In Hollow Knight Silksong you’ll eventually meet Sherma, a whimsical pilgrim who loves to belt out a good earworm. While Sherma doesn’t seem very good at the instrument he wields—he basically whacks two nails together towards a discordant “melody”—he’s got a lovely voice on him, especially with an excess of cavernous reverb applied.
Tee Lopes, a videogame composer who’s worked on Sonic Mania and Shredder’s Revenge, to name a few, has released a remix of Sherma’s lil’ jingle. It sounds a lot like that style of saccharine European dance pop that was big in the ’90s and early 2000s: music that resembles Saturday morning cartoons, but which is actually precision-geared for dancing to while high. Very high.
Here it is. I like how Hornet nods out of rhythm in the accompanying video. Bugs will be bugs.
Lopes has also done one for Shakra, whose banger sounds like something the Vengaboys might have released at the height of their inexplicable popularity. In the words of YouTube commenter @Akif-Faisal: “This is what entertainment looks like”.
(It may also look, depending on your temperament, like something akin to torture. Oh, the Mandelbrot complexity of human subjectivity!)
For my money, if Pharloom had a kind of “Top 40” for insects and parasites, I think Shakra’s jam would win out over Sherma’s. Sherma’s, while cute, has a low key darkness to it. It feels like something that could be used towards evil ends.
I spent all weekend playing Hollow Knight Silksong, and here are my impressions.
