Although not a video game inspired album technically, I believe Mattias Häggström Gerdt AKA Another Soundscape has been around these parts (mainly over at OCReMix) enough to get a pass on such trivial matters. This album, We Express Ourselves With T-Shirts (available through this link), marks Anosou’s foray into original tunes, and is quite successful at it no doubt. The instrumental album, revolving on T-shirts and our lives within them is a suprisingly evocative work. Kicking off with the forest like adventure of Richard’s T-Shirt and into the longing sounds of The Person You Love Forgot This T-Shirt the album creates some surprising moments of depth as well as upbeat head bobbing.

My personal favorite track, if you couldn’t guess, is the cosmic Souvenir T-Shirt From Space Travel (it’s just something about songs about space). The track starts with a reverberating tone that leads into a track that creates a mood of reverence and adventure that is hard not to enjoy. The warbling tones create an alien like atmosphere while the pianos and scratchy drum beats keep you in the mindset of a noble human on that alien world. Definitely a stand out track in my mind.

The rest of the album continues to play around with different themes and moods, like the upbeat rhythms in T-Shirt With Flowers Instead of Fabric or the laid back dance atmosphere of Rather Plain T-Shirt, and closing with the deep jungle vibe of Stolen T-Shirt With Black Cat Print.

This is certainly a strong debut of original tracks from a long time member of the VG inspired music community. As a close I would also like to include some of the liner notes from Anosou himself from this new album.

Even though my heart is with video game music, you can’t expect all your ideas to fit in games. You can’t even expect to get enough work to try those ideas in games. Sometimes, just sometimes, you want to make music for yourself. ‘We Express Ourselves With T-Shirts’ is a compilation of such music written on various occasions and locations between 2007 and 2009. The title is a self-referential joke that grew on me and ultimately made it to the cover of this compilation.

Thanks goes out to everyone at OverClocked ReMix for helping me get to where I am today, friends and close ones for inspiration, support and joy and finally the video game music community at large for loving, promoting and re-inventing the art form. I love you!
Mattias Häggström Gerdt
Stockholm – January 3rd, 2010

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