Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture Soundtrack

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture Soundtrack, Jessica Curry, 2015

Coming off Dear Esther’s critical and commercial success, British indie developer The Chinese Room began work on two projects: Amnesia: A Machine for Pigs and Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture. Of the two, the latter was clearly the more ambitious undertaking, co-produced by industry giant Sony Computer Entertainment for the PlayStation 4. By and large, Rapture adopted the same basic gameplay approach as Dear Esther. Players are tasked with walking through a deserted village, trying to piece together what happened to those who once inhabited this idyllic stretch of English countryside — with no battles, perils, or game-over screens in sight. Unsurprisingly, the limited interactivity of Rapture’s world was not to everyone’s liking. All the same, reviews were positive overall, with critics particularly praising the game’s narrative and placing Rapture on several year-end lists.

Rapture also received several awards, including for its music. As with previous The Chinese Room titles, Jessica Curry provided the soundtrack — deservedly taking home a BAFTA and two Game Audio Network Guild Awards for her efforts. Curry was involved with Rapture throughout its three-year development, both as composer and as one of the project’s directors. It is no surprise, then, that the music’s shape and function within the game were so carefully considered. With the design strongly influenced by the peculiarly British sci-fi subgenre of the “cosy catastrophe”, Curry’s score was bound to follow suit.

Initially, Curry considered scoring the game’s 1984 setting with period-specific detail — in other words, the Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture soundtrack came close to turning into a Vangelis homage. Ultimately, she changed direction considerably, opting instead for a sound she considered timeless: “The score is based around the pastoral ideal, this nostalgia for an England that never existed. It plays on the Englishness of Elgar and Vaughan Williams.” Curry elaborated further on her vision in another interview: “What I wanted to capture with Rapture is that sense of nostalgia for a world that is already gone. The player has that feeling of loss and melancholy as they’re playing.”

Curry realises all of these artistic goals on the Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture soundtrack, one of the most moving live orchestral game scores. What strikes the listener most immediately is the sheer torrent of emotion pouring through her gorgeous melodies. Sadness, melancholy, and yearning suffuse every second of this music, articulated through consistently attractive melodic lines and textures. A comparison with Curry’s Dear Esther score reveals both similarities and differences. Both works revel in slow tempi and in the spellbinding evocation of static moods. But Dear Esther remained emotionally ambivalent, oscillating between austere abstraction and hints of tonal warmth. Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture, by contrast, is far more direct about the emotions it seeks to elicit, demanding much less deciphering from the listener.

This is still music of great subtlety, however, never resorting to histrionics to achieve its sometimes devastating effect. For immediate proof, one need only hear “Clouds and Starlight”. Initially presenting itself as a straightforward lullaby, the piece offers the soundtrack’s most romantic face, with a heart-wrenching, unforgettable melody carried by choir over soft strings. It is the score’s most optimistic moment — and it has to be, because a glance at the lyrics confirms that this is music preparing a baby for its imminent passing from the world. It is precisely this delicate balance between personal tragedy and hope that permeates the entire Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture soundtrack, giving this deeply felt music its unabashed emotional resonance.

Curry’s impeccable handling of forces and material is the bedrock of the score’s success. Beyond her gift for delivering beautiful melody after melody, her orchestrations strike the perfect balance between clarity and richness. There is no shortage of intricate contrapuntal writing on longer tracks such as “An Early Harvest”. Just as often, though, Curry’s compositions are carried by solo instruments or voices — violin, piano, various woodwinds, and, most spectacularly, Elin Thomas’ voice. Her angelic soprano, hovering almost in boy-soprano register, opens the soundtrack and immediately announces that this is music broad enough to encompass the personal as much as the ecclesiastical, and thus the universal. It is an ingenious way of articulating the idea of the “cosy catastrophe” — the end of the world seen through the eyes of ordinary people — through music.

In musical terms, this balance between the personal and the universal produces a constant sense of solemnity and calm restraint, while still allowing for profoundly intimate reflection. These moments are often articulated through co-director Dan Pinchbeck’s lyrics, which circle, unsurprisingly, around yearning, loss, and death. The Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture soundtrack features a prominent vocal component — solo voice and choir alike — that proves fundamental to its storytelling ambitions. The developers envisaged a score capable of telling the game’s narrative even without the visuals, and that is exactly what Curry achieves.

Rapture’s story repeatedly returns to the regret its protagonists feel and to the way their past weighs upon them, separating them from those they love. That mixture of quiet dejection and insistent hope, the yearning to overcome separation, is audible throughout the soundtrack. Curry’s use of choir not only addresses the scale of the narrative, but also evokes a sense of history — of past events that have left indelible scars. This is particularly evident in the haunting “Carry Me Back to Her Arms”, where heartfelt, pleading lyrics collide with the choir’s plainchant and its rigid, composed rhythmic progression.

Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture’s ending can be read as an alien being liberating humanity from its past, as all beings merge into one and obliterate the void between them. Then again, that is only one possible interpretation. Curry’s score takes an intriguing stance here. Having carried the game’s narrative and underlying emotions so superbly, the music ultimately refuses to pass judgement. Final track “The Light We Cast” remains mysterious, though in a different way from the concluding composition of Dear Esther. What makes Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture’s finale elusive is not emotional ambivalence, but the near-absence of emotion — a surprise given how overtly emotive the rest of the score is. With a surprisingly even melodic progression that has an objectifying effect, “The Light We Cast”’s choral voices announce the arrival of a new age, but whether that is cause for celebration or fear is left entirely to the listener.

Despite its tonal accessibility and melodic immediacy, then, the score remains a challenging work that sidesteps easy resolution. Much of its music feels like an evening prayer in an empty church as the sun sets and the light slowly fades — and then the stars appear in the night sky, whispering the universe’s secrets in a language we do not understand. Quietly monumental, the Everybody’s Gone to the Rapture soundtrack achieves the rare feat of elevating the mundane into the universal, where personal disappointments and small victories carry as much weight as the apocalypse.