one

one
AKA	Minecraft: The Story of Mojang soundtrack
Release date	2012-12-23
Genre	Ambient, Orchestral
Running time	1:35:42 (digital) 1:50:44 (CD)
Bandcamp	$7 or more
Fangamer	$15

one is C418's sixteenth released album and third major album. one serves as the original soundtrack for Minecraft: The Story of Mojang, a documentary on Minecraft and its development by Mojang. Like C418's other soundtrack albums, one favours usage of more ambient elements over soaring leads. For one, this meant the unique combination of heavy usage of mbiras and chiptune, although it also features selective use of other styles.

Official descriptions

one is the biggest album I ever created. Originally most of the songs were made for the official soundtrack to the documentary about Minecraft, but I think this album has become even bigger than that. I hope you'll like it as much as I had fun creating it!

—C418, Bandcamp

one is the official soundtrack to Minecraft: A [sic.] Story of Mojang, which was a documentary about the development of Minecraft when things were still innocent and young. The soundtrack itself is way more than that though. Through editing it became an album on its own, something that is way more unique than what I could have accomplished by just making a dedicated album.

The tone is pretty relaxed, with a mix of live recorded chiptune, orchestral phrases and a lot of Array Mbiras. A LOT of them. I also intentionally put in a lot of repetition into the album. You will hear a lot of songs that sound similar to songs you’ve heard before. Like Leitmotivs, but actually for entire songs.

There’s a word in German, called “Schönhören”, and it roughly translates to the act of listening to something until you start to like it. So, a lot of this album is an experiment on if that can actually be true. That may sound like a lot of bogus, but I was actually genuinely curious if songs sound better if you’ve heard preview versions of them before you listen to the main track. Did it work? I think it did for me. But did it work for you? I don’t know, you tell me!

[...]

And that’s one. I think it’s probably the most polished album I ever created.

If you want to work really hard and just want to put some noise on, you should try this album. A lot of my friends told me this is like their magical programming album.

—C418, c418.org

Tracks

Disc one

Note that while some releases of this album use title case for the track titles, the Bandcamp release uses all lowercase and so is considered to be the official version.

cliffside hinson

cliffside hinson
Length	3:46
Bandcamp	$1 or more

“cliffside hinson” is the intro to the album as much as it is the intro to the movie. It seemed fitting to use it as the first song. It’s also the introduction to “social lego”, a song that appears MUCH later in the album. I think I considered it the theme of accomplishments the community of Minecraft had. All the crazy projects of gigantic cities built within the game.

—C418, c418.org

Trivia

• Uses the same theme as social lego.
• This song's title refers to BigGiantCircles' real name, Jimmy Hinson. Several track titles on Minecraft - Volume Alpha were named after C418's fellow indie game composers, and BGC was notably missing from there.
• C418 collaborated with BigGiantCircles on BGC418, and remixed a track of his as Jimtention.

surface pension

surface pension
Length	6:34
Bandcamp	$1 or more

“surface pension” is the main theme of the hard and often unnoticed job of working developers. If you pay attention you can hear them clicking away on their keyboards. This song also uses the same progression as “preliminary art form”, and as an antagonised version in “post success depression”. All of these songs are essentially the same, but they all carry completely different messages across. While “surface pension” is about the hard work, “preliminary art form” is about the trance you have when working on a thing for so long that it becomes second nature. Finally “post success depression” identifies with the times when working hard becomes the enemy. When your work hours are way past 60 a week. When you still have to get your work done, no matter if you want to or not.

—C418, c418.org

Connections

• This song is closely related to preliminary art form. Surface pension features a warmer, more synthesised version of what is essentially the same soundscape. Surface pension features a variety of gameboy synthesizer sounds, an mbira, and there is also a subdominant role for a piano. During the song computer keyboards are used as percussion to emphasise the theme of the life of computer developers. Preliminary Art form is more minimal in its approach in that it mostly focuses on the piano. Both versions retain an upbeat atmosphere, much unlike Post Succes Depression. As the name alrady gives away, Post success Depression is of darker nature. It is a lower-pitched version of the song, transposed into a minor scale. Post Success depression starts small but slowly builds up to an entire orchestra.