The sim game Planet Zoo is in the same family of games as Planet Coaster, the amusement park creation game whose soundtrack we featured in week 523. JJ Ipsen collaborated with Jim Guthrie for that one – but the music of Planet Zoo is Ipsen’s alone, and it’s as charming as a child’s first visit to the zoo.

The track list tends towards animal-related wordplay: “Hippo Campus”, “Twin Beaks”, “Jeux Doe”…and my favourite, both musically and pun-ily: “Echidna Round.”

In case you’re not familiar with the Echidna as an animal, it’s a creature that is certainly worth getting to know. I can’t possibly do it justice in a 500-word post, but here are some highlights:

• It’s a monotreme; a rare case of a mammal that lays eggs
• Echidnas have spikes like a porcupine, but a long snout and tongue like an anteater (their name, in fact, comes from the Greek for “sticky tongue”)
• Baby echidnas are called puggles, which is the absolute best
• Both male and female have a pouch to hold their puggles
• Their milk is pink
• The male echidna has a…um…a four-headed appendage

That’s probably enough to get you started on a long and shocking Google image search, so I’ll go ahead and get to the song.

What makes this a beautiful song:

1. The quick triplets in the guitar.

2. The soothing voices.

3. The big plodding percussion.

Recommended listening activity:

Designing an animal of your own. (Or, if you’ve been doing Echidna-related image searches, clearing your browser history.)

Buy it here.

The post Week 810: “Echidna Round” by JJ Ipsen appeared first on Beautiful Song Of The Week.