Happy Halloweek!
From the Shadow Temple and the Depths to Skull Kids and Poes, Hyrule and its parallel worlds are riddled with spooky places and characters. I wrote recently about the uncanniness inherent in the Twilight Realm and its battle music. Spookiness and creepy music come easily to darker Zelda games like Twilight Princess and Majora’s Mask.
Breath of the Wild, on the other hand, with its lush cel-shaded landscapes and bright open world, isn’t generally known for its spooky factor. One character, however, stands out for his innate creepiness.
As the proprietor of the traveling Fang and Bone, Kilton has cornered the market on Monster Extract and Halloween costumes. Rather than Rupees, he deals in Mon, a currency of his own that Link can only earn by selling him Bokoblin guts, Keese wings, and other monster parts. Kilton is so obsessed with monsters that he can even smell whether Link has defeated every member of each of Breath of the Wild’s three miniboss types.
Kilton’s whole monster-fanatic vibe is creepy, to say the least, and his aesthetic follows suit. His hot air balloon is a patchwork of darkly colored fabrics, with chains and skulls adorning its façade. And like the hodgepodge of materials that make up the Fang and Bone balloon, the theme for Kilton’s shop — composed by Hajime Wakai — is a Frankenstein’s monster of spooky musical idioms.
We start with low rumbles and noises that sound like rain or fingernails tapping on a window. (These sounds could also be pitched-down angklung, the bamboo percussion instrument heard throughout the Forest Temple in Ocarina of Time.)
The melodic role of the first section is played by my instrument: the bassoon! It does double duty here, adding to the eeriness with its nasal middle register while also fulfilling its traditional role of signifying goofiness (for all his creepiness, Kilton is undoubtedly a goofy guy). The melody itself is unsettling, filled with crunchy minor-second intervals between its notes.
Interjecting over the bassoon solo is what sounds like a violin playing sub ponticello, or under the bridge. Playing in this area on any string instrument produces a ghastly screeching sound akin to nails on a chalkboard. The shrillness of sub ponticello (and its more common sibling sul ponticello) appears frequently in horror film soundtracks to evoke spookiness and the supernatural.
A distorted steel-string guitar and piano join the ghoulish violin shortly thereafter, playing dissonant minor seconds and jumping around tritones, respectively.
Just listening to the first section, it’s incredibly hard to tell the time signature because each instrument plays so freely. (It took me several listens to realize it’s in the very common time of four-four.) Since our brains are hardwired to recognize patterns, the freeness and irregularity of this section makes it hard for us to feel comfortable.
The second section is more regular in rhythm. In a way that matches Kilton’s unabashed love for monsters, the piano rocks metronomically between tritones, unbothered by the harmony’s reputation as “The Devil’s Interval.” The glockenspiel’s shrill timbre carries another tritone- and minor-second-laden melody, starting each statement on the downbeat of a measure in contrast to the bassoon’s earlier freedom.
The piano concludes the section with a series of chromatically cascading major thirds. While major thirds are ordinarily cheerful, these sound unfamiliar and queasy in the context of all the other creepy sounds we’ve heard up to this point.
Kilton’s Shop Theme is another excellent example of how Zelda games use musical idioms to reflect the idiosyncrasies of its places and characters. This theme stitches together Kilton’s simultaneous spooky and humorous traits. Kilton would swoon to have any of the musical monster parts that make up his Frankensteined theme.
