The Path Soundtrack

The Path Soundtrack, Jarboe / Kris Force, 2009

One effect of the indie game scene’s resurgence from the second half of the 2000s onwards was the proliferation of titles that questioned received ideas about what actually constitutes a game. An early example of this emerging tendency was The Path, a reimagining of the Little Red Riding Hood tale. The Path transforms that classic fairy tale into an exploration of female sexuality and the painful process of growing up.

The former aspect in particular makes The Path a fascinating addition to the medium, given how depressingly rare nuanced depictions of sexuality remain in video games. The player takes charge of six girls of different ages and leads them towards their grandmother’s cottage. If you stay on the path, however, the game tells you at the end that you have failed. Players can only unlock The Path’s mysteries by wandering into the woods, where the wolves lurk.

A game with such a cerebral set-up required music that was equally out of the ordinary. That the developers managed to enlist American singer-songwriter Jarboe, of the legendary avant-garde band Swans, to create The Path soundtrack was quite a coup. Jarboe collaborated with Kris Force, head of the San Francisco ensemble Amber Asylum. Not only had both artists previously worked together on Swans albums, but Force also brought games-industry experience to the project. A brief disclaimer is necessary here: while Jarboe is credited with The Path’s music and Kris Force with the game’s sound, the Bandcamp album release credits both artists. Given how thoroughly The Path blurs the line between music and sound design, this review will treat both as creators of the soundtrack.

If the pedigree of both artists sets high expectations, The Path soundtrack fulfils them with disquieting ease. In fact, the score turns out to be one of game music’s most unique – and most challenging – creations. Often closer to sound design than to “music” in any conventional sense, The Path conjures an atmosphere of suffocating dread and nightmarish vision that few other game scores can match. But it would be a mistake to assume that this is simply a horror soundtrack interested only in frightening the listener.

Instead, Jarboe and Kris Force have something more intriguing in mind. The Path seeks to lure the listener into a disturbing sonic world and keep them there. To that end, the composers mirror the duality underlying the game’s narrative. It may be safe on the path, but are not the forest and all its mysteries far more compelling, however dangerous they may be?

As a result, the soundtrack revolves with morbid obsession around the dual poles of sensuality and terror. These two forces intertwine inextricably throughout the musical maelstrom that is The Path. Several compositions accordingly cast a spell that is at once alluring and frightening. The second track, “Forest Theme”, already prepares the ground for the album’s more disturbing passages. Jarboe’s ethereal, layered vocals conjure the image of a haunted place, warning us of the wolf. At the same time, her delivery has a calm, inviting quality that makes the prospect of encountering the wolf feel intriguing rather than simply terrifying. Allure and menace, the central dichotomy of The Path, have already begun to collide.

It is especially the sensuality of The Path soundtrack that sets it apart from many of its horror-genre counterparts. Even an abstract piece like “Woodsman Wolf” radiates warmth – though in the form of searing, claustrophobic heat. Jarboe’s ritualistic chants hover over incessant effects of thrusting saws and axes biting into wood. Together, these elements fill the soundstage with an atmosphere as sexually charged as it is violent. The walls seem to close in further once abrasive guitar feedback rises and thickens the air with paranoia and fear.

Another composition that fuses charisma and discordance is “Charming Wolf”. Its jazzy inflections come from at times atonal saxophone fragments and brushed percussion. These clash with a wall of buzzing guitars and the roar of a motorbike – the classic marker of the authority-defying male teenager. Here, however, his aura of cool and danger is actively menacing, as those unsettling guitar textures grow increasingly unruly towards the end of the track.

Further separating The Path soundtrack from more conventional game scores are two spoken-word pieces, both performed impeccably by Jarboe. The first combines earlier versions of the Little Red Riding Hood tale. These are far more cannibalistic and sexually explicit than one might expect. Yet the story told there still ends happily. That is not the case with “Little Red Riding Hood”, which crucially closes the album’s narrative arc. This is the ‘classic’ version of the tale, but it cuts off after the wolf has devoured the girl. No hunter appears to rescue her, no punishment is meted out to the wolf – only the protagonist’s death remains.

The contrast between these two readings crystallises the point that The Path seems intent on making. It may be safe on the path, but never straying from it will ultimately lead to disaster. The only way to survive is to confront danger, experience pain and loss, learn from them, and attain maturity – not exclusively, but significantly, in sexual terms as well. It is difficult not to notice that both game and soundtrack present this process of growing up as one of inevitable female suffering and hurt, and that is not easy to accept. Then again, perhaps that sense of inevitability is meant less as endorsement than as a reflection on the cruelty of a largely male-dominated world.

Ultimately, that is only one possible reading of The Path soundtrack. And that is precisely why it is such a stimulating work, intellectually as well as emotionally. Jarboe and Kris Force’s score demands serious engagement and allows for multiple interpretations of its intent and effect – and there are not many game soundtracks for which that can be said.