The Music of Amanita Design

Regular readers will know that I've been getting back into music of late, both stuff I am nostalgic for and new stuff by old favorites (and also new-to-me bands, but that's a post I haven't written yet). But I've also been getting back into soundtrack music: the floor where my office is is mostly empty these days, so I have been listening to music because it's depressing sitting up there for eight hours in silence. This has spurred me to get back into buying soundtracks, something I used to do with regularity but fell away from since it didn't make sense to buy soundtracks I would then not listen to.

One of the weird things about being a soundtrack collector is when you pick up soundtracks for things you don't actually watch. I have all the soundtracks for the new Battlestar Galactica series, even including spin-offs like Blood & Chrome and Caprica, even though I stopped watching the show during season three. That makes a sort of sense: I knew I liked Bear McCreary's work from the first two seasons, so it stands to reason I would enjoy more of it.

But sometimes I buy soundtracks to things I don't actually do. For example, my wife was into puzzle videogames in the early 2010s, and I ended up enjoying the music to games I never played but did overhear her playing. Most notably, there was Machinarium (2009), where you are (if I remember right) an old rusty robot on a quest. It has whimsical, moody music, the perfect kind of thing to read or write or grade papers along to. I think the game (which she probably got via Humble Bundle) may have actually even come with a soundtrack. The music was by Tomáš Dvořák, a Czech composer who also goes by the name Floex. 

I enjoyed it enough that later I ended up tracking down more Machinarium music by Dvořák: he also put out a free EP of bonus music (I particularly like "Game In The Brain"), but also I got some unreleased source music somewhere... though I don't know where that actually came from, given it was added to my iTunes a decade ago.

The publisher of Machinarium is Amanita Design; I don't remember exactly how I came across another soundtrack for one of their games, but my guess is it is because of the pandemic. Not that I was playing videogames, but I guess my wife must have been, because the soundtrack for Botanicula (2012) was added to my iTunes in April 2020. What else was there to do during that time? Botanicula's music, by Czech duo DVA, is a bit more cutesy than Machinarium's, but still quite enjoyable. (There's a fun Star Wars–inspired track which doesn't seem to be on the Bandcamp album.)

Once I had two albums for Amanita products, clearly this was a thing, so I began adding them to my soundtracks-to-get list. Last fall, once I got back into soundtrack music, I picked up the music to Samorost 2 (2006), which I believe was Dvořák's first work for Amanita. (My understanding is that the music to the original Samorost was unlicensed tracks downloaded off the Internet by the developers.) This one was pretty good, but what I have really been digging is his music to Samorost 3 (2016), which I picked up just after Christmas. I particularly like the main theme.

I am bad at writing about music (hence my whole reason for attempting this irregular series of posts about it), so I can't tell you what I like about it, but if you like electronic soundtrack music, I highly encourage you to support the work of Dvořák and DVA even if you are not a videogame player!