At one point, I was in charge of the audio design service department at Wargaming and even got to participate in a field recording of real tanks in Jordan. Officially, I was in charge of the entire trip, but in reality, I was mostly getting in everyone’s way 😉
A bit later, we decided to restructure the team, but I still maintained (and continue to maintain) good relationships with many of the guys. I remember when a new guy, Andrey, joined the Minsk team—now widely known as Andrius Klimka, the creator of many iconic tracks from the game World of Tanks as well as its promo videos.
Andrey truly crafted some legendary tracks, and a couple of them have found a permanent place in my playlist. Those are the ones I want to share today.
The first one is Studzianki. To me, it embodies both Polish motifs and the character of Western Belarus, which is why, on some genetic level, I immediately felt the melody as something familiar. Though I’m sure Ukrainians would also recognize motifs of their homeland in it. After all, we are all neighbors, and these lands were once part of Rzeczpospolita (the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth).
The second one is Waffenträger. This track was created for a special in-game event featuring futuristic electric tanks. The vocal part was performed by Rusya, the lead singer of the Shuma project. For those unfamiliar with the language, it may seem like the song is in German, but in fact, the words are entirely made up to sound like German. This was a creative decision by the authors. And the result is just amazing—the intensity of the melody paired with the perfectly matching vocals is enough to give you goosebumps.
Later, Andrey recorded a Russian-language version of the song with vocalist Alexandra Stepanova. It’s also quite good, but I feel that the melody of the Russian language doesn’t quite match the intensity of the German-sounding version, even though the “German” is fake:
And the third track is more of a bonus. Andrey created this melody based on the very well-known Belarusian song Kupalinka, reimagining it in his own style. The music video for it beautifully showcases the natural beauty of my homeland—Belarus:
