Wholly impressed by the new Caves & Cliffs soundtrack, I set out to discover more about Lena Raine's music. Celeste has been one heck of a place to start! I've never touched, or even seen the original game. Having now built up a world of emotions absorbing its soundtrack, an interesting experience awaits me if ever I explore the source of inspiration for such this mesmerizing music. She has struck me as a musician with a voice that's unique, a niche that will take much time and many records to decipher. Just taking my first steps, I'm sure it will be another wonderful journey.
Aligning glossy pristine pianos with buzz saw synths vaguely reminiscent of chip tune aesthetics and an assortment of virtual instruments, Lena flirts with the joys of digital imagination and fantasy with the real emotions they can evoke. The deep feels are first felt on First Steps. The lush piano and swirling synth melodies allure and blossom with a swell of reversing base synth that just elevates everything already heard to a magical place. Following up with a nine minute epic, Resurrections builds steadily to an end section of bustling percussion dancing melody that is entrancing every time.
From here a meaty mountain of music follows, totaling one hundred minutes of scenic songs flowing back and forth to its main theme with a few short transitional sequences between. The first stretch of songs bar the opening three drift into dark places. Scattered And Lost ushers in eerie horror melodies and upheavals of frantic drumming, quite the maniac vibes in brief moments. Anxiety pushes hard with its unsettling siren like synths and deep brooding saw waves before it collapses into a place beyond the pale, the soothingly sombre space of pain and suffering past by.
With Madaline And Theo we come out on the other side, ready to encounter the main theme again along with some seriously lively and ambitious instrumentation. It swaying from calm ambiences to busy, bustling layers of synth and animated percussion is wonderful, all with an emotional narrative that leads me to think this game is heavily story driven. With an eleven minute epic, Reach For The Summit, we are pulled into the final stretch as its big thematic swells leads us to satisfying, conclusive vibes with a teary, solemn ending played out through My Dearest Friends.
As a record, Celeste is a journey, a tale, an adventure, a remarkable one too! Its most impressive aspects are found in the busy and at times cluttered compositions that do not shy away from complexity or abrasion. It navigates them remarkably, holding onto a core theme and always having fantastical melody and direction at its side. Best of all its progressive song writing style keeps the music evolving and unraveling as even returning melodies and themes get reworked, told again through multiple lenses. Through all this the wonderment, adventure and emotional siring never ceases! Its quite remarkable.
Rating: 9/10