Pioneer

Pioneer from the 2025 Remaster of the 2001 album The Arcangel Soundtrack. Arcangel was my first game release for Windows PC, and it featured CD-audio by design. This music was recorded in 1999 at around the same time as the first Synaesthesia album, making those two albums my earliest music releases. Arcangel is a turn-based strategy game, and the story tells of two giant minds, genetically created super beings named Archetype and Progenitor that held the role of gods in a dystopian, militaristic future. Much of The Arcangel Soundtrack is dark and moody, and most of the tracks consist of melodic, analogue sounds without percussion that gradually build in layers, repeating chord structures that grow, and then fade into silence as each layer is removed. The album was recorded entirely using a Yamaha SY-85 synthesizer, driven by MIDI via MED Soundstudio software. This gave it a unique analogue-like warmness. In 2025 the album was remastered using new recordings taken from that synthesizer in 2022.