“Not everything good in games music resembles a film score…” – James Hannigan

Download audio file (bbcradio4-bleepbleepbloop.mp3)

Games Designer Paul Bennun explores the growing popularity and ambition of music composed for video games.

Video games now have the resources to match that of the big Hollywood orchestral film scores. But it’s not just commercially that video game soundtracks are taken seriously. Composers are becoming more interested in it artistically and BAFTA and the Ivor Novellos have recently recognised the form with their own award categories.

Bennun traces the development of this new genre and finds out how it is changing the way music is made and consumed. Has it now left behind bleeps and bloops and arrived at the brink of artistic respectability?

I was head of sound design in charge of creating and balancing the sound effects, composing  music and licensing tracks. This involved creating over 100 sfx for the game, 5 original tracks plus a bunch of end-game short pieces, as well as making them all sound right in-game. I was also in charge of currating the in-game music, which was licenced from Deathsucker Records, Broken Robot Records and Broken Records.

Eat Them! Promo Music Mix by parasite

One of the tracks was used for a short film by Anakissed called “Distance Over Time“, while others were used for a locative based exhibition by photographer Liz Milner called “A Walk in the Woods“.It’s very rough and badly mastered by today’s standards, but you get the vibe of it…and it’s bound to send you to sleep

Download Music For Sleeping (320kbps MP3 / 113MB .zip file)

Audio Samples:

04. Flow Of Tears: Download audio file (april.mp3)

08. Confinement Download audio file (june.mp3)

10. Lost in Dreams Download audio file (december.mp3)

13. Crocus Sativus: Download audio file (march.mp3)

Star Wars: The Battle for Hoth for iPhone and iPod Touch is now available for download on iTunes. The game which was developed in Bristol by FluffyLogic is a classic Tower Defence type strategy game and features music and sound design by me. It was a real pleasure to have access to the original Star Wars sfx from the film!

About The Music:

Everyone knows the original score to Star Wars: Empire Strikes Back by John Williams, which still sounds great 30 years on! Instead of using the original score in game I wrote two new pieces that reflected some of the drama and tension of the original. Fans of the genre will be pleased to know that we kept the original Star Wars music for the front-end and in the menu screen.

Have a listen to music from the game here.

Here’s a quote from the FluffyLogic website:

We, at FluffyLogic, are really pleased to see that the music for ‘Savage Moon: Waldgeist‘ has been nominated for an Ivor Novello award. The Ivor Novello Awards (aka The Ivors) are named after the Cardiff born entertainer Ivor Novello. The awards are for excellence in music and this is the first year that they have included games and the category Waldgeist has been nominated for is the Best Original Video Game Score.

The Ivors are a prestigious, worldwide recognition of musical talent and are judged and presented by the music-writing community. Other artists/writers nominated this year include songs performed by Dizzie Rascal, La Roux, Bat for Lashes, Lily Allen and Paolo Nutini. We asked Armin for a comment and he said, “It has been a great pleasure to create the soundtrack to the Savage Moon series of games on Playstation3 and PSP for FluffyLogic LTD. The thriving Bristol music scene has had a major influence on the music I compose bringing in flavours of dubstep, drum & bass and breakcore. Computer games have generally had quite traditional sounding orchestral soundtracks for a while now, and to be able to bring in more experimental music to the games market has been a real challenge.”

As such we’d like to say a huge ‘congratulations’ to the sound designer and composer, Armin Elsaesser (aka Parasite). He is up against some strong competition for the award; Empire: Total War and Killzone 2. Fingers crossed…

Reviews:

The music (there are new soundtracks to unlock) is depressing, but in a good way, and the sounds the turrets and the dying Insectocytes make is meaty and terrifying. Sound 9/10. – videogamer.com

The music fits in with the dark and sinister theme. Sound 9/10. – sanctuary4gamers.com

I compossed some new music for the Savage Moon: Waldgeist DLC game on PlayStation3 which was released yesterday!  You can download it from the PSN Store, but you need a PS3 to play it!

The bugs are back and they’ve evolved beyond anything mankind has faced before… prepare to visit the Waldgeist Nebula in the expansion pack for Savage Moon, featuring six additional levels and a host of other space age features. It’s time to take mankind one step further into the dangers of deep space – there are rich pickings for the brave, but the hesitant will die in the Waldgeist Nebula…

Check out the original Savage Moon score here: http://www.parasite.org.uk/projects/savage-moon/. You can also download the Savage Moon Remixes here: http://www.parasite.org.uk/projects/savage-moon-remixes/

I recently made a soundtrack and sound effects for a new Playstation 3 game called Savage Moon. It’s a tower defence strategy game available in Europe and USA on the PSN (Playstation Sony Network) download shop. Savage Moon is not currently available in Japan, so I decided to ask a few friends from Japan (Fourgram, Himiru Yoshiteru, Freezer and Unuramenura) to remix the soundtrack in the hope that people there might like it enough to want to play the game.

Download Savage Moon Remixes FREE! http://www.parasite.org.uk/projects/savage-moon-remixes/