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Pacific Wharf

Posted by SSrustworthy on 3/4/23

This loop has been something of a peculiar case in that one track was ID’d in a Magic Music tracklist as “At Play (WorldSong)” in 2002. However, no source album/artist/label has ever been found that contains the source track. IHeartGaming has recently found the source track itself, but not the source. So the mystery continues.

DCA_-Pacific_Wharf_BGM-_At_Play_192_kbps.flac https://app.box.com/s/mnhvd22941sm5gi1ir1ws9e4u96qvb5q HeartGaming notes “This file is not actually lossless. The original source is a 192 kbps MP3, and FLAC was only used in order to not introduce any additional lossy compression. Unfortunately, this brings me no closer to the source of "At Play" nor whatever WorldSong is.”

In celebration of finding this track in its 192 kbps glory, pixelated has generously given me access to a live recording for the sake of finding edit points. It is likely this loop will also soon disappear with the transformation of Pacific Wharf into San Fransokyo, so consider this a final salute.

These tracks tend to have long fadeouts, and it’s hard to know where the cutoff is between tracks. As such, I assigned the start of the track to the appearance of frequency (at any level) on the spectrogram. The loop lengths are then calculated from that location until the start of the next track. There is a possible loop start where there is no overlap between tracks between Streetbeat and Don Quixote, and about 1.045 seconds of silence. Only one track is edited with a late track start. There are no crossfades between tracks.

DCA - Pacific Wharf

Loop length 01:08:54.662

<1.045 seconds of silence>

  1. Don Quixote - Luis Villegas - Cafe Ole (loop length 00:03:04.784)
  2. Loco Por Ti - Oscar Lopez - Seduction (loop length 00:05:05.506)
  3. Whirl-Y-Reel 1 - Afro Celt Sound System - Sound Magic, Vol. 1 (loop length 00:07:19.845)
  4. Rosa Rose - Oscar Lopez - Seduction (loop length 00:04:14.119)
  5. Baby Elephants - Luis Villegas - Cafe Ole (loop length 00:03:39.162)
  6. Rattle and Burn - Jesse Cook - Vertigo (loop length 00:03:45.798)
  7. Spanish Eyes - Carlos Villalobos - La Esperanza (loop length 00:04:12.122)
  8. Mercuriana - Jose Luis Encinas - Duende (loop length 00:04:27.873)
  9. Egüle-n Boru - Togtooliin Chagdarjav, Dashnym Enhtuya, Gurddrj Gantuya - Mongolian Instrumental Music (loop length 00:02:09.110)
  10. Olinda Road - Hapa - Islands (loop length 00:03:18.113)
  11. Tigris Palace - NovaMenco - Gypsy Fusion (loop length 00:04:22.666)
  12. Puerto Rican Gypsy - Banda Criolla, Jose Gonzalez - A World Instrumental Collection (loop length 00:05:50.153)
  13. At Play - Jim Lang - World Song (1992) (loop length 00:01:13.503)
  14. Köke Torɢan Degel  ~ Goyar Sedgil - Doljin Enhtaivan, Togtooliin Chagdarjav, Dashnym Enhtuya, Tsegmid Gerelmaa, Gurddrj Gantuya - Mongolian Instrumental Music (loop length 00:02:53.622)
  15. S.O.B. - Luis Villegas - Cafe Ole (loop length 00:03:59.643)
  16. Nasca Lines - Brian Hughes - A World Instrumental Collection (loop length 00:05:35.789)
  17. Streetbeat - David Hewitt - A World Instrumental Collection (loop length 00:03:41.465)

The Mongolian Instrumental Music album is out of print. See the Discogs listing: https://www.discogs.com/release/10867664-Various-Mongolian-Instrumental-Music

A lower quality rip is available here (I don’t have the CD unfortunately):

A much-anticipated update… after two decades of mystery and intrigue, the source of At Play has been identified!

How did this happen? A series of fortuitous events to say the least! Keep in mind that what we had to go off of was the original tracklist posted by Progressland on Magic Music of the Mouse, and the recently discovered lower quality source track of “At Play” which never turned up any hits in music ID services.

At the end of a workday, I had the random late-night idea to search “Worldsong documentary.” I was inspired by another MouseBits post which connected a score cue from the EPCOT entrance music with the Le Mans soundtrack, which VJ brought to my attention. I probably made that mental jump by thinking about identifying music that was in unreleased or unavailable movie score soundtracks, and “World Song” seemed like the sort of title that screams “documentary.” For so long, we had focused on commercially available albums as had been the source for all of the other tracks in the loop, and so the potential for a link to an older film had completely flown under the radar.

My hunch immediately turned up an IMDB listing for a 1992 film titled “World Song,” with the premise that it was a lyrical exploration of common themes of humanity. I immediately felt like this was a pretty strong lead, given the title “At Play” which could be interpreted as the common practice of leisure, much like one could be At Work pretty universally. The 14-minute film was played in the pabellón de los Estados Unidos de América , AKA the USA pavillion, at the World Expo in Sevilla, Spain in 1992 and was sponsored by General Motors.

pixelated used some handy Spanish skills and did some research, turning up the following footage of the pavillion:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=50zCK_JjYQg

Snippets of the World Song film are visible starting at the 6:16 timestamp, and partial footage of the segment with the At Play score is audible around 6:23. And thus, we had found the source of At Play!

The full footage of the film was unfortunately not available on YouTube for a complete verification, but IHeartGaming was able to get in touch with the production company, Pyramid Media, and order a DVD for $20. The URL to do so for your very own copy of World Song is available here: https://a1599.americommerce.com/world-song.aspx

The DVD gave us a clear verification that Jim Lang is the composer of At Play, with Marylata Jacob coordinating the music and Vince Mendoza conducting. The audio tracks from the DVD are in stereo but understandably have the SFX and ambient sounds mixed into the audio, so the source 192 kbps track is still the best copy we have. We are currently trying to track down the score. Fingers Crossed!

Thanks for everyone’s dedication to this identification of this track over the years! It’s been a fun ride. And it couldn’t have been made possible without the original information gleaned from Progressland on Magic Music. We did it!