Minecraft is a sandbox game where the player mines and crafts (pun intended) in a world entirely made of blocks. You can play a creative mode where you’re given unlimited resources to build what you desire, or you can play survival mode where you have to gather resources on your own. Many players, myself included, love to indulge in a roughly two-week Minecraft session once every year since the game gets regular updates to this day.
It’s the best-selling video game of all time; there’s boundless creativity only limited by its blocky nature, which, in my opinion, boosts said creativity. It has a unique feel unlike any other game in existence; even other sandbox games fail to replicate the vastness of Minecraft.
In my opinion one of the biggest parts of that comes from the game’s original soundtrack. It’s a unique genre of music that most people wouldn’t typically consider listening to: ambient music or simply ambience. Back during Minecraft’s prerelease versions in 2009, artist C418 composed various songs for the game that people still remember to this day, such as Wet Hands, Moog City (the most popular one in Sweden), and my personal favorite, Subwoofer Lullaby, among many others.
C418 continued to work on Minecraft music with a second volume with hits such as Blind Spots, Moog City 2, Concrete Halls, and Floating Trees. Another volume was released, featuring instantly recognizable classics for millions of players. After this, however, C418 was not used again as an artist because he argued he deserved royalties for the success of Minecraft, so Mojang and Microsoft just started hiring other artists such as Lana Raine.
Lana Raine has emulated this iconic Minecraft ambience with her own style. She uses a piano to accompany her ambience to give it her unique touch with songs such as Stand Tall, Left to Bloom, One More Day, and others. Each song from Alpha to current day can play at any moment during a Minecraft playthrough, setting the mood for exploration, building, or whatever you’re doing in the game.
These soundtracks define the vastness of an infinite Minecraft world; sometimes you may be alone or with some friends journeying across biomes in search of something unique like a woodland mansion or a super tall mountain to put your house on. You could be like me and spend multiple hours searching for a mooshroom island in the middle of the ocean for the fun of it. This ambient music distracts you from everything else, allowing you to enjoy the peaceful experience of playing with blocks and gathering resources. If for some reason you haven’t played Minecraft yet, I highly recommend you try it out on a survival world with a friend or two, keep the music on, and just let yourself settle into the moment. I’m confident it will be enjoyable.
