Art of Mind Productions - Blue Ice (1995)

 

Composer: Various and Unknown Artists
Console: MS-DOS and Macintosh
Game Release Date: 1995-xx-xx
Bootleg Release Date: 2022-11-28
Ripper: SnowBlue
Runtime: 1:16:49, 36 Tracks

And here we are. The final post for the blog. Post 72. 

This is the soundtrack for the completely forgotten game, Blue Ice. This is a point-n-click adventure game developed by Art of Mind Productions. Absolutely nothing is known about this studio and this is their only game. 

I myself know little about this game either. I tried playing it a few years back and quickly got confused. Despite being a point-n-click game it's extremely abstract, puzzles make no sense, the plot barely makes sense and the whole thing is just too "out there" for me to figure out. It also doesn't help that I only rarely ever get into point-n-click games. I only originally picked it up because I found the cover art striking. 

The plot follows some heir to a throne having to prove himself king-material but traversing a super strange landscape. I don't know. I haven't beaten it, the one review I found complained the game too obtuse and nobody on YouTube has beaten it. 

What really interested me was the games soundtrack. It's this psychedelic, extremely dreamy and sometimes jazzy dungeon synth OST. There is also just a gabber(?) track jammed in there too. It's really strange. The developers really assembled a perfect group of tracks and turned them into this bleary-eyes mess that sounds amazing. 

Unfortunately no specific artist is listed as composing it. It says this in the manual. 

"Integral to the game are 30 tracks taken from published music CDs. Using the catalogueof a major record label, samples from well-known bands add atmosphere to each location as well as interweaving with the puzzles themselves. This music is played directly from memory allowing sound effects and speech to be superimposed."

It then adds the list of songs on the same manual page. However, despite those songs being listed they aren't the same as they appear in the game. The developers have modified all of the songs in some way, remixing them all. For example The Future Sound of London's song Dead Skin Cells appears in the credits. The song sounds nothing like FSOL's original track from the album Lifeforms. Same thing with Duke Ellington's Daydream track. They've all been remixed, no doubt to fit onto the CD and fit the atmosphere. Same thing The Grid's Leave Your Body. It sounds nothing like the Blue Ice version. 
As for who remixed it I can't say. The games credit list Carol Nudds and Richard L. Yapp in charge of sound but don't specify if they were the ones doing the remixing or not. It's a mystery that like the game will probably never be solved. 

Ripping the soundtrack was a puzzle in itself. The files were on the disc and stored as RAW files. After much trial and error I eventually found I could convert them with Audacity by importing as RAW and getting the encoding right (I think it was big endian iirc). I then extended the tracks a few times over (4-5 loops, made it about 3-4 minutes long) and volume boosted them all. 

Because I already spent over an hour or so fixing up all the tracks I am not going to try and identify which track is by which artist. I just titled hence I just gave them all random titles on some lorem ipsum shit. 

The quality is in 320kbps. Enjoy! 

Download: aHR0cHM6Ly9tZWdhLm56L2ZpbGUvU2RwUXlUeUsjejZ4V1E4cnJOTTdKR2J6Ni1XSWxseW9WQlNiMG1INDJGcTF2ZHVkejd1Zw==
p@ss: forgottengame