Somewhere in a drawer in my house sits a black DS lite. Said DS lite played a large role in my childhood, having travelled hundreds of miles, and playing hundreds of hours of games. It currently lies dormant in its drawer with a large dead pixel in the middle of the screen, covered in the same Pokémon Platinum themed stickers it’s always had. I’ll never get rid of that thing, as it and the endless hours I spent playing Platinum and countless other games on it are precious. What does any of that have to do with this music review, you may ask? Well dear reader, last night as I was panicking over a slightly lackluster release radar, I was blessed with a whole list of releases from the radar of fellow AuraLink contributor Gray. Gray has very different taste than I do, generally with a 1:10 hit rate for me liking what they sends, but this time I immediately had my eye caught by a song named after the Pokemon that not only was the subject of many childhood rumours, but was the holy grail of my collection after obtaining a legitimate one from an event. It’s nothing short of fitting to have this blessing of a song named after the “god” of all Pokémon, maybe a bit on the nose, but fitting.

Vylet Pony’s Arceus is not at all what I had anticipated from the title or even the Spotify preview. It’s a song that comes on incredibly strong with cosmically large synth washes paired with majestic square wave arpeggios. It’s a grand entry that leaves a deep imprint, but just as fast as it came it fades to silence. What follows is a complete shift in energy. We’re treated to a ballad steeped in more emotional anguish packed into 4 minutes than I’ve heard in a very long time. With a piano-led instrumental the soundscape is sparse, spacey, met with the occasional background swell. The sound palette has a distinctly “down home” country feel to it, while simultaneously not becoming a country ballad. Through all my time as a music journalist I can confidently say this is the first time I’ve written about a song containing a harmonica, a banjo, or a slide guitar, let alone all 3 in the same place. If you’d told me that line up removed from context I must admit I probably would’ve assumed the stereotypes and passed up, but completely contrary to what you may be assuming this lineup creates an atmosphere that feels like crying in your home town. It paints this feeling so vividly that it even managed to get through to me despite living in suburban Canada my whole life, but I digress. This ballad moves and flows on, growing increasingly developed in its instrumentation and more emotionally charged, allowing the feelings to rise to a breakpoint before it once again pauses. This time the pause is not with a ringing fade to silence, but with the same arpeggio of the Azure Flute used to summon God himself.

As someone who grew up on Pokémon with the gen 4 legendaries being my ultimate favourites, this moment felt transcendent as this ping of nostalgia gave way to the thick synth chords of the intro once again. This climactic moment has scale that feels nothing short of monumental, as if we are giving ourselves up to the universe having said our piece. It’s sad, it’s grand, and it cuts straight to the heart, and every pause to allow the piano some room to breathe only emphasizes the grandeur of the synth leads layered against the backing vocals. For 1:35 seconds, we are set free from our chains, as everything is released, only to come back to a quiet conclusion of simple piano and humble banjo.

As I stated earlier, this was not the song I was expecting when Gray, the person who sends me hyper-rap I simply cannot get into, sent me a song named after a beloved fictional horse-god-thing. This heart-wrenching ballad is, if nothing else, a gorgeously authentic piece of art that someone absolutely needs to hear. It has feelings, it has range, it has great production, and most importantly it has real soul to it. There’s really not much more I can say to stress all that. So as simply as I can say it: well done.