Signals is the twentieth track in the album Transistor: Original Soundtrack, and its instrumental release is the nineteenth track in the album Transistor: Original Soundtrack (Extended). It was written and produced by Darren Korb, with vocals provided by Ashley Barrett.
Signals is an OST-exclusive bonus track that does not play during gameplay and does not become available on the Sandbox's Music Player. Nonetheless, like the game's other vocal tracks, it can be considered one of the songs written and performed by Red during her career in Cloudbank.
Lyrics[]
Official lyrics from the Bandcamp album release:
Step out beyond the edge and start the motion
Look out below, I know there's no decision
Just collision
It's all arranged
Too late for me, no reason to recover
If I should choose to rise
I'm still descending
Never ending
I fall
I fall
And we all are sending smoke signals
Keep pretending we're one
Take up the call and follow everybody
I won't become a number in the system
Zeroes and ones
Not me
Not me
And we all are sending smoke signals
Keep pretending we're one
We're all descending
No strings
We keep pretending we're one
Step out beyond the edge and start the motion
Trivia[]
- Signals was easy for Darren Korb to write, coming together quickly and easily. It was written after the game's completion, specifically from the soundtrack,[1] and is not present in the game's audio files.
- The lyrics, a protest against enmeshment in systems which isolate individuals for easier management while falsely claiming to provide unity, are more direct than many of Red's other songs and may have contributed to her reputation as a provocateur. The reference to "numbers in the system" evokes both the world's underlying code and its social structure's reliance on capturing and analyzing data about every aspect of citizens' lives. The longing for genuine community in "keep pretending we're one" also contrasts with the less savory performative unity depicted in We All Become's repeated refrain of "before we all become one".
Media[]
| Transistor Soundtrack | |
|---|---|
| Vocal Tracks | In Circles (_n C_rcl_s) · Paper Boats · She Shines · Signals · The Spine · We All Become |
| Instrumental Tracks | Apex Beat · Blank Canvas · Coasting · Cut Apart · Dormant · Forecast · Gateless · Gold Leaf (G_ld L__f) · Heightmap · Impossible · Interlace · Old Friends · Sandbox · Stained Glass · Tangent · Traces · Vanishing Point (V_n_sh_ng P__nt) · Water Wall |
| Unreleased Tracks | Dread1 · HighriseStingerShort · MysteryStingerAuden |
| Unused Track | HighriseStinger |
| Albums | Transistor: Original Soundtrack · Transistor: Original Soundtrack Extended · The Songs of Supergiant Games |
- ↑ Transistor Devs Q&A. Archived by the Wayback Machine; retrieved 04 August 2024.