Composer Dren McDonald captures the comforting essence of digital companionship in the release of Stay: Forever Home Vol. 2 Cozy. Serving as the ambient counterpart to the upbeat Vol. 1 Chaos, this soundtrack provides the sonic backdrop for Windup Minds’ pet simulator game, Stay: Forever Home, where players nurture a relationship with a magical pet named Ember. The album shines through the improvisational vocal mastery of Sophia James and Amelie Anna, whose voices were layered and even reversed to create the transportive, “magical” atmosphere of the game’s Otherlands.
The first soundtrack installment, Vol. 1 Chaos, caught our ears last summer with its upbeat, colorful charm. Now, McDonald also shows a clear ability to succeed in the chiller spectrum, with Vol. 2 Cozy delivering well in precisely the atmospheric realm implied by its namesake.
A warming, blissful opener, “Otherlands Nightfall” crafts a world of both intrigue and comfort. The initial vocals exude a wordless, ghostly quality — lending a slight chill to the air that’s counteracted by glistening keys and subdued rhythmic elements, resembling the clinking of everyday tools. The spine-tingling flourishes of vocals intermingle with glimmering tones resembling wind chimes, slithering freely with each gentle breath of wind. In the context of entering a video game’s world, it’s easy to see why this would open the album, with qualities both inviting and full of transportive mystique. McDonald’s two favorite vocalists, Sophia James and Amelie Anna, are prominent forces throughout, as they also were on Vol. 1. This second volume’s title track enchants with their melded presences, again reprising their collaborative vocal layering on the finale “Starfall To Nightfall.”
“A Home In Between” continues those caressing qualities, here featuring Amelie Anna’s vocals solely throughout a more spacious, sporadically unfolding soundscape. Voice leads this mesmerizing track, with faint bolstering of gentle instrumentation adding nicely to the mix. Sophia James’ vocals then assume the lead on “Night Time Explorations,” maneuvering seamlessly from haunting dreaminess into a buzzing midpoint resonance, followed by vocals attaining a higher-pitched elongation that enthralls in its melding layers of both voice and synth pad swells. That both vocalists continue to star, either on their own or together, speaks to both their gorgeous performances and McDonald’s ability to cohesively infuse sounds, whether vocals or synth pads, within delicate walls of sound.
An especially interesting development shows within “The Otherland’s Floating Music Spore,” where serene vocal elements coexist between soaring lushness and snippets of more word-like beginnings. Doses of spacey, effervescent synth tones combine with tender acoustics for a particularly atmospheric hold. “Ember’s Memory Pieces” is also excellently produced in capturing this starry-eyed, luminous sense — achieving a truly blissful sound. Finale “Starfall to Nightfall” brings back the unified talents of both vocalists, delivering an airy breeziness that ends the album with a soundscape fit for sunshine. Excelling across both understated dreaminess and brighter emotion, Stay: Forever Home Vol. 2 Cozy (Original Game Soundtrack) is another lovely output from Dren McDonald.
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