w w w . d e e p d i v e . c o m is an album able to deftly navigate the nuances of many subgenres of the vaporwave scene. While on the surface, it might appear to be a traditional lo-fi album. As the album progresses, you find tracks able to successfully navigate out of the box it had seemingly placed itself in. You wind up with some unexpected influences flooding the album while never losing the lo-fi vibes it establishes out of the gate. You get climatewave (“Mind Mirage ドット 通信”) tossed in, and even some classic vapor (“Zetta 禅”) shows up. But the biggest triumph of the album is arguably its selection of samples and loops, as the album stays engaging from beginning to end, avoiding the lulls you’ll often encounter in longer albums.
The Alien franchise has had its up and downs. This is particularly true when it comes to games. First we had the reboot of the Aliens vs. Predator series by Rebellion. Then, of course, the utterly disastrous release of Aliens: Colonial Marines. In the ensuing years, things have gotten appreciably better, thanks in large part to Creative Assembly‘s immaculate Alien: Isolation, one of the greatest horror games ever created. This was followed by a safe, if unimpressive third-person shooter in Aliens: Fireteam Elite. And now we have the great tactics games from Tindalos Interactive, Aliens: Dark Descent. While the quality of this bunch of Alien titles has fluctuated wildly in quality, one thing that never wavered was the music. Alien titles always bring with them incredible soundtracks, and Aliens: Dark Descent is no exception. Which is why we’re excited to have had the chance to sit down with the game’s composer, Doyle Donehoo, to discuss what went into the soundtrack’s creation.
Over the course of this conversation, we’ll talk about the legacy of music in the Alien franchise, what role in-game environments have on how to interpret the music, and how Doyle’s previous work on Warhammer titles has helped with crafting this score. Let’s dive in!
Utopia District: Thanks for taking the time to do this Doyle! Let’s hop in! When it came to influences from the films of the Alien franchise, how challenging was it to choose moments to reprise specific composers?
Doyle Donehoo: The game featured three distinct environments: space-ship, colony, and industrial. The game developers, [Tindalos Interactive] and particularly I, wanted to strongly immerse the players in those environments from the movies so they could feel very connected to the feel of the Alien franchise. In particular, to the first three movies. That was the foundation. From there, we could build on that to deliver an experience that was at once familiar and unique. So, for me, the environments dictated which legacy composers I should be most influenced by. For example, the space-ship environment pointed towards [Jerry] Goldsmith, who with Alien profoundly set the musical language for the Alien universe. For me, all of the Alien music springs from that. So, the environments and the legacy composers associated with them set the direction of the music in the game.
UD: Using Jerry’s score as a jumping-off point makes sense. In their distinct ways, Goldsmith, James Horner, and Elliot Goldenthal all crafted masterpieces (to say nothing of the contributions of John Frizzell, Marc Streitenfeld, Harry Gregson-Williams, Jed Kurzel, Harald Kloser, and Brian Tyler). For my money, Alien3 has the greatest film score of all-time!
DD: Yes, the first three movie composers made the greatest contributions to the Alien franchise. Alien3 has some great musical moments I am really attached to, but that score would not have been possible without the first two. I did an homage modernizing particular cues from the movies, in particular Alien3. It is unlikely it will be released, but it was satisfying to do.
UD: How did you go about choosing when to honor these film scores and when to deliver original material in the game? Was it easy to pick those moments? Challenging?
DD: While I utilized Alien orchestral sounds from the movies (bassoon for example), we delivered original melodic material throughout. The sounds and the Alien musical language are what bring the feel and emotion of that Alien environment, while still delivering original material. It was not so much a challenge as doing the obvious when honoring a venerated franchise such as Alien. We wanted the fans to get a satisfying and original Alien experience.
UD: Speaking of the Alien experience, the Xenomorph is one of the most recognizable icons of horror. But apart from horror, what kinds of influences did you draw from? Movies, books, television, etc. Or anything outside of the world of entertainment even.
DD: Well, mostly all of the above. For Alien in general, I am a big fan. When Alien and Aliens first came out, I saw them numerous times in theaters, and countless times on VHS, DVD, and Blu-ray. I collected all available CDs, records, books, programs, magazines, art collections, buttons, newspapers, and all things Alien I could find. I have done many Warhammer scores, which cover everything from horror to military actions and many other things as well. I have read hundreds of books from all genres and seen your basic truckload of movies. I like to think my whole is greater than the sum of my influences.
UD: Like that myriad Alien collectibles you accumulated through the years, the world of the Alien films includes a wide range of aesthetics and styles, bringing with them the opportunity for a broader musical palette as well. The gothic elements, the industrial, the organic & alien. These could all appear incongruous at first, but they harmoniously coalesce in the world of Alien. Are there any genres or types of sounds you brought into your music that would appear equally incongruous at first blush?
DD: The first three movie scores are almost ancient history now, and I have sounds and instruments that were not available then, and I used a lot of them in my score. I go through thousands of new sounds and instruments every year and take notes. But there are certain sounds and instruments that speak to me in a particular way, and when doing a project like Aliens: Dark Descent, I use them because they sound “Alien”, and fit what I am doing. Only certain sounds will work. Still, you have to try seemingly incongruous things and see if they work, and maybe open new lines of sonic possibilities.
UD:In the Alien films, the music plays such a monumental role. In particular, they excel at presenting the duality of the human elements of the world alongside the hostile, alien realm of the xenomorph. But, here in Dark Descent, we have human/xenomorph hybrids, completely eliminating the line separating these two disparate elements. Musically, what kinds of challenges did this pose? Did it dictate a change in how you approached the game at all, did you have something in mind right away for this very outcome, or did it require a bit more reflection?
DD: Yes, in the Alien films, the music plays a monumental role, which is one of the reasons it appealed to me so. I was freaking out within the very first scenes of Alien, mainly because of the music. It really spoke to the frailty of humans on so many levels.
As for the forms of humanity in the game, I really didn’t have to deal with the nuances of human/xenomorph hybrids and other details. I had 60 minutes to establish the various environments while writing for exploration, discovery, story-telling, minor encounters, major encounters, defeats, success, failure, and a variety of levels of intensity. I think all that organically covered any special situation. And this hour of music had to cover for around 40 hours of game-play.
UD: And as something of a part two to the above, how did the gameplay style of Dark Descent influence the way you crafted your score? A tactics game is going to be considerably slower than say, an FPS. Did you do anything musically that sort of matched that irregular rhythm to gameplay that a tactics title can provide? Jump around a bunch with signatures? Rapidly moving between modes? In what ways did you try to “get nuts” with the music?
DD:Yes, Aliens: Dark Descent is very different than a FPS. You exchange constant combat for various degrees of tension and desperation, and THEN all-out combat for a time. I have heard real-world combat described as hours of boredom and waiting around interspersed with periods of sheer terror, and I think the game is more akin to that. So musically speaking, the music has to flow and evolve. A lot of the music was composed in large chunks covering various moods, and delivered in such a way it could be easily edited to match the various scene changes. Also, it was mostly written in the same key, so it was easy to edit together different parts. Remember, it is a limited amount of music spread over a long time.
UD: So you mentioned Warhammer earlier which I was planning on bringing up. You’ve been involved with Warhammer 40,000 for many a year. But the worlds of Alien and 40K offer different kinds of science fiction. How does this difference in universe alter your approach to composing? What would you consider the key differences?
DD: Actually, there are a lot of similarities between Aliens and Warhammer 40K. In my opinion, Aliens influenced the Warhammer race of Tyranids, who are insectoid versions of Aliens on steroids and mutated into many different forms. And they also travel in masses, and some forms of Tyranids can rip Space Marines into tiny bite-sized pieces. When composing Warhammer music, the Alien scores were often referenced. And now we have Colonial Marines facing off against swarms of Aliens, so there is that similarity. The major difference for me is that the Alien is the ultimate ambush hunter and stealth and sneaking around plays a bigger part in Alien franchise games and Aliens: Dark Descent. FPS’ are often constant action and combat, so there is not a lot of room for mood changes. However, for Aliens: Dark Descent there is a lot more nuance and changes of mood. There is story-telling and discovery for example. I didn’t want every Alien encounter to be an excuse for over-the-top epic music unless it was THE main encounter with something very important. And I worried about the music interfering with the sound effects and dialog. You can heighten the intensity of a scene without overwhelming it with music. So, the music has an arc as things work towards a crux, where I can “get nuts”.
UD:And to close things out, I always like to end my first-time interviews with the same question because the stories can be fun to hear! To that end, what brought you to gaming? How did you end up finding yourself making music for games?
DD: Well, that is a very long story indeed. I have a music, art, graphics, and engineering background. I used to write my own music software, and I have been involved with music all my life. But to make a long story short, when video games first came out starting with DOOM, I knew I wanted to be involved in video games in some way. Computer technology finally reached a point where meaningful music could be created, so I started to build my studio and learn traditional orchestration. I also scored some minor games. Then, at E3, I saw a rolling demo of Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War, and I knew that was exactly what I wanted to write music for. What followed was a lot of begging until I got a chance to audition for Warhammer 40K: Dawn of War II, and the rest, as they say, was history.
UD: Thanks so much for taking the time to do this Doyle!
DD: No problem!
And there we go! A peeling back of the curtain so-to-speak. Hopefully, you enjoyed a glimpse behind the magic of crafting video game music! And please, don’t forget to check out the game! And the music!
PlayStation VR2, the latest headset from Sony launched back in February. Among the massive launch lineup for the virtual reality peripheral were upgraded ports of two of the previous generations’ best titles: Moss, and Moss: Book II. The Moss titles are action platformers that see you assume the role of “the reader,” a magical being who has a spiritual connection to the adorable ASL-fluent mouse heroine, Quill. To celebrate the re-releases of these two gems, we sat down with series composer Jason Graves. In addition to scoring both Moss titles, Graves has lent his talents to a number of games, including Until Dawn, the underappreciated The Order: 1886, and perhaps most significantly, the Dead Space franchise.
Over the course of this conversation, we’ll talk about the challenges that go into making a sequel sound fresh, how differing time signatures played a big role in Book II’s musical identity, and yes, even a quick little question about Dead Space. Let’s dive in!
During the course of this interview, there are references to a past discussion with Jason. This is in reference to an interview conducted by this writer for the PlayStation website Push Square, and for anyone curious about what was discussed during that interview, you can find that article here.
Utopia District: Really glad to be talking again! Years ago we actually talked about your work on Moss over at Push Square!
Jason Graves: I remember! I totally remember, it was great! I had such a good time!
UD: Awesome! I’m happy to hear that! Some of the questions ended up almost as companions to that interview, so let’s have a look at how things went for this time with Moss: Book II!
On completion of Moss, were there any ideas that stuck with you? Melodies or bigger picture ideas that you might have wanted to explore if you had the chance to work on a Moss sequel? Like “Ah dang, I want to do that now!”
JG: When we finished the first one, there was this big question mark. With any game, it’s like that. I’ve scored so many games where it was like “We have three games planned” but only the first ever gets made. It just winds up not being financially viable to continue. Musically speaking, thematically, I think…[Moss] was one of the first times with themes where I got to explore them this much. I didn’t feel like I had short-changed any of them, and then when the second game came around and we knew it was going to be a thing, I thought I should be coming up with a bunch of new themes. Not for any reason other than “new game, new themes! Maybe I’ll use one of the old ones!”
There were a lot of smaller themes that came out of the second game, but most of the second game is a reiteration of the themes from the first game. They just sat really well with me and with the audio team at [Moss developer] Polyarc. We just really liked them. We felt like they didn’t wear out their welcome the first time. And I had them playing everywhere, just all the time! But I think, for an emotional connection to the music, having that sort of theme, like the Indiana Jones theme [“The Raiders March”], something that allows you to connect with a character. It was written, well, hopefully anyways, as something you never get tired of when it shows back up. As long as I can dress it up in different ways!
UD: And then when the original version of the melody shows up again in sparse moments of Book II, or even at later points in Moss, as the player you’ll be able to better recognize it. Like, “Ahhh, I know that. I recognize that!”
The reprisal of “Dear Reader,” [from the first game] that melody, I noticed quite a few times playing in Book II, which I found interesting. It reminded me of John Williams, especially Star Wars. Star Wars of course relies on reprisal a lot more than many other properties. And it’s effective in that context, and I think that Moss is using reprisals in a similar fashion.
JG: That’s actually great to hear! That’s the sort of thing that John Williams is just so well known for. Whether it’s “The Flying Theme” from E.T. or Star Wars, I already mentioned Indiana Jones. That was just my gut reaction to thinking “What sort of theme when I hear it, evokes a certain thing.” And I love film music. I love ballet music, and classical music, and that performance-oriented underscoring of action in music. And for me, John Williams, many others as well, but mostly John Williams, is the pinnacle of that sort of writing. I didn’t look at any John Williams music and think “I want to write Moss like that,” but it’s an indelible part of my DNA now since I’ve heard those scores and watched those movies so much that I can’t help but write my music for games in a cinematic way.
The tracks on the CD, for Moss and Book II both, were the tracks that I gave the developer when they said “We need some music for when Quill’s [the mouse heroine from the games] fighting some mechanical bugs.” So you hear this dancey combat track, and it ebbs and flows. Gets louder, and quieter. I’m just doing all that based on my internal monologue. How I think the action could be playing out. And that’s just so much fun!
UD: I think that shines through loud and clear in the music!
To step back briefly, I think that the key melody (see the Bandcamp embed above) that shows up in the first game, and all throughout the second game, is a good relationship anchor. Not to harp on John Williams again, but he’s especially good at writing themes for characters, especially compared to contemporary composers. On soundtracks now, you don’t often get “theme for so-and-so” anymore unless it’s a contemporary Williams score.
But with Moss, I feel like that key melody functions as a character theme for Quill, but also as a theme for “The Reader” [the character players control in both Moss titles]. And it of course helps to connect those two together as well.
JG: Totally! And that was the purpose behind it for the first game. And it helps to forge an even stronger bond in the second game! There were instances where I was working with Stephen [Hodde] and Kristen [Quinn] at Polyarc, on the audio team, and they would say “This would be a great time to have the theme there, but maybe it’s shaded slightly sadder, or more heroic. Or this would be a great time to have the theme, but we want it to hit as nostalgia. We want it to feel like the first game in how it’s presented.”
This helped, as I just get really bored quickly, so I’m constantly re-harmonizing things, trying to make it feel like it’s saying different things. Even if it’s just the same two notes repeated.
And those intervals are very open and there’s no third in them. So the third of the chord is what makes them feel happy or sad. And I intentionally wrote that for the first game so I could put a minor chord, a minor third in there and it would sound sad, or a major third in there so it would sound happy. Without having to change the notes of the theme. I didn’t do it much in Moss, but in Book II, I did it everywhere. Every time I used it, I was reharmonizing it in different ways. If the first game was my dream come true to be able to write like that, the second game was like winning the musical lottery. I got to write twice as much music! And so many more themes. But really, falling back on that first song that I wrote for [singer] Malukah that’s at the end of the first game and the end of the first soundtrack, those melodies were the keystone to the whole thing!
UD: So going back to the newer themes that you worked on for Book II, how did you evolve those sounds? The ones removed from the melodies you wrote for the first game. Obviously, they’re an accompaniment to what you’re making elsewhere in the game, but how did you want to make these new ideas distinct?
JG: So to keep it fairly surface level and not get “musical nerdy,” a lot of it had to do with the type of harmony that I was utilizing. There was a general “bad guy” theme in the game that a lot of the time is played by super low bass clarinets, contrabass clarinets, and bassoons and I would double it with low piano, and low electric bass guitar. And that creates a lot of mysterious intervals. Lots of half steps. So when you hear this texture play, even if it’s just a single note, it’s this low, weighty thing. And then you get these half-step meanderings and it sounds…well it sounds evil.
As opposed to something like the theme for [Quill’s uncle] Argus, who is sort of your quest in the first game. And…spoiler alert, but it’s a 5-year-old game!
At the end of the first game, you rescue Argus, but he did not have a theme in the first game because he was more the impetus behind Quill’s journey. But. as the second game picks up right where the first game left off, now Argus needed a theme. And that one’s using warm, familial, friendly nostalgic harmonies. So when I was able to play his melody underneath those harmonies, you could recognize it. Any time he’s on-screen it’s basically playing his theme. But I could also play just his harmonies without the melody and you kind of get that same warm cozy nostalgia despite the melody not playing. I think it’s important to have the harmony and melody distinct, especially in games. So I gave the audio people at Polyarc the harmony and melody separately so they can just play an English horn playing Argus’ theme by itself if it’s a quiet moment. Or just play the harmony by itself if it’s an exploration moment. The music needs to be modular that way it can still evoke the same feeling for the player even if half of the things for the music aren’t actually being heard at that time.
UD: Plus since it’s up to the player to dictate when the action moves forward, you don’t want to see the figurative “seams” in the music. In areas where the music loops.
JG: Totally! I’ve been such an opponent of just merely looping music in games for at least the last 15 years probably. To me that’s just the telltale sign, you can see the seam, like you said, I like that! I don’t want the music to loop. I want it to play through in its full 5-minute state that I give them, and if for some reason the player is still in that area, half the music gets very quiet. The conductor would tell all the melodic instruments in the orchestra to stop playing, and all the higher instruments and now we just hear the lower part of the orchestra quietly in the background. And it makes it feel like the music is continuing and not looping.
UD: Even though it’s a stripped-down version of what you’d been hearing. But masked effectively where it feels wholly unique!
UD: So my next question involves the technical end of things. I’m curious to hear about how your approach to composition has changed for VR in the time from Moss to Book II. Or if it has? I know when we did the Moss interview, I asked about how composing worked for you in VR, and I’m interested to see if that process has changed?
JG: [Laughing] It hasn’t. It’s a really quick answer. As a matter of fact, the few things that I did for VR specifically in the first game, the second game was so much larger in scope, that the music took more of a step back, and plays more of an emotional background role. This time, we didn’t want to call a lot of attention to the fact that you’re in VR. We likened it to being in an interactive storybook, which I suppose it is. So the music is in the background, and no fancy VR tricks this time!
UD: I’m glad you mentioned the scope of the game having expanded because that relates to my next question! So in Book II, the scope and complexity of the environments are much larger. The puzzles as well. But what did that expansion present to you for musical opportunities? You mentioned the music taking a minimized role this time, but with all these new environments and types of locations, did that open up anything new for you musically?
JG: Absolutely! The game is just on a bigger scale. With the first game, it sort of crescendos and feels bigger by the end, but you still have this mouse-sized perspective on everything. A lot of the instruments I used were small, very high [sounding], very quiet. And I wanted to take half of that and continue in the second one, but also augment things. Not necessarily in a subtle way, but I didn’t want it to sound like a gigantic orchestra.
I just did small things. So instead of using a solo violin, which I used extensively in the first game, I opted for a solo cello. You get this deeper voice from the cello, and when it goes up higher, you get a beautiful, longing, mournful sound. It’s one of my favorite instruments to write for. And instead of using the Celtic Harp, which was also featured a lot in the first game, I just got tired of tuning it. I didn’t want to buy a super expensive harp, because they can get really really expensive, I just had a little lap harp, but it was always going out of tune. So instead I bought a piano! Honestly, the piano ended up being so much more expensive than a harp, but I’ve always wanted a piano. And it’s a grand piano. But I bought it with the intent of composing the score for Book II on piano, in the same way that I scored Moss primarily on the harp. And you can get some similarity there. The harp is plucky, and has a sustain that slowly dies away, and the piano does the exact same thing, but on a larger scale. Those were the instrumental options that seemed like a natural progression from the first game. As a result, it naturally expanded my harmonies and the rest of the sound palette. Everything was opening up and feeling bigger, without having to force it. Without the big Hollywood drums or brass.
UD: An organic expansion of the sound as opposed to a Blockbuster [film score].
GS: Yes! Exactly!
UD: So my next question is an accompaniment to my last one, especially in regard to the environment. Book II has an industrial lilt to it. Especially with the forge.
JG: Yeah, the underground stuff! Beneath the castle.
UD: Exactly! What opportunities did that new kind of environment present to you that basically weren’t at all there in the first game? There’s a little in the first one I guess, mostly with the enemies, but in Book II the environments themselves are a lot more industrial, some of them almost feel Steampunk!
JG: Yeah! It’s tricky. So, I’ve been doing this for 25-something years now. So the first half of my career was everyone telling me what they wanted the music to sound like, and me having to sort of get as close to what they wanted but also make it different. So I was trying to be original. But now in this second half of my career, people are instead asking my opinion. Like, what do I think it should sound like?
And there are a lot of traps you can easily fall into. And in Book II, the perfect example could have been “Oh there’s a forge, and there’s molten metal and big steampunk-looking things and this giant robot to fight. We should use big industrial metal sounds!”
JG: [Laughs] Even if it was “Mossified” in a way where it worked in that universe, it just didn’t feel like the right approach to take. So a lot of it was just using guitars especially. I played a lot of guitars, and I had Tom Strahle, an incredible guitar player, play Oud and Bouzouki, which are these incredible world guitars. And what I would do is distort them. Well, not like Trent Reznor distortion, but more that they had some edge to them. If you hear a clean guitar, and then I played you [these] distorted guitars, and you see those visuals of the forge, it’s just a little bit rock and roll with the tone of the guitars. And I played some electric guitar as well. It’s this bouncy, busy, slightly edgy guitar sound from Tom, and myself on an acoustic guitar. And then there’s a lot of really distorted electric guitar, but I’m playing it [with] this big reverb, and it almost sounds like a pad. A washy, background thing, but it also has an edge to it. It sounds so subtle when I’m talking about it, but if I played the track for you and took it out, you’d be like “Yeah, this feels like there’s something missing.”
Additionally, everything that takes place aboveground in Book II is composed in triplets (three evenly-spaced notes played within the span of two notes). Which gives it an almost Celtic snap. But everything that happens underground is recorded in groups of 4, so it’s very square sounding. I like the idea of it being more mechanical, square like that down below. Whereas up top it’s beautiful and pretty. But [this is] all pretty subliminal. I would never expect anyone to actually pick up on that.
UD: That has to have been premeditated right?
JG: Oh yeah, absolutely. At first, I was thinking the whole score was going to be in triple meter, and very bouncy. But then I saw the underground forge stuff, and the caverns that Quill and Sahima [an additional playable character for portions of Book II] explore. And I thought, “Oh, this should be in 4/4”. It just feels like it’s different. And then you combine that with the textures and the beautiful visuals. When you’re playing the game, it’s like “Oh, okay.” We are in a completely different area now, with no sonic relation or any other kind to what was upstairs.
UD: That’s why I was so curious about it, because, it’s night and day, almost literally, while you’re playing. Such wildly different areas to explore!
Anyway, with that progression of sound, where the music almost took a step back but was equally important in Book II, what kind of advancements would you be looking forward to or expecting in a hypothetical Moss: Book III?
JG: No idea. Only because everything from the instrument sizes –violin to cello, harp to the piano—all of that was based on the story and the setting of the game. And I know the overall story, what happens between different games, but the specifics are really what draws me in and starts painting musical ideas in my head for instrumentation and everything. I’d have to get that pitch from Polyarc and simmer on it for a couple of weeks.
UD: Ruminate on ideas like how you arrived at those time signatures for the different areas.
JG: Yeah, totally. It’s the kind of thing that’s almost more of a reaction to getting input. And I need that input [from Polyarc] to process some sort of a decision.
UD: So for my final question, I want to ask about something apart from Moss. Plus I just can’t help myself from asking about Dead Space. Obviously, the remake came out a couple of months ago, so I was curious if you had a.) played it, or b.) if you had any thoughts on the soundtrack?
JG: Oh boy. Well, that’s going to be an easy answer, because I have not played it and I have not heard the soundtrack. But I am in the middle of watching Servant on AppleTV, which Trevor [Gureckis, the composer for the Dead Space remake] did the music for, and it’s brilliant! So I can say that I do love his music. I don’t know him personally, but I’m sure he did a great job sort of filling in where they added all this extra gameplay and bridging the gaps between the score and everything else. I’ve heard nothing but rave reviews about how well the remake was done. I was just tickled that they left any of my music behind, let alone all of it, and supplemented it with other stuff. Talk about the best compliment in the world!
Although, if I could get my hands on a PS5, I would totally play through it with one of my daughters because she’s dying to play it, but it’s just been impossible [to find a PS5].
UD: Luckily, Sony’s finally managing to meet at least some of the console demand, so you might actually be able to get one soon!
JG: Hopefully. We’ll see!
UD: That does it for me! Thanks so much for taking the time to do this!
And there we go! A pulling back of the proverbial curtain. A glimpse at the intense world of crafting video game music! If you enjoyed the interview, please check out the game! And the music!
Falling into memories offers up a lo-fi album with an incredible sense of longing. The romantic undertones, while no stranger to the genre, just feel all the more powerful here. This is thanks to many facets, but opening with a heart-wrenchingly sad track titled “farewell” definitely sends a somber message. The samples chosen for the remainder of the album don’t shy away from piling emotions on top of emotions either, making an album that demands your attention. It hits the emotional targets it sets out for itself so effectively that we almost don’t want to recommend listening to it unless you’re already sad. Just in case!
Favorite Track: Still Running Towards The Moonlight, Still Far Away From You
The new open-world title from Square Enix’s in-house team Luminous Studioshas arrived! Forspoken is a fantasy-action RPG that sees players take the mantle of Frey, a woman transported from, the streets of New York City to the fantasy world of Athia. The title is out now, and what better way to celebrate than with an interview? We had the chance to sit down with one of the game’s composers, Garry Schyman – perhaps best known for his work on the Bioshockfranchise.
In the following paragraphs, we’ll wax poetic about the collaborative nature of working on Forspoken’s music, the rigors of blending hip-hop beats with a more traditional orchestral score, and the many memorable moments of hip-hop in the original Bioshock! Join us here at Utopia District as we go on an adventure alongside Frey!
Utopia District:On Forspoken, you collaborated with fellow composer Bear McCreary. From your perspective, I’m curious how you’d describe your collaborative effort [with Bear McCreary] [working on Forspoken]. What’d you work on together? Separately?
Garry Schyman: We collaborated particularly in our approach to the score. We started together, talking with Luminous Productions, Luminous, part of that Square Enix world. They were describing the game to us… we were Zooming with them, and then we had some conversations about it. And then he did some themes, I did some themes, and then I was pretty much on my own after that. Our minds came together, and we agreed on our approach to the score. I actually wound up using some of [Bear’s] themes, he wrote some beautiful themes.
UD: So you used some of his themes to craft new pieces of music around?
GS:Yes! He wrote Frey’s (Forspoken’s Protagonist) theme, so when I needed to, I would utilize that.
UD: How did working on Forspoken differ for you? Either because of that collaborative element or just in general.
GS: Bear and I are friends, so it went very smoothly. Once he did his thing, he pretty much had other stuff to work on, so I continued and wrote two and a half hours of score, and wrote cutscenes. I have collaborated before though, on Shadow of Mordor, and Shadow of War, for Monolith. But that was with their in-house composer, Nathan Grigg, and that was a great collaboration. Went very smoothly.
[Smooth collaboration] happens more in video games I think. In film, it’s more likely that a big-name composer gets a project and divides it up among their minions. That may happen in games as well, but I’ve never done that. But in this case, we both did our parts.
Someone once joked to me, a very successful mixer, an engineer, that the difference between game composers and film composers, is that game composers actually write their own music. [Laughs]
Now, that’s certainly not true of every game composer, it’s unfair to them, but I’m just you know, passing along the joke! In some instances, there’s probably a bit of truth to that. But yeah, working with Nathan was fantastic. And on Metamorphosis (a game I’ve actually previously talked with Garry about) I worked with Mikolai Stroinski(likely best known for scoring The Witcher 3: Wild Hunt), so I’ve had these collaborations. In games, we often have these music requirements that can be many hours. So it can [make sense to collaborate].
A few months ago, someone told me that they were writing eight hours of music for a game. And I was like “really!?” To me, that sounds more like…time at San Quentin [State Prison] [Laughs].
UD: Yikes. Eight full hours? Or just a number of cues that could be turned into eight hours of music?
GS: I didn’t drill down. I was just too taken aback. That’s a lot of music. Sounds more like an in-house type job, where you’d be working on cranking out music all the time for various things. I would not be interested in that. Well…unless they paid me something stupid. If they pay me some ridiculous rate, I guess I would. Then I could hire some minions to help out! I think I’m good for 2-3 hours per game, but by then I think I’d have said everything I wanted to say musically. As you know, games can be very long, 30, 40 hours. Or more! Sandbox games, or MMO’s and you can play them for years. But say make an 8-hour combat cue, that sounds horrible.
UD:Or an 8-hour character theme!
GS:Right! [Laughs]
Well, there’s a piece by Erik Satie, a French composer from the early 1900s, late 1800s. He wrote a piano piece, it’s not terribly long, but then he said “repeat 150,000 times” or something. Maybe 10,000. I forget, but recently, or maybe 5, 10 years ago, there was a performance of it. And there were multiple pianists, and they played over 4 days or something, and they played the piece as many times as the piece dictated.
The piece in question is “Vexations,” written in 1893. In this piece, a series of chords are played, followed by the instruction to repeat them 840 times. Performances can often be upwards of 35 hours, leaving the interpretation of the tempo mark of “very slow” as a deciding factor.
UD: For this next bit, I’m curious about how you captured the mystery present in Forspoken. In all the marketing hype, interviews, etc. there is a great emphasis on speed and fluidity in combat. And in context, you could construe that as rhythm. On your end, how did you go about capturing that in the music? Did it have an influence at all?
GS: No, I think the combat music is there to inspire you, maybe make you anxious. So I would say, I would take what a particular battle was. Each battle was unique, related to who you were fighting, what was going on. Each one had a specific feeling. So that played a greater role in directing me, more what influenced me creatively.
UD: From what I understand, Frey starts in New York at the beginning of the game before being transported to [Athia] and to me that feels like it could introduce an interesting dichotomy of elements. You could start with something more terrestrial, before transitioning into this more bombastic fantasy world. Is that something you leaned into with the score, or experimented with?
GS: Absolutely! I think there is a differentiation between New York, which is a relatively modest part, maybe 5% of the game takes place in New York, it’s a long game. So that definitely exists. But it seemed to me that it made the most sense to play with. Still definitely use some orchestra, but it also had to have some beats, some street vibe to it. So definitely that was influential in how New York was portrayed, or at least the music that we heard.
That said, there are also some cinematics that take place in New York, and they’re very empathetic to a difficult situation that [Frey] is going through. So those moments did not need a beat. And we hired a wonderful singer named India Carney, and she sang, vocalized in those areas, and even did some improvisation as well.
UD: Was there a concerted effort to include themes or elements from the New York music and carry it forward in a way? Transform it? Or did you want to keep the music of New York and Athia separate?
GS: There are definitely some shared themes if they were relevant to Frey’s character. As long as it was something relevant to Athia, the world that she enters. So there’s some of that. But if you heard a cue, usually you could go “ehh, that’s New York,” you know? Except for those cinematics, where there was this very sympathetic, sad element. And those were scored in a more, you might say, “traditional” way.
UD: Okay, so I’m actually glad you brought up India Carney because I had a question about that! I was curious about the hip-hop elements of the score, as well as India’s involvement with the music. Hip hop isn’t a terribly common soundscape you’d hear in games, it does show up, but not frequently. Was that chosen in large part because of New York, tied to the identity of the city?
GS: Yeah, it felt like an appropriate beat for the city. She’s a young black woman in New York, and she’s dealing with things that have a very “street” vibe. And it felt more authentic. Not that I’m a hip-hop artist. Although maybe you know me by my hip-hop name. Kidding! [Laughs]
But yeah, I’m not a hip-hop artist, but it’s easy to obtain some beats, loops. And that’s what many hip-hop artists use too, they use loops. And then to write over them, score over them. To combine orchestra and hip-hop, it can work quite nicely! And then if you have some as soulful as India singing over that, it’s quite a lovely combination.
And I wrote some melodies for India, but then when she came into the studio, I asked if she could improvise too and she said “Yeah! I’d love to!” And those are wonderful moments as well where she just has the chord changes and she does some beautiful stuff.
UD: That hip-hop element, have you worked with that previously in any capacity? Or is that brand new?
GS: Nope! That’s brand new! Although there’s a lot of hip-hop in Bioshock if you recall!
UD: Ah yes! One of my favorite games of all time. I distinctly remember all the hip-hop at Fort Frolic!
GS: Exactly! All that rapping.
UD: Sander Cohen loves it!
GS: Evil rapping! Cohen’s master rap.
But yeah it is new to me. But I’m often doing things that are new to me. And that’s one of the things that I love about being a scoring composer. Because I am constantly being challenged to write in ways I’ve never written before. To me, that’s one of the things that makes this job so cool, and so interesting and so challenging. We’re in such an eclectic time, musically. Hundreds of different styles. I don’t even know how many Grammy categories. There are probably plenty that don’t get attention still (like vaporwave! -Ed).
UD:And now they’re finally paying attention to games! At long last!
GS: Indeed! I was interviewed by the Sunday Morning Show with Jane Pauley, I’ll be on that the morning of February 5th, the day of the Grammy’s, and they were interested because I teach a class at USC on scoring for video games!
UD: Oh, wow that’s cool!
GS: But they came out, visited my class, and interviewed me. They interviewed me for a half hour, I’ll probably be on screen for 3 seconds. But in any event, that is a cool and wonderful thing. Games are finally being recognized for the quality of their music. But that acknowledgment is still way behind where it should be.
UD: Oh, absolutely! I’ve been writing about game music for almost a decade? And in that time, it’s been so frustratingly underrepresented. Even though, game music is oftentimes more impactful and interesting than film or television. Those have a rigid structure, but games afford so much more room for dynamicism and room to expand. And the Grammy’s what, they gave games 2 nominations before this? [Austin Wintory’s]score for Journey, and then [Christopher Tin’s] main theme for Civilization IV? And that’s it.
GS: But at least it’s a start. It’s finally become a category though, and it’s wonderful. Let’s celebrate that! Let’s take what we can. Take the breadcrumbs out of that and make meatloaf. They use breadcrumbs in meatloaf, right?
UD: I’m pretty sure. [Laughs]
So to get back to India’s involvement quick. When was she brought in? Was that the plan from the beginning?
GS: Early on yeah! I used her on my first cue, and Bear used her on his theme for Frey, and she was amazing. She did such a great job, and I loved her sound so much. She brought a lot to the table. If I didn’t think she was great, I wouldn’t say anything, but she was amazing. We talked about Metamorphosis earlier, Joanna Freszel, who did the sprechgesang for the game (a style of music that offers dramatic fluctuations between traditional song and something closer to regular speech) brought so much to the table. When people add that element to a score, we’re so lucky. I love doing that. I love hiring people and having them come and add their unique skills.
UD: How did India explicitly get involved? Did one of you have her in mind?
GS: So Bear contacted a PR Contractor. One that hires musicians, and she was recommended to us. She also sings in choirs actually! So she has a legit, or a “traditional” choir sound. She can read music too. There are people who can sing really beautifully, but they can’t read music. India can read music, she can improvise, she can do it all! She brought a lot to the table. Very adaptable. She sings perfectly in tune too. That’s not always the case. You’d be shocked how many times we’ve had to digitally tune singers. But that wasn’t the case here. She was right on the money!
UD: Well, that was my last question for you! Thank you for taking the time!
And there we go! A pulling back of the proverbial curtain. A glimpse at the intense world of crafting video game music! If you enjoyed the interview, please check out the game! And the music!
While most mallsoft albums try to recreate the experience of visiting a mall in real life, what would happen if a release strove to recreate the experience of visiting a digital mall instead? This is the question that Merced Mall [Virtual Tour 2004] ponders. The experience remains a soothing one, with all the ethereal background noise you would want and expect out of wandering through a vaunted retail space, but the digital twist gives the release an entirely different texture. 90s games didn’t have the luxury of populating their wide-open spaces with sprites, so Merced Mall feels weirdly empty, but in a more welcoming way than you’d get from more traditional mallsoft. It doesn’t feel like a dead mall so much as a mall that happens to be empty. It allows for a genre used to sticking with the same handful of tricks to try out something new. And the result is something different, yet familiar.
Once upon a time, many years ago, back before COVID was a thing, Christmastime at a mall was a big deal. The bustling hives of frantic shoppers and fitful children would pack in for the holidays, and the malls themselves made sure to up their game. Decorations would appear seemingly overnight; giant ornaments, tassels, trees, and of course a (paid) photo opportunity with Santa Claus himself. All that’s well and good, but it doesn’t convey the coziness that a mall used to have around Christmas. Whether it’s the promise of shelter from the biting cold outside, the general cheer of the holiday season or the relentless, inescapable sound of Christmas music piped throughout the mall, these vaunted shopping Mecca’s just feel different at year’s end. But we’re here to focus on the music. Specifically, the latest album from mallsoft maestro Looking Through Sheets.
It can be hard to hear amid the hustle and bustle of a filled-to-capacity shopping mall, so it’s great that Christmas at the Brand New Lifestyle Center gets that. Sure you’ll hear some classic tunes on occasion, sometimes even with disarming clarity, but more often than not, recognizable tunes will weave in and out of your consciousness, never quite feeling alien, but not quite familiar either. This is all beautifully conveyed through the opener, “Christmas at the Brand New Lifestyle Center.” A massive 15 minute journey, the track packs the aforementioned instant recognition, but isn’t afraid to scramble the signal up a bit. It helps to keep you a little off-kilter as you barge through the doors of the retail palace. Sure, that might sound like “Silver Bells” for a split-second, but just as quickly it’s gone, fading into a cold repeating loop devoid of warmth. Where’s the characteristic warmth of a regular mall? Maybe it’s in one of the other wings.
“Spengler’s Things” could well be an indicator that a classic Christmas shopping experience is going to be hard to find. A reverberant, haunting vocal distortion drives the track, and things feel more like Halloween than Christmas on this one. It’s decidedly unnerving. But what’s this? Where is that piano music coming from? A warm glow seems to be emanating from somewhere, and sure enough, “That Christmas Mood” (a collab with Swanson Teavee) at long last brings that Christmas spirit roaring in. There’s more crowd chatter in the background on this track, and the mall just feels more full of life in these parts. You must have started in the abandoned wing, is all. The warmth carries over into “Same Time Next Year”, another peaceful track that seemingly carries you right into the heart of the mall. Eager shoppers bustle and shout across the halls, interrupting your chance to hear the music once in a while. It’s starting to feel like there never even was a pandemic after all. “Bon Marche” seems to agree, as this track comes the closest to a traditional mallsoft track. Slowed samples, reverbed drums you’ve definitely heard before — all that good stuff. It provides a comforting sense of familiarity amidst the storm of all these foreign sounds, and allows the track to feel a lot more unique than it might if it weren’t on a holiday album.
You just might have gotten too comfortable though, as “Carpenter Way” almost entirely strips away music. It’s there, but very faintly, and the track is primarily instead motivated by a solitary set of footsteps and the sound of an elevator. Dropping off some shopping in the car? Or just going home altogether? It’s hard to say with “Lark Bells Carol” (a collab with Ghost Fliers). The track is absolutely beautiful, a stunning, melancholic rendition of (unsurprisingly) “The Carol of the Bells” that doesn’t really sound like it takes place at a mall. You’re definitely still around people, but it doesn’t have the same mall-like quality to it. A restaurant to grab a bite? An airport? Where are you going? Given the further progression into the dark on “1961” it sure seems like the fun times at the mall have come to an end. Distortion comes back here as well, perhaps as you reminisce about a particularly good holiday from years past? Do you enjoy going to the mall so much that when you’re done, it makes you incredibly glum? If the closing track, “Humbug”, is any indicator the answer is yes. One final piece filled with melancholy for the road, then. One very simple but very sad melody loops for a couple of minutes, before the album gracefully bows out.
While these concluding tracks make for great listening, they aren’t necessarily festive. The back half of the album might be better saved for after the holiday season concludes. As the New Year comes around, you might find yourself thinking about how sad it is that the holiday season built up for so long, only to be gone in a flash. And that is when you want to put the back half of this album on. Soak up the melancholy of the album alongside your own feelings rather than bring things down while there remains so much to be happy about!
Maybe mallsoft still has room to grow after all. All it took was departing the concourse. And that’s what we get with “Live” at Lowe’s, May 6 2015: a mallsoft album that feels fresh and exciting amidst an ocean of albums that all fall back upon the same few tropes. Instead of faintly ominous reverb and the idle chit-chat of window-shopping pedestrians, Lowe’s shifts its attention elsewhere. While the people in the store are still present on the album, their presence is much less conspicuous than other entries in the genre. While we do hear the crowd’s footsteps and mumbling on occasion, their influence on the sound comes more from what they are doing. A greater emphasis is placed on the scraping of barrels, rolling white noise of carriages, and piling of mulch bags. The end result is an album playing in the same toolbox as its peers but in a whole new way.
Favorite Track: The Relaxing Music Plays On Repeat While Shopping
Music to Mood Boards By offers a chameleonic variety of sounds. As the opening track samples Anna German, you’d be forgiven for expecting a mellower release, but what we have here is an album absolutely jam-packed with hip-hop drum beats draped across an eclectic mixture of sounds that should be incongruous, but are ultimately rather harmonious. Mallsoft gives way to funk, and then to soul, to bossa nova, and so on and so forth, until the album winds all the way through its diverse spectrum. While the drumbeats sometimes threaten to upset the delicate sense of serenity afforded by listening to this album, they never quite overstep, managing to walk a very fine line. This is a good choice for when you can’t quite settle on one sound to listen to and would rather cycle through a few things.
Ahh, fall. The best time of the year. Autumn foliage, spooky movies, and the…looming threat of Satan taking over the world? That’s right, back in the ‘80s (hell, even today in some parts) there was a growing fear that Satan would engender himself into every house throughout the world thanks to horrifying rituals and depraved sexual acts. Which begs a much more important question: what would the music of a real satanic panic sound like? Well, thanks to Vacation Bible School, we have an answer.
Vacation Bible School is an artist with a definite religious focus –just about single-handedly carving out their own niche of “churchwave” – so who better to use music as an avenue to talk of the temptations of Satan? The opening track, “t h e _ s a t a n i c _ p a n i c” fittingly begins sampling John Carpenter’s classic melody from Halloween mixed underneath a “definition” of Satanism. The provided definition is a rather skewed outlook on the whole movement, which is masterfully demonstrated by the Carpenter sample being horribly scrambled. As the speech carries on, the piano melody begins to reverberate with such ferocity that it loops in upon itself, eventually degrading to such an extent that it destroys the core of the melody. A fitting metaphor for Satanism then? Or perhaps a warning about what permitting Satan into your home could do to your mind?
If the opening track was the thesis, the subsequent tracks provide the supporting evidence. One thing that will get progressively more noticeable as you listen is the reverb. Sure, reverb is present in a lot of vaporwave, but it serves an interesting purpose here. While in most instances, the goal is to distort or mask something hidden below the surface, the echoing actually brings forth added clarity to the whole affair. There’s something inherently ominous about reverberation, especially through a large, abandoned space. But what if that’s it? What if your goal is to disturb? This album affords the opportunity to be ill at ease for fifty glorious minutes.
But perhaps the most interesting thing with Fall Festivals and the Satanic Panic is that there’s not really much to talk about musically. Now that’s not to say there isn’t music. There are tons of samples and vapor influences present. For example, “p a g a n _ i n v a s i o n” has some slushwave underpinnings, and “z o m b i e _ m a l l” unsurprisingly incorporates mallsoft elements (and a sample from Halloween III: Season of the Witch, as it shall henceforth be known, the best Halloween.) There are a number of other vapor subgenres that make cameo appearances along the way too. On a traditional album, this scattered approach might ordinarily make everything feel a little unfocused. But it works for two reasons.
The first is that the album evokes the feeling of channel surfing one late Halloween night in the ‘90s. Everything should feel different as you jump around. Movies give way to commercials, which give way to more movies, including a fun little moment where the 1990 and 2017 It’s get sampled one after the other. There’s even room for the channels at the end of the cycle that solely play music, as shown off on “St. James Infirmary (mallsoft version).” The signal doesn’t seem to be coming in too great though, so make sure you mess around with the antennas if you’re dissatisfied with the sound quality. Many of the track titles are written in such a way where it should be pretty easy to jump around too. A track with a name like “g o o s e b u m p s” makes it fairly obvious what you’re in store for should you flip over to that tune.
The other driving force behind the album’s success is the degree with which it captures a mood. While the musical melodies remain present, they never really drive the ship. The biggest factors are, rather oddly, the sound effects. The ethereal whisperings, the wind rustling through the trees, the screams, these are the elements that really drive home the frightful visage of what this album wants to be. Dropping a plethora of musical tracks over top of that, and the end result is a thematically focused release as well as a personal seasonal favorite, even if it’d be a reach to call ourselves big fans of Satan.
