments, is particularly effective — understated but beautiful. While technically used in the gameplay, this track certainly complements Balfe’s cinematic tracks with its extended development, and mixture of scenic and introspective components.

The other noteworthy tracks that use the main theme are “Enough for one Life” and “Altair and Darim”, the good thing about these is that they don’t heavily alter the main theme but instead build on it with different instruments. “Enough for one Life” is especially refreshing and emotional during the game as it plays the theme in violin, which is the iconic instrument for emotions. It also relies on Madeline’s vocal but not much as “Altair and Darim” where the vocal is the stand point and the music is secondary. Lastly the score “Sofia Sartor”, although unfortunately short introduces us to the love theme of this game. The secondary theme to this is “A familiar face”, which is perhaps the highlight of Lorne’s talents; it’s really classic and has spot on orchestration, which make it the highlight of the love theme.

The thematic tracks are not all that Lorne has written as this game includes some dramatic work as well. “Son of Umar” is basically what you can expect from the dramatic themes. They will either be slow and moody like “A heated Discussion” or ominous and suspenseful like “Last of Palaiologi” which integrates a mixture of beats and suspenseful scoring to really elevate the experience both in game and as a standalone. Amazingly the fortunate thing is that even Lorne’s dramatic music doesn’t sound like a Hollywood cliché, almost every track has a unique melody or instrument lined up to prevent that and keep it fresh/

Ubisoft’s strong placement of music in the game is also reflected by the usage of several key tracks during the main gameplay. “The Crossroads of the World” is mostly played at the beginning of the game to enforce many stylistic and thematic ideas featured throughout the soundtrack. It presents Kyd’s vision of the main theme on slow swelling strings above acoustic guitars performed by Dan Sistos. But its most iconic section is two minutes in, where mournful vocals combine with much darker strings to create an image of an ageing Ezio. When this track is established, the game eventually replaces it with other material, including “Byzantium” — another heartful ambient track that derives many of its ideas from “Welcome To Kostantiniyye” — as the title explores other areas and characters. Once again, Kyd also captures a sense of suspense that is strongly tied to the situation. “Yerebatan Cistern” captivates with its ominous strings use nonlinear development, while the minimalistic “Altair Escapes” is fascinating and immersive from start to finish. Others such as “The Traitor” are a little too subdued for stand-alone, but still very well-integrated into the circumstances they are used in.

Although most of Balfe’s tracks are focused on the cinematic cutscenes of the game, he also created a range of music for the multiplayer mode, featured across the third disc. These tracks begin with “Abstergo Industries”, another excellent variation of the main theme featuring dramatic chanting.

which once again makes excellent use of the Main theme in an altered pace and form, this time the vocals are more like chants and make the overall composition sound really dramatic. The game’s secondary main theme is also particularly well-highlighted in “Firenze”. There are other tracks which play at different maps like “Constinople” and “Venezia”, in these tracks you can obviously find a Hollywood mix but is definitely something new and fresh sounding and so, it doesn’t feel cliché. The other half of the mp tracks are slow paced like “Assassinate the Target” that create a very tense and interesting mood using electronic tunes to relate to the Sci-Fi setting.

The tracks that really shine however are the action paced tracks used during fast paced objectives and the singular track that really shows this is “The Pursuit”, this track is definitely the most exciting track in the entire soundtrack other then “Road to Masayaf” and it reminds us why we love high octane action tracks from Hollywood styled composers. The track uses the main theme in a heroic and faster tone, but what makes this track really memorable is the vocal work blended with the fast paced strings that are really mind-blowing and the other best thing is that the track is not short and so it has enough time to highlight different moods from suspense to action. This is not the only exciting track for the taking as others like “On the Run” and “The Hunter” are also available and although not quite as memorable, they are definitely a good listen.

Summay

Overall, this is a generous sampler of the full soundtrack and, in particular, features many of the highlights of Kyd’s contribution. Once again, most of the tracks here are both amazing during gameplay and interesting enough to warrant stand-alone listening. However, it omits many of the tracks from the full soundtrack — including all of Lorne Balfe’s main theme, cinematic, and multiplayer tracks — so fans desiring a complete musical experience should head fir that one on Amazon. This is nevertheless a good bonus with the signature edition of the game.

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