Songs They Do Play On The Radio - Once Human Radio, That Is...

I was going to do a music post today because it's been too long and stuff's piling up again. I still might but I've been thinking about this one for a while and since it's musical too I kind of jumped the tracks, so this is what we're getting today.

I've long been envious of those games that come with a faux radio soundtrack that places real songs inside the game as diegetic music. The one you hear about the most is Grand Theft Auto, where the tunes come from the radio as you tool down the highway (I'm guessing... never played...). I seem to recall reading Cyberpunk 2077 has something similar. 

Actually, there are a ton of them. Giant Bomb has a list of more than a hundred, almost none of which I am ever likely to play. Reddit (Of course.) has a thread where people name their favorite individual in-game radio stations, most of which are indeed in GTA5.

Unsurprisngly, given the dominance of fantasy in the MMORPG genre and the extent to which that's been my domain for a couple of decades, I haven't had many opportunities to experience the joy of hearing non-game music coming out of the games I play. 

I'd certainly prefer to listen to some actual songs than endelss variations on the video-game version of orchestral music but I'm one of those odd people who have to have the game sound up while I play on the assumption that it's - y'know - an integral part of the milieu and entirely necessary to the experience. I don't have the luxury of just switching the game sound off and playing my choice of music over the top. 

I have tried it but I really dislike it. It takes me right out of the game and also degrades the experience of listening to music I like at the same time, so it's a solid lose-lose.

Somehow none of that applies when real-world songs play from inside the game. I've come across it occasionally, like in The Secret World, where you can go into the record shop and listen to whatever's playing, but it happens so rarely I can't think of another example right now, even though I'm sure there must have been a few. 

And that's one more reason why I find myself enjoying Once Human so much. It has in-game radio stations - five of them. And you know what makes it so much better? At least two of them are really good!

For weeks I've been driving around, first on my motorcycle and then in my coupe, with the radio on full, tuned either to 100.9 FM - Gokuaku Hidō or 92.1 FM - A Side of Fries. Occasionally 107.2 FM - 80 Degrees, but usually one of the first two. 

I also have Gokuaku Hidō on all the time in my house because some of my deviants like to listen to music. (No, really. It's a thing.)

The same tunes play endlessly on a loop so it's quite astonishing how willing I've been to hear them again and again. Eager, even. Whoever programmed these stations did a superb job. 

For a long time I just let the sounds wash over me and didn't think about it too much but eventually I began to wonder just what the songs were, who they were by, if they'd been composed for the game or picked off Spotify or whatever...

I wanted to know but I thought it might be a bit of a challenge to dig it all out - but of course I didn't have to. Someone had already done it for me and that someone was gentlemanparrot on the Once Human subReddit. They "did the hard part and listened for hours on end recording every single song from each station". Then they Shazam'd the lot and this is what they got:

89.1 FM - Classical FM

1. Red Dress - Adrián Berenguer

2. Cage (Ad Brown Dub Mix) - Andre Volodin & Karina Smirnova

3. Tombeau de Vivaldi (SPEARFISHER REMIX) - Spearfisher & Cicely Parnas

4. Horizon - Veaceslav Draganov

5. Seven Raindrops - Yonnie Dror

6. 호숫가에서 들리는 새, 바람, 풀벌레 소리 Summer Forest (Wind, Birds, Frogs, Bugs) - Baby Lion Nana

92.1 FM - A Side of Fries

1. No Dub - Scooty Wop

2. Vroom - Vic Sage

3. The Dark - WEARETHEGOOD & Leana

4. No Loss - Canon

5. Ding Dong - Ofri Flint

6. Anywhere - Evan Ford, Lightmuzik & Evan and Eris

95.5 FM - Abyss Oracle

1. Beyond the Past - Jay Ray

2. Cold Light (feat. Jimmie Strimell) - Jay Ray

3. Lost Chance - Paul Udarov & Jay Ray

4. The Great Art of Living - Jay Ray

5. Crash and Burn - Kissing Candice

6. Magic Show - Kissing Candice

100.9 FM - Gokuaku Hidō

1. Tsuiraku - macaroom

2. Hoshifuru Yoruni (feat. 9maBear & Noa Tamaki) - ra'z

3. Kirari Kirameku (feat. ZENI & 9maBear) - ra'z

4. Do You Really Wanna (feat. Lulabi) - Dimitrix

5. Fun Fun Fun (feat. Raquel Castro) - Dimitrix

6. One More Last Time - Henry Young & Ashley Alisha

107.2 FM - 80 Degrees

1. LOVU (feat. Yimgah) - Shu

2. The Beach House - Space Doves

3. Evergreen - dazeychain & The Wildcardz

4. It Hurts Me - Joel Ansett

5. Midnight - Paper Planes

6. A Starry Night - Shu

 

So now we know the names. We just need someone to compile a playlist. What are the chances?

I dunno. Have you met the internet?

Here's one on Spotify, compiled by KorbenM. I don't use Spotify, though, so it's not quite what I'm looking for.

YouTube is much more my speed. Reckon someone's put a playlist up there? Oh yeah...

Writing this post, I'm listening to Once Human Radio compiled by Poisonslash.Which is all very well but I can't just ride their coat-tails now, can I?

Yeah. I know. I have do my duty.  Go back and add all the links those good people took the trouble to find.

Hang on. Imma need a coffee for this...

Okayyy... that's twenty minutes of my life I'm never getting back but you gotta do these things. I think I got all the cut/n/pastes right but feel free to correct me in the comments. 

I did notice that a couple of the tracks listed by gentlemanparrot don't appear in Poisonslash's playlist. Both of them are on Classical FM, which I don't listen to, so I have no clue who's right. I found the links for the reddit version and used those just for consistency. 

That leads me to some notes on the stations themselves. 

Classical FM would be self-explanatory if it actually featured anything you'd call "classical". Mostly, as far as I can tell from a quick dip, it's a melange of instrumental styles from all over. Some of it is deep house...

A Side of Fries is the approximate hip-hop station. I like most of the tunes on that one and they're very good to drive to, as you might imagine. 

Abyss Oracle is metal, although as you can see it's just two acts so it's a very specific selection from the sprawling metal smorgasbord. I tried it but I couldn't stand more than about thirty seconds. Harshin' my mellow, man.

Gokuaku Hidō, for which I can find no translation, is a kind of indie-pop station, mostly of Japanese origin I think. It's my favorite by a margin. I turn it up loud and groove. No-one's said "groove" since the sixties but what do I care?

80 Degrees - The chill station. Mostly indie-folk or fellow travelers. Really nice at five am in the desert when the sun's just coming up.

And that's about it. Curiously, it took almost exactly the same time to write this post as to listen to the eighteen tracks on the three stations I like. I expect the universe is trying to tell me something with that. Probably that I should stop typing and go walk the dog.

So I shall.