Dief

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Dief

Dief.jpg

Release date 2017-03-13
Genre Ambient, Breakbeat
Running time 32:01
Bandcamp $4 or more
Apple Music/iTunes $5.99
Spotify Ad-supported
I failed the quiz.
This article is missing trivia.
The basic details are all here, but if you know some fun facts on these tracks, you should add them.

Dief is the seventh major full-length album by C418, and the soundtrack to the GDC talk Still Grooving: Game Dev Life Set to Live Music which was presented by Teddy Dief, director of the game Hyper Light Drifter and the album's namesake.

A recording of the talk can be viewed here, and features C418 playing music from the album live.

The album artwork was designed by Ben Swinden, who also designed the accompanying graphics to the GDC talk.

All songs on the soundtrack are licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0, with the exception of Texture Prayers.

Official descriptions

Dief is a short album created in under two weeks for a performance piece by Teddy Dief at GDC 2017. It runs at a smooth 90BPM at all times and is here to relax and calm you down. The album art is by creative genius Ben Swinden
“Dief” is a short album created in under two weeks for Teddy Dief‘s GDC Talk “Still Grooving: Game Dev Life Set to Live Music”.

The artwork by the way is made by game designer artist musician multitalent Ben Swinden.

As the title implies, I’ve created backing music as Teddy read a sort of poem about his life. The talk itself worked better than we anticipated! We had very little time working on it, mostly because Teddy is a busy boy directing a new game at Square Enix, which, who knows how much time that swallows.

Everything of “Dief” runs at a smooth 90BPM, mostly because I had to make sure the BPM was the same all across the board so I could quickly switch over to any song that I desire. However, the album version of course doesn’t do any crazy transitioning, it’s more of a normal traditional breakbeat style album. I’m hoping it works really well with just playing it in the background and chilling to it.

[...]

I’m pretty happy with what I’ve managed to accomplish in less than two weeks. It’s of course SUPER simple and you can’t really compare it to the works I’ve spent years on. Still, it chill, ok.
—C418, c418.org

Tracks

Texture Prayers

Texture Prayers
Length 3:28
Bandcamp $1 or more
“Texture Prayers” is the simplistic intro to the entire piece, mostly consisting of string chords and pretty much nothing else for about 3 minutes. It’s supposed to be a tranquil intro before things get more active.
—C418, c418.org

Trivia

  • Shortest track in Dief, but only shorter than Work Life Imbalance by one second.
  • The only track in Dief not licensed under CC BY-NC-ND 3.0

Work Life Imbalance

Work Life Imbalance
Length 3:29
Bandcamp $1 or more
“Work Life Imbalance” is both supposed to be optimistic and sort of discouraging, as the piece was supposed to describe the feeling of moving onwards to new adventures, yet mournfully missing your past life. You’ll probably start to notice with this piece that most songs seem to share the same instrument and drum base, and that’s not a mistake. I wanted everything to feel sort of similar, but still far away enough to make every song unique.
—C418, c418.org

Imaginary Interlude

Imaginary Interlude
Length 3:29
Bandcamp $1 or more
“Imaginary Interlude” is one of the few songs I didn’t actually use for the performance. In on itself it’s very dark and melancholic, with the use of bells, broken drums, and heavy compression.
—C418, c418.org

Smooth Fall

Smooth Fall
Length 4:35
Bandcamp $1 or more
“Smooth Fall” is probably the coolest of them all. It starts extremely minimalistic with only a few base chords, but then starts breaking out into rhythm, until the piano dictates the entirety of the piece. I also didn’t use this song in the performance. I just couldn’t transition to it without muddying the performance too much.
—C418, c418.org

Blank Cubicle

Blank Cubicle
Length 4:42
Bandcamp $1 or more
“Blank Cubicle”, huh. I seem to always use 808 drums whenever I want to describe busy work life in cubicles. I wonder why… well, anyway. I tried putting lyrics into this piece, and I’m not sure if I was quite successful at it, but I don’t think I ruined the song with it. I hope, lol.
—C418, c418.org

Lyrics

Four times
I wonder if
I could have changed my life forever

One time
I wonder if
I could have changed my life forever

Eight times
I wonder if
I could have changed my life forever

Four times
I wonder if
I could have changed my life forever

Four times
I wonder if
I could have changed my life forever

Eight times
I wonder if
I will have changed my life forever

Four times
I wonder if
I could have changed my life forever

One time
I wonder if
I would have changed my life forever

Eight times
I wonder if
I could have changed my life forever

Four times
I wonder if
I could have changed my life forever

One time
I wonder if
I could have changed my life forever

Eight times
I wondered if
I could have changed my life forever

Trivia

  • The only track on the album to feature vocals.

Keighley

Keighley
Length 5:01
Bandcamp $1 or more
“Keighley” is supposed to be the most confusing piece. I tried to give the emotion of a lot of things happening, but without making the piece itself too loud, since I did write all of this with the afterthought of Teddy having to narrate stuff on top of it. I think it worked, but ultimately this is maybe the least enjoyable piece to listen to outside of our performance.
—C418, c418.org

Match Cut

Match Cut
Length 5:42
Bandcamp $1 or more
“Match Cut”, the ending of the entire piece. It starts with an optimistic, but cautious melody and groove, telling you to don’t feel bad about what’s to come. But also, be careful and always make sure you know what you’re signing yourself up to do. Finally, the song ends the way this album started, which string chords, fading into nothing.
—C418, c418.org

Trivia

  • Longest track on Dief.
  • As mentioned by C418, Match Cut fades into the same string chords from the beginning of the album in the track Texture Prayers.

Gallery