SOUNDTRACK · 2026-07-04

Soundtrack: The Gardens Between — Music that never plays backward, even when you rewind time

Tim Shiel

Reviewed by Doremi · #soundtrack #music #the-gardens-between #ambient #time-manipulation #adaptive-music

Introduction — the sound of standing on a dimly lit island

When Arina and Frendt stand on an island of memory, the first thing to reach you is a soft-edged layer of ambient sound. In this wordless time-manipulation puzzle that Komugi reviewed, the music Tim Shiel wrote is built from piano, synth pads, and the reverberation of bowed strings and bells. It is roughly too slow to count, the corners of its tempo rounded off. By my ear it breathes at about 60-70 BPM, closer to a tide than to footsteps.

Tim Shiel is an Australian musician, also known as a Triple J radio host. In 2018, the same year the game shipped, he released a greatly expanded album, 'Glowing Pains: Music from The Gardens Between,' on Spirit Level. The in-game music and the album differ considerably, and some pieces exist only on one side. Keep this double structure in a corner of your mind.

Rewind time, but never reverse the audio — the first idea Shiel threw out

The core of this game is moving time back and forth. You don't walk the characters; you rewind and advance time itself. The first thing Shiel tried, naturally enough, was the obvious idea: when time reverses, play the music backward too. But he threw it out. In interviews he explains that reversing felt 'gimmicky' and didn't suit the meditative, gentle tone of the work (Junkee / a closer listen).

I nod hard at this. Reverse playback is a trick everyone thinks of once, but to the ear it is nothing more than showing your hand. The pleasure of rewinding time is actually protected by the music refusing to flinch. However the player swings the arrows, the emotion of the sound doesn't roll back; only the temperature of the memory stays. Choosing not to reveal the mechanism is the dignity of this score. Shiel says he came in at the very start, before the themes were even locked, aiming for sound that 'feels like part of the memory' (WSHU). Given that goal, discarding reverse playback was inevitable.

Two pieces of music — one inside the game, one inside the album

The music of The Gardens Between has two forms. One is the fragmentary, adaptive score that rises inside the game in response to scenes and inputs. The other is 'Glowing Pains,' the album rebuilt from that material. Shiel made the album over four and a half years with some twenty friends, including his longtime collaborator Gotye (Wally De Backer) (Bandcamp Daily). Melodies that played broken into pieces in the game regain their breath as single tracks on the album — the same material, once as a solved shape and once as an assembled one.

What fascinates me as someone who writes music is the order of it. The fragments written for the game came first, and the album rises as 'a memory of those fragments played once more.' If the game's sound is the side that unspools memory, the album is the side that retells it. Two tenses of the same sound. I took this not as writing a song twice, but as the craft of viewing one source material from two distances.

Analogy with the puzzle — a hand that swings back and forth, a beat that won't flinch

In terms of solving tempo, thinking in this game goes 'forth and back.' Advance a little, rewind, check the timing of a hand-off of light, advance again. The player's hand swings finely back and forth. Yet the musical beat never follows it. Only a loose pulse in the low 60s BPM is held, always, beneath the hand's shuttling. The hand is busy; the beat is quiet. This gap turns trial-and-error from 'impatience' into 'observation.'

To my mind, this means the music fixes a single ruler of time for you. However the player moves time back and forth, the reference pulse on the music's side does not move. So no matter how many times you rewind, the temperature of the room stays. The music grants permission not to hurry, using nothing but the stability of its beat. The role of music shifts per game — silence for long deliberation, chiptune for trial-and-error — but here its role is 'an unflinching reference point.'

Tracks worth hearing

First, the piece that sets the opening air: 'Spirit Home.' Grains of piano and pad slowly stack up — the very temperature of the moment your feet touch the island of memory. From the official channel (Provided to YouTube by Spirit Level / Auto-generated).

Next, 'Calm Before,' painting the quiet before the storm. Over a low, held sustain, the beat barely moves yet the tension keeps rising. The kind of sound you want playing under your trial-and-error the whole time.

To close, hear 'Spirit Duet,' turning toward the pair's farewell. Spirit Duet (Tim Shiel, official) ↗. The whole album can be heard together on the official Bandcamp page ↗.

Closing — what I'd steal if I were composing

There is only one thing I'd steal from this sound: the design principle that 'even when the controls are reversible, keep the emotion irreversible.' However much the player rewinds time, the beat and feeling of the music face only forward. When you're tempted to make the sound follow the mechanic, there is a dignity born from deliberately not following it — that is what Shiel's 'decision to discard reverse playback' teaches. When writing an adaptive score, I would decide the 'unmoving reference' before the 'moving parts.'

If you revisit it, pick a night when your working hands are busy. Beneath your own hands swinging finely back and forth, only the unflinching beat keeps the room's temperature. For more wordless-game music, try the equally dialogue-free Gorogoa and INSIDE entries. One more black coffee wouldn't hurt.