So here’s something a bit different for you. I had been thinking about what to do next on the Monkey Island front. I had fun with the MI Myths soundscape and received a lot of nice feedback. But expanding on the concept was going to be problematic because I can’t draw or animate. I knew I wasn’t alone in wanting to see more of Plunder Island, in particular Puerto Pollo. That one illustration, I think, encapsulates what CMI is all about. Where do the lane ways lead? Who lives where? Are there any other businesses that we can’t see? And what would the place look like at night…

Luckily before I started on a “Puerto Pollo At Night” scene I Googled it and found an incredible illustration on Reddit. It was as though the artist had already seen what I was picturing in my head and drawn it. The thread was old but I saw that the author had mentioned that he would like to, someday, create a soundscape to go along with the drawing. So I sent him a message without expecting to hear back and within a day Jim Clark of Jim Clark Art and I were talking. Turns out he was familiar with my channel and uses the MI ambiences on a regular basis. I would have called this a coincidence but actually it makes perfect sense. Monkey Island fans are a particular breed of people and we’re drawn to a very particular multimedia aesthetic. And the community isn’t huge, at least by gamer standards. At this stage Return to Monkey Island hadn’t been announced and we were both working under the assumption that if there was going to be any new MI material, it was going to have to be fan-made. So we set to work, Jim going the extra mile (or more) to take his illustration and turn it into a subtly animated scene. I already knew what it needed to sound like, so I set to work in the sonic foundry. After finding the banjo more challenging than I’d anticipated, The Guild of Ambience stepped in to record the parts and provide his audio engineering expertise.

The track isn’t quite done yet, but it’s close. So, we’ve put together a little preview. Stay tuned…