FYI.

This story is over 5 years old.

Music

Watch the Trailer for 'Sable,' a Video Game Soundtracked by Japanese Breakfast

It's Michelle Zauner's second foray into video games. A new song, "Glider," plays behind the first preview of the game, hinting at more ambient and synthetic sounds from the indie artist.

Michelle Zauner's second album as Japanese Breakfast, Soft Sounds from Another Planet, played out in front of sci-fi sets and outer-space daydreams. The album's lead single, "Machinist"—a story about a woman falling in love with a machine told through Auto-Tune and whispers—was so detached from everyday reality that Zauner turned it into its own indie rock-referencing video game, Japanese BreakQuest. Now Zauner is returning to gaming, providing the soundtrack for a forthcoming PC game called Sable. Judging by the game's first trailer, it'll be an entirely different creature.

Advertisement

Described by its creators Shedworks as "a coming-of-age tale of discovery through exploration across a strikingly rendered open world desert," Sable seems like a vast role-playing game. The 90-second trailer is soft and ambient, following the title character through pastel-colored caves and sparsely populated deserts. A new Japanese Breakfast song called "Glider," a more impressionistic and synthetic take on Zauner's pop, soundtracks the clip. You can watch it all at the top of the page.

“Having this kind of open world game that you explore, that’s really rooted in nature, and finding snakes and climbing mountains puts you in a really soothing space,” she told Polygon. “A lot of the music is linked to places or images I’ve seen that [game designer Gregorios Kythreotis] created. It’s been a lot of fun looking over my notes of, ‘OK, like, ‘cave,’ and imagining myself in a cave with glow worms. What does that sound like?”

Sable is out in 2019.

Follow Alex Robert Ross on Twitter.