Alan Wake Soundtrack album review by Soundtrackgeek.com

“Welcome to the world of Alan Wake, a dark and mysterious world, a nightmare. The latest game from Microsoft will put you inside the head of this washed out writer who travels to a small town with his wife to find himself. Instead he finds himself inside a nightmare when his wife goes missing and strange things starts happening. The story is written as you go along in the game and you find the pages which all seem to come true. The dark forces in this game are disguised as the city locals, but is it all inside Alan Wake’s head? This composer of this fascinating story is Petri Alanko.

Let me just say that Alan Wake is brilliant on many levels, maybe most of all the execution of a fantastic story. If this was a TV show I would religiously watch it every week. I can’t shake off the feeling that this might have been a great Stephen King story back when he was really great. The story is so fascinating, and the music written and composed by Petri Alanko leaves nothing to be desired.

If you have seen the trailers, then you have heard some of the music within the game. One theme that stuck in my head was the one where Alan wakes up and they drive into the small and beautiful town of Bright Falls. It’s featured here as ‘Welcome To Bright Falls’ and is a wonderful theme that unlike the story as a whole, feels very optimistic and positive.

Yes, we are in for a ride here and it’s a dark one. The title track ‘Alan Wake’ is all you need to hear to understand that this score is a very dark one. The score is a creepy one, and simple, yet it sounds complex. The darker tones and ambients is the main part of the score, while the strings and piano play the slightly smaller, yet just as important role in the story.

Psychological thriller scores can be quite a nightmare to get through, but I have no problem with Alan Wake and it’s in fact excellent music to write to. I will be using the music of Alan Wake for my next novel. What I love most about this score is that it makes you think, it makes you feel. The haunting music doesn’t feel like it’s overpowering you, but you feel totally engulfed by it. The album is packed to the brim, but doesn’t feel too long.

Get it if you like minimalistic orchestral scores with lots of haunting melodies with ambients, strings and piano. It could easily be music for any great TV show or movie, and you will not feel cheated in any way that this is music made for a video game. It is a better listen outside of the game as you can truly soak in the excellent details which just seem to get better every time I listen to it. A truly great score and I hope that Petri Alanko will be flooded with offers from now on.