Japanese Breakfast Detail Sable Soundtrack

Between the new album and the bestselling memoir that’s being adapted into a movie, Japanese Breakfast’s Michelle Zauner — a person who does not share my opinion of Billy Joel’s “We Didn’t Start The Fire” — is having a huge year. It’s not slowing down anytime soon. Back in 2018, Zauner announced that she would soundtrack the forthcoming video game Sable. In June, she shared the new Japanese Breakfast song “Better The Mask,” which comes from that soundtrack. And today, Zauner has announced that the Sable soundtrack — effectively the second Japanese Breakfast album of 2021 — is coming out next month.

Zauner made 32 tracks of instrumental and vocal music for the game, and you won’t have to buy the game to hear it. The soundtrack, on its own, is coming on the same day as the game. (The Japanese Breakfast song “Glider,” which is being recirculated today, dates back to 2018, when Zauner first announced plans for the soundtrack.) Talking about the soundtrack in a press release, Zauner says:

I was so lucky Daniel Fineberg and Gregorios Kythreotis from Shedworks invited me onto this game so early on. I was immediately captivated by the world they’d built, a desert planet filled with mysterious natural and architectural wonders, and the story they’d imagined, one of a young girl coming of age through exploration. It was important to me that each biome in this world felt unique. I used woodwinds and vocal layering to make monumental ruins feel ancient and unknown, industrial samples and soft synths to make atomic ships feel cold and metallic, classical guitar and bright piano to make encampments feel cozy and familiar. I wanted the main themes to recall iconic works of Joe Hisaishi and Alan Menken, to fill the listener with the childlike wonder of someone on the precipice of a grand discovery.

TRACKLIST:
01 “Main Menu”
02 “Glider”
03 “Better The Mask”
04 “The Ewer (Day)”
05 “The Ewer (Night)”
06 “Eccria (Day)”
07 “Eccria (Night)”
08 “Campfires”
09 “Exploration (Ships)”
10 “Exploration (Ruins)”
11 “Exploration (Nature)”
12 “Beetle’s Nest”
13 “Glow Worm Cave”
14 “Pyraustas Ruin”
15 “Badlands (Night)”
16 “Hakoa (Day)”
17 “Hakoa (Night)”
18 “Sansee (Day)”
19 “Sansee (Night)”
20 “Redsee (Day)”
21 “The Wash (Day)”
22 “Chum Lair”
23 “Beetle Detour”
24 “Machinist’s Theme”
25 “Cartographer’s Theme”
26 “Mask Caster’s Theme”
27 “Mischievous Children”
28 “Ibexxi Camp (Day)”
29 “Ibexxi Camp (Night)”
30 “Burnt Oak Station (Day)”
31 “Burnt Oak Station (Night)”
32 ‘Abandoned Grounds”

The Sable soundtrack, like the game itself, is out 9/24. You can pre-order the soundtrack here.