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Hyrule Highlands II

music from tim de man

Tim de Man and ZREO: Second Quest are pleased to present Hyrule Highlands II – Music from Tim de Man – A Zelda tribute album styled in Folk and Celtic arrangements from the mind of Tim de Man. It’s a sequel to his Hyrule Highlands I (2020) album and sports the same Celtic and folk flare with studio-level care. We’ve worked directly with Tim to create each track from the ground up.

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A one-Man-Celtic-band

Instruments like whistles, accordion, guitars, mandolins, and dulcimer feature in this Western European folk themed journey.

This album is full of life and character. Tim uses live-performed acoustic instrumentation that allows the music to breathe, the dynamics to swirl and the rhythms to groove.

Hyrule Highlands II – Music from Tim de Man features music from across the Legend of Zelda® franchise.

Titles include Ocarina of Time®, Majora’s Mask®, The Wind Waker®, A Link Between Worlds®, Twilight Princess®, Skyward Sword®, and Breath of the Wild®.

Meet de Man

A pianist and music teacher by education, Tim de Man is a Dutch game music composer and multi-instrumentalist. He plays piano, drums, accordion, guitars, mandolin, and tin whistle, and has a vocal range of more than three octaves.

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from de Man himself

I’ve been fascinated by how much soul is in this video game series since I saw Ocarina of Time when I briefly played it back in 1998.

The best way for me to partake in Zelda’s mystery has been through its soundtracks – game music has been the center of my musical connection from early on.

Freeing the classic games’ music from their technical constraints through live performance is a joy, and the ultimate expression of that so far is Hyrule Highlands II.

As a pianist, my options for bringing out this expressiveness are limited, and I didn’t want to resort to too much MIDI trickery, so during the making of the original HYRULE HIGHLANDS I taught myself the basics of instrumentation that I thought would fit the Zelda aesthetic particularly well: Western European folk.

It allows for a cohesive and versatile sound, and is in the scope for a single musician to grasp, so I started learning whistle, folk guitar, and bass guitar and improved my accordion and drumming skills to realize my vision.

The original HYRULE HIGHLANDS I was entirely a solo effort: I wanted to do everything as a challenge to myself – arrangement, performance, recording, mixing, visual design, you name it.

The result was an album that I’m very proud of, but which was limited by what I could reasonably expect to do on my own.

When Sam from ZREO reached out to me and showed me what awesome work they were doing, I was hoping that we could work together on giving the follow-up an extra boost in quality. ZREO did not disappoint, and combined with some fantastic art by Giz, Hyrule Highlands II is all that I’d hoped for.