Weird, beautiful, deeply human music for a game about a clown who just wants to hug everyone. Dropsy is a 2015 point-and-click adventure on Windows, and its soundtrack is one of the most genuinely strange and wonderful things in indie gaming.
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The track titles alone are an art form. "Slightly Ominous Theme Heard While Waking From A Dream" is both a perfect name and a perfect description of what the track actually sounds like. "Kierkegaard's Umbrella" opens with this philosophical melancholy wrapped in lo-fi warmth, and yes, naming a clown game track after an existentialist philosopher is exactly the energy this whole album operates on.
"In The Court of the Junkyard King" has a regal, absurd grandeur. "Waltz of Urban Blight" turns city decay into something danceable. The three "Clown Breath" variations evolve from quirky to unsettling to something almost tender.
"Mothersbaugh on the Beach" tips its hat to Devo's frontman with this sun-bleached, offbeat groove. "LF - HF in Four Dimensional Bossa Nova" is a real track title and the music somehow lives up to it. "144 Gears Marching in 14 - 4" uses bizarre time signatures that shouldn't work but absolutely do.
This is outsider music in the best sense, made with obvious love for a game that's equally impossible to categorize.