When Asked About How His Music For Silent Hill Strikes Fear In Players, Akira Yamaoka Responded: “First

When asked about how his music for Silent Hill strikes fear in players, Akira Yamaoka responded: “First and foremost is ‘irregularity.’ People are analog creatures… When things don’t happen as we expect, or when the rhythm breaks, we start to get very nervous… In short, I betray the user’s expectations.” In the game, as Yamaoka notes, individual loops of music contain irregular rhythms and sound events, most of which would defy accurate transcription with conventional Western notations for duration, pitch, and timbre. On a broader scale, however, several of the game’s tracks actually achieve an oppressive effect by repeating samples with unwavering regularity. Much of this music can be parsed into melodic and rhythmic cells lasting no longer than a few seconds each. These recycled noise fragments evoke a hellish labyrinth in which paths toward escape and resolution are persistently concealed or deferred.

Cheng, William, 'Monstrous Noise: Silent Hill and the Aesthetic Economies of Fear', in Carol Vernallis, Amy Herzog, and John Richardson (eds), The Oxford Handbook of Sound and Image in Digital Media, Oxford Handbooks (2013; online edn, Oxford Academic, 16 Dec. 2013)