music & video games: star power

Star Power

Occasionally a video game company might bring in a “celebrity” to help on a games soundtrack or audio. This is not always a good thing. BT’s contribution for Tiger Woods Golf feels phoned in and dull compared to his solo work, Paul Oakenfold’s FIFA theme sounds like it could have been written by anyone. However, there are those rare occasions when you can tell the artist connected with the game on some level and the end result is something really worth listening to.

One of the first game soundtracks that got me excited was the original Quake. Not only was Trent Reznor one of the first mainstream musicians to compose original material for video games, but he defied expectations by creating mostly unnerving ambient soundscapes instead of something decidedly more Nine Inch Nails sounding. You could also use any CD from your collection to provide the music in place of Reznor’s score. I used to love experimenting with different albums to change the mood in the game, Fear Factory and Dead Voices On Air were a few of my favorites to use.

Often times music in games is not a linear affair, tracks can be created on the fly based on the situation the gamer is in at any point in time. Although I have not played it, I can imagine that Amon Tobin’s soundtrack for Splinter Cell: Chaos Theory used this strategy. It seems to me like the song versions included on the album may be arrangements created out of the ambient, mid and high intensity sections of the music for given levels. It’s all pretty typical Amon Tobin sounding, which ultimately means this is some of the most intricate sounding game music I have heard.

Initially I was sceptical of Junkie XL’s soundtrack for SSX Blur as the samples seemed a little uneven. But the mix of funky guitars, big beats and chopped up samples is just too much fun to be angry that it sounds a little hastily put together. Or a little too cut and paste. Overall, this is a fantastic game soundtrack and a pretty decent fun loving electronic album to boot.

Chris Vrenna’s (Tweaker, ex-NIN) freakishly creepy, somewhat cartoony soundtrack for American McGee’s Alice is found here mixed as one continuous piece with brief clips of dialog taken from the game. Jack off Jill’s vocalist Jessicka provided the sampled female vocals that appear all over the soundtrack. At the time, I remember being very excited that much of the soundtrack was made available by the game studio as non-DRM mp3 files prior to the release date.

next up: odds n ends

previously: themes/scores, song libraries