Hello everyone!  Borealis here.

It's time for the next three tracks of the Venus: Improbable Dream soundtrack, with all the insider gossip!  Click the video below to hear them!  Let's jump in!

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Thin Ice

As someone who has a lot of anxiety and fears, Kakeru spends a lot of time in isolated contemplation, and I wanted to create a track that would reflect just that.  The result was born out of finding the slightly warped piano sounds that you hear, and I knew I wanted to keep the track sparse and somewhat tense to match Kakeru's uncertainty.  It's not entirely sad, but not exactly optimistic either - more akin to the wavering feeling you get when you're trying to weigh up something in your head and never quite reaching a conclusion.  Kakeru also does so much of this type of obsessive, catch-22 style thinking that it tends to take a mental toll on him, which helped me to come up with the title of this piece - a feeling of metaphorically walking on thin ice.

Nozomu

A large part of Kakeru's ability to keep having tentative conversations with Haruka at first is the fact that something about her puts him more at ease than his fellow classmates and teachers, and things seem bizarrely more calm to him when he talks to her.  To reflect this, I created Nozomu, a soft yet gently cheerful piece that further conveys this sense of slight relaxation.  Nozomu is also another one of the tracks that I'd already recorded prior to the creation of Venus: Improbable Dream - just a random piano and guitar instrumental that I made for fun, and had never used for anything.  Since I felt like it fit this purpose well, I spruced it up and changed a little of the guitar melody, and it became Nozomu.  I'm pretty sure the original file was simply titled "guitary song", but that's not very professional!  I went with the Japanese word Nozomu because it means "hope", which in a way, is what's being suggested when Kakeru manages to uncoil his nerves enough to talk to Haruka - a spark of hope for his future, even if he can't quite see it himself yet.

Elephant In The Room

Now this is a funny one!  I knew that there'd be some awkward, silly moments in the story, so I needed a comedic track to accompany them.  I figured it'd be good to go with some slightly childish sounds, so I mentally rooted through the box of toy-like percussion instruments you tend to get given in your early music classes at school and pulled out some things, including a xylophone and woodblocks.  I also felt like it'd be funnier if the melodies were quite bouncy, so I kept everything quite clipped and staccato (that's a classical music term!  Ask Kudo-sensei what it means!).  Finally, I decided to title it after the main thing that tends to define awkwardness in Haruka and Kakeru's embarrassing moments - making a social faux pas, and then feeling unable to address the elephant in the room.

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I hope you enjoyed today's tracks!  On Monday, we'll be delving into some more very contrasting pieces - one bright and relaxing, one emotional and touching, and another tense and sorrowful.  Stick around to hear them and learn more about their creation!

Have a wonderful weekend, and stay warm out there!

Borealis