Eldritch Blast (2023)

marimba solo + electronics

This piece is a big mixture of ideas I’ve had over the last several months/years, inspired by the soundtracks from Celeste, Chicory: A Colorful Tale (Lena Raine seems to be a big source of inspiration over the last couple of years. Her music is just so cool!), Xenoblade Chronicles 3, and various nostalgic video games from the 80s/90s.

I wanted to do something different (stop me if you’ve heard THAT one before), and include a lot of stuff I don’t typically hear in marimba solos, if ever. So, this piece features 80s synthwave, an epic orchestra, aggressive chromaticism, random angry chord clusters, hard grooves, a pseudo-looping effect, some actual real life bona fide melodies, and drums from the Super Nintendo.

This wasn’t about anything specific, I just had a bunch of groove and melody ideas I couldn’t get out of my head. The track is basically just me messing around with a bunch of different sounds I have and going way too overboard with it.

I thought Eldritch Blast sounded cool.

for 5.0 octave marimba
~8’00”