- Music for games sure has come a long way since the 8-bit soundchips available to early composers lent an extremely limited yet distinctive sound palette to games such as Mario Bros. Aficionados of low-rez bass synth and noise-burst snares have the retro fetishist ChipTune genre to call their own, with dedicated festivals such as Australia's own annual jam, SquareSounds. That's *not* what we are talking about here.

Game soundtracks have grown up and come of age, and that's in no small way thanks to the maker behind the soundtrack to Induction, Tim Shiel.

Having won a string of plaudits for his soundtrack to the 2013 mobile gaming indie hit Duet, Tim is taking his place among a crew of composers who are showing that game music can be much more than a series of poker machine style bleeps and sweeps to accentuate the thrill [ or disappointment ] to moments of gameplay.

Duet was an album of dance electronica that had serious musical chops behind it, and Induction continues in an even more thoughtful vein. Opener Induction Theme draws you in with driving organic percussion and an ascending melodic feature creating intrigue and anticipation,then the album alternates between stretched-out ambient pieces and driven percussive dance numbers.. you can feel the arc of the game shifting from slower problem-solving stages to faster 'evade-and-survive' modes and back again throughout.

Undone p1 is simultaneously epic and restrained, whilst its follow-on in Undone p2 recalls a live performer finally dropping the beat that you didn’t know needed to happen. Ghostly vocals peer out at the edges of a wash of reverb. I found myself really wanting them to be a hint to a hidden level or a warning from some unseen opponent..

Taken as a whole what really distinguishes this release is the constant balancing act between ambience and drive, a move that might never have been attempted without the brief of an indie art-game to inspire it. I'm imagining this album could be a kind of trojan horse for people who would never knowingly seek out or listen to Eno's Music for Airports' or Aphex Twin's Selected Ambient Works vol.2.

Closing cut Blessed sounds like a sunrise over a futuristic skyline, with raw silk-edged synths layering underneath piercing crystalline tones. The overdriven guitar (making a return from its first appearance in Gernika) bursts into life for a flash, then it’s over and so is the album. Man, if the ending of the game is as good as the album I may have to overcome my wooden thumbs to play it all the way through.

- Kieran Ruffles.