Erik the Viking Soundtrack, Neil Baldwin, Unreleased
It is a shame that Neil Baldwin wrote his two best NES soundtracks for games that were ultimately shelved. At least game music listeners were able to discover the excellent score for Hero Quest once the game’s developer released the ROM online. Baldwin’s second cancelled project, Erik the Viking, by contrast, remained largely unknown – at least until he posted the soundtrack on his website Duty Cycle Generator.
Action-adventure games like Erik the Viking require a fair amount of world-building, and the music has to carry its share of that burden. As such, the soundtrack demanded a broader and more varied musical canvas than anything Baldwin had previously written for the NES. He rises to that challenge with formidable assurance. Erik the Viking pushes his music into territory he had not explored before.
From the outset, Baldwin makes it clear that he is eager to expand his palette. The opening cue, “To the Death”, is his first true NES battle theme. Baldwin applies the same rich arpeggiated textures already heard in Hero Quest, but here they acquire a harsher, dissonant edge that gives the music the right charge of adrenaline and even panic. Metallic clanks and bursts of static heighten the intensity still further. At the same time, Baldwin carries over from Hero Quest his ability to thread enough melodic interest through these torrents of arpeggios to keep them emotionally engaging.
The fellow combat cue “Labyrinth Battle” is brief, but still intrigues through its stuttering rhythmic design. Completing the trio of enemy-related compositions is Erik the Viking’s dungeon theme, “Caves”. In lesser hands, its sparse textures and reliance on sound effects and fragmentary gestures might easily have produced something merely dull. Given Baldwin’s virtuoso handling, however, “Caves” feels instead like a journey through a dark subterranean tunnel, with mysterious and alluring flashes of light and colour suddenly emerging from the shadows only to disappear again seconds later.
Another important development in Erik the Viking is its unprecedented emphasis on melody. Hero Quest had already pointed in this direction, but there the melodic material was still bound tightly to Baldwin’s trademark dense textures. In Erik the Viking, by contrast, he is often content to reduce the complexity of his writing. Whether in “Village Life”, “Dragon Dance”, or “Land of Sorrow”, he places the melodies – often genuinely memorable ones – front and centre and allows them simply to weave their spell. At times, it almost feels as though Baldwin is deliberately staying out of the music’s way.
Yet these cues receive no less care or attention than the more elaborate parts of the score. Just listen to the subtle, lovely tremolo effects closing each phrase in the A section of “Village Life”, or the booming drum sound in the folksier “Dragon Dance”, borrowed from the final cue of Hero Quest. Sequenced together near the end of the album, these tracks do not quite match the brilliance of the soundtrack’s finest moments, and they create a somewhat more low-key approach to the finale than one might expect. Even so, they set the stage effectively for the closing cue, “Giant’s Harp (Peace Restored)”. Its happily drifting melody provides the necessary sense of fulfilment and brings Baldwin closer than ever to JRPG conventions.
Even this already covers a broader emotional spectrum than any of Baldwin’s earlier NES work. But the score’s crowning achievement lies in a trio of early tracks. The most conventional of them, “Spirit of Adventure”, is exactly as upbeat and enterprising as one would want from a great overworld theme, though Baldwin introduces a few carefully placed syncopations in the rhythm section to keep things interesting. With its fluid development and expert use of countermelodies, “Spirit of Adventure” is his most melodically ambitious NES composition.
“Peace in the Harbour” translates its title into sound with remarkable directness. Its calm walking bass line, convincingly simulated seagull cries, and one of Baldwin’s warmest and most affecting arpeggio textures all radiate contentment. Suitably laid-back, the cue’s most striking touch is a pitch-bend figure repeated across three octaves. It is an unusual effect that somehow manages to sound both ethereal and faintly quirky.
Finally, “New Dawn (Erik the Viking Theme)” brings the soundtrack’s high-adventure ambitions to a head in surprisingly oblique fashion. Rather than writing a straightforwardly dashing main theme, Baldwin opts for something more esoteric. Dreamlike melodic fragments rise and fall above constant arpeggio swells – the shadows of grey ships about to emerge from the fog before the haze swallows them again. Gradually, the music consolidates its melodic material until a steady drumbeat enters. Balancing the cue’s drifting quality, the percussion completes its quietly monumental character. With its ceaseless arpeggios, serene melody, and persistent ritualistic rhythms, “New Dawn (Erik the Viking Theme)” is one of those 8-bit compositions that transcends technical limitation while fully harnessing the particular nature of its medium: an ancient myth conjured from nothing more than four humble sound channels.
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