Arcadian Sky

Arcadian Sky began with a feeling I could not shake: standing in a place of impossible beauty while knowing the danger is real and overhead. It is the world of the raiders - scavengers on a wounded Earth, looking up at a sky that gives and takes in the same breath. You come up from the underground, the light hits, the ruins are gorgeous, and somewhere above you the machines are already listening.

So this is a whole album written to live inside that contradiction. Music for the long walk out, for the loot you should not have reached for, for the firefight you did not want and the quiet after it. I am Joseph Laurence, a UK songwriter and composer, and Arcadian Sky is the widest, most cinematic of my records - made for players who know exactly what that sky feels like.

If you have searched for music like the ARC Raiders soundtrack, or for something to score your own raids and clips, this is the record I built for that itch. Not a copy of the game's score - a separate, original world that sits beside it.

Musically it is the widest of my four records. Long, cinematic builds, real-feeling orchestration that aches and then lifts, melodies that carry the gold of that low, enormous sun. There is a brightness to it, and underneath it a low, patient tension, because you are never quite alone out there.

It is music for the hush before the descent, and for the run home afterwards with your heart going. The kind of cue that holds its breath while you crouch behind cover, then opens all the way up the moment you break for the extraction. Beautiful where the world is beautiful; teeth where the world has teeth.

Underneath the scale, though, it is a record about hope that refuses to quit - the quiet, human kind that keeps people moving when the sky is anything but kind. That is the part of ARC Raiders that stayed with me most: not the threat, but the stubbornness of the people who keep going out into it anyway.

If you play, you already have the pictures: the descent, the gold light on the ruins, the freeze when a Tick skitters past, the sprint to extraction with a full bag and no plan. Arcadian Sky is scored to those exact moments - a soundtrack for the world you already live in, made by someone who plays it too.

It is built to sit behind your own raids and edits as well. Long, evolving pieces give a clip room to breathe, and the loud-quiet-loud shape of each track lines up naturally with how a run actually goes - the careful approach, the scramble, the relief. When the album is out, it will be on every major streaming service, ready to drop under your footage.

Want to know the moment it lands? Follow Joseph Laurence wherever you listen and the release will reach you first - no need to keep checking back.

No. Arcadian Sky is an independent album inspired by ARC Raiders - it is not the official soundtrack and it is not affiliated with or endorsed by Embark Studios. The official ARC Raiders score is by Patrik Andren and Johan Soderqvist for Embark Studios; if that is what you are after, you want their OST, not this record.

What Arcadian Sky offers is something different: an original, standalone body of work made by a fan of the game's world. Same sky, same feeling, entirely my own songs. Think of it as a companion you can press play on - inspired by the game, written from scratch, and released under my own name, Joseph Laurence.