ANACHRONISTIC SOUNDTRACK: RECYCLING SOVIET SONGS IN THE VIDEOGAME “ATOMIC HEART”

Abstract

The article examines the soundtrack of the game Atomic Heart (Mundfish Studios, 2023) from the perspective of recycling Soviet pop songs. The obvious oddity is due to the fact that most of the sounding schlager songs were written much later than the time in which the game is formally set. The author summarizes the functions of an anachronistic soundtrack. First, popular songs create a sense of multiworldliness, the coexistence of non-intersecting realities. Second, anachronistic songs are designed for the disconcerting effect caused by the mismatch between their established perception and the context of the video game. Third, Atomic Heart’s invocation of an anachronistic soundtrack captures the problem of historical memory, which is the philistine oblivion of the internal gradations of the Soviet era. The two types of presentation of Soviet pop songs in “Atomic Heart” are atmospheric and action types. In the first case, the songs appear as a background that creates the general atmosphere of the space, and in the second case, they become a kind of show-stopper, which has a strong influence on the perception of the action gameplay. The author illustrates his observations with a detailed analysis of specific songs and peculiarities of their arrangement.

For citation:
Zhurkova, D. A. (2024). Anachronistic Soundtrack: Recycling Soviet songs in the videogame “Atomic Heart”. Experience industries. Socio-Cultural Research Technologies (EISCRT), 1 (6), 66-84. (In Russian). https://doi.org/10.34680/EISCRT-2024-1(6)-66-84