A Sleeping Dogs OST Purchasing Extravaganza
I've mentioned Sleeping Dogs before, but one of the best parts of the game - the soundtrack - is also one of the most frustrating. A combination of low availability and baffling Amazon listings makes it a fair trek around the block to simply buy some of the music on offer. Worse still, many of the tracks are listed as being sung / composed by what I can only assume are fictitious, in-game entity style characters who you won't find within a million miles of HMV or wherever by virtue of the fact that they're the creation of "Some music person in a sound studio somewhere".
Does anybody know who sings the parts of Vivienne Lu, of "Yellow Fever" fame, for example? I've no idea. Nobody seems to know for sure, although if this post is accurate then it definitely isn't Lucy Liu. Similar issues abound for many of the in-game tracks, especially when dealing with some of the stations such as "Soft". Well, fret no more because I put a fair amount of time into this and now you're going to read it, damn you.
1) My favourite tracks remain those by Bei Bei and Shawn Lee (here's the Amazon link to Into the Wind). What you may not be aware of (I certainly wasn't) is that Bei Bei has another album available on Amazon, though it won't show up alongside the former - you'll be told there's 400 odd albums, and none of them look remotely Bei Bei related. Fear not - scroll down to the bottom of page 1 (I know, strenuous stuff) and there she is with Quiet your Mind and Listen. An earlier album than the collaboration, there are no jazz / 70's stylings and I don't recall seeing it before so maybe it's a new addition to the site. Interestingly, one or two of the songs contain many of the motifs used throughout the newer album. So that's a fun thing to explore.
2) Art of Xen. You're not told anything about the track in-game, but the composer most definitely has a name - Jay Price. They have an album on Amazon with 12 tracks on it, but unfortunately it isn't available in some (or potentially many) locations. On the bright side, "As Featured on Sleeping Dogs" seems to be on sale in a lot more locations and contains 70(!) tracks to boot alongside being completely fantastic. YOU'RE WELCOME.
/ 2016 update: The old Amazon link has now expired, so here's a few more places you can buy / stream from: [7digital] | [Spotify]
3) Shanghai Nights and Gao Shan Ching by Celestial can be found here (UK only as far as I can tell, the US store has a CD but that's it). Don't click the band name to find (as you would reasonably expect) more albums from the same band - you'll be taken to a couple of albums by what appears to be a random gospel / soul singer instead. For some reason, Celestial albums are a nightmare to dig out on Amazon - here's the one containing The Crossing. That album is available in MP3 form on both US and UK stores, and there's a third (non Sleeping Dogs related) album floating around with a little more digging.
4) The Cinematic Orchestra, "Burn Out". Well, this one is a bit of a pain to buy, depending on region. The US can buy either CD or MP3, but the UK only has expensive looking import CDs. I believe it's available on iTunes, but you may want to simply purchase direct instead.
5) Yellow Fever by Vivienne Lu. Nope, doesn't exist. Sorry :(
Does anybody know who sings the parts of Vivienne Lu, of "Yellow Fever" fame, for example? I've no idea. Nobody seems to know for sure, although if this post is accurate then it definitely isn't Lucy Liu. Similar issues abound for many of the in-game tracks, especially when dealing with some of the stations such as "Soft". Well, fret no more because I put a fair amount of time into this and now you're going to read it, damn you.
1) My favourite tracks remain those by Bei Bei and Shawn Lee (here's the Amazon link to Into the Wind). What you may not be aware of (I certainly wasn't) is that Bei Bei has another album available on Amazon, though it won't show up alongside the former - you'll be told there's 400 odd albums, and none of them look remotely Bei Bei related. Fear not - scroll down to the bottom of page 1 (I know, strenuous stuff) and there she is with Quiet your Mind and Listen. An earlier album than the collaboration, there are no jazz / 70's stylings and I don't recall seeing it before so maybe it's a new addition to the site. Interestingly, one or two of the songs contain many of the motifs used throughout the newer album. So that's a fun thing to explore.
2) Art of Xen. You're not told anything about the track in-game, but the composer most definitely has a name - Jay Price. They have an album on Amazon with 12 tracks on it, but unfortunately it isn't available in some (or potentially many) locations. On the bright side, "As Featured on Sleeping Dogs" seems to be on sale in a lot more locations and contains 70(!) tracks to boot alongside being completely fantastic. YOU'RE WELCOME.
/ 2016 update: The old Amazon link has now expired, so here's a few more places you can buy / stream from: [7digital] | [Spotify]
3) Shanghai Nights and Gao Shan Ching by Celestial can be found here (UK only as far as I can tell, the US store has a CD but that's it). Don't click the band name to find (as you would reasonably expect) more albums from the same band - you'll be taken to a couple of albums by what appears to be a random gospel / soul singer instead. For some reason, Celestial albums are a nightmare to dig out on Amazon - here's the one containing The Crossing. That album is available in MP3 form on both US and UK stores, and there's a third (non Sleeping Dogs related) album floating around with a little more digging.
4) The Cinematic Orchestra, "Burn Out". Well, this one is a bit of a pain to buy, depending on region. The US can buy either CD or MP3, but the UK only has expensive looking import CDs. I believe it's available on iTunes, but you may want to simply purchase direct instead.
5) Yellow Fever by Vivienne Lu. Nope, doesn't exist. Sorry :(
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