Darren Korb's an extremely cool composer. i honestly don't know what my favorite ost by him is- a lot of people would expect me to say hades based on superficial traits i'm known to like, but honestly i'm thinking it might be pyre from what i've heard at this point?! Pyre seems like it has the least of a distinct aesthetic, which might be a detractor, except i think in turn, what it let him do is focus on compositional intrigue rather than being expected to sound like any particular atmosphere. It's funny that i think this now because my initial impression of Pyre's soundtrack was pretty bad, but now i even enjoy the tracks I didn't used to like, not to mention all the ones like this that I didn't know of before that i LOVEd from the start. When I hear pyre music i hear him exploring a lot more interesting rhythmic layering (which this soundtrack has A LOT of) than in the other stuff, where rhythmic explorations are more linear in nature, rather than vertical and stacked upon each other like here, and this stacking and seamless seguing between so many different ways to feel the same space of time is one of the things i like most about this.

this tries pretty much every grouping of rhythms in a space of 1 bar that still sounds potentially smooth and makes sense. it doesn't feel mechanically gridded at all, there's ""6 even spaced beats in one bar"" on the plucked string ostinato, to start out with, and then the drums come in with ""4 beats stretched to the same length as the 6 beats on top of that. and then there's all the vocals that've been threading the whole thing in their own more fluid way. around 2:00 you hear the harp start to arpeggiate more quickly, and suddenly at 2:17 EVERY layer has switched to the tempo the drums were at. 4 (or 8 or 16 or whatever your interpretation) notes in the space of one bar. and ANOTHER switchup at 2:35 to shuffle/swing feel, which also still exists in the same space. I think stuff like this is actually a lot more interesting to me than a lot of other music that sells itself around odd rhythm stuff like 'odd time signatures' or whatever, this is never really anything like that at all, you could write this whole thing out in 4/4 at the same tempo if you wanted, but it explores like every possible way you could split up that space of time and smoothly segues all of them together.

the harmonies in the vocals are really cool, both parts harmonize in very interesting ways, whenever they're simultaneous and it works really well for cool climaticnesss. think in general I'm really attracted to the chord progression here too. the actual chord changes are mostly simple, flipping between d major and g minor back and forth over and over again mostly (mostly enforced by the plucked strings you hear from the start), spending an equal length of time on each chord; but it does not ""feel"" that simple, because the vocals and other layers are phrased in such a way where it kinda floats above, detached from that. and if you focus on the vocals, melody lines and spoken phrases don't exist in the same grid of ""this chord for 12 notes, the next chord for 12 notes"", the vocals thread together the changes by melodic lengthiness. like if you're following the melody line you're not paying attention to the progression behind them, and instead hearing these cool sequences of notes that aren't a repetitive loop at all. I think this is important, like without the vocal melody line, the chords would just be pretty plain in feel, but because they are the lead, the focus, you're actually guided to follow them and not notice the repetitions in the progression. at least that's what happens to me, and I think it feels cool! Of course there's also the times the chords deviate from that loop for big climaxes and those moments are super important too!

in the past few years i've come to really appreciate folky stuff, stuff that sounds like a bard telling a story about the PAST like this is absolutely included in that. this has increased my interest in darren korb stuff in general, but this track's one of the best examples of how my interest in that category just keeps increasing as time goes on (this would be like 50 slots higher nowadays oops. maybe i really should try a re-ranking at the end of the topic that's more representative of my current 2+ years shift in tastes over the course of this topic lol). thinking about this though, one thing i like is that although this is incredibly musically intriguing stuff in every way, tonally, rhythmically, there's never a part that's musically boring even this was instrumental--the lyrics are just as important. if I WANT to listen to the stories told, i can, but if i want to focus on the music instead, i can also do that. it's a delicate balance, but this hits it. both the music and lyrics are equally focused on, neither to the detriment of the others' potential to shine. neither thing distracts from the other

aaaaah there is SO MUCH inside of this song and there is no way i can address every single cool thing going on lol. i like pretty much everything about it, i'll say that much haha. great nomination.