I simply have no words enough or powerful enough to describe the impact this soundtrack (the original Unreal game soundtrack) has made on my life. I find it imensely powerful, and mixed with the moments when it appears in the game it simply makes my heart shiver. First time you get out of the opressive wreck fearing for your life and you see the alien sun, the openness, the discovery, seeing the Spire climbing to the sky, walking through the cloud city large streets, traversing caverns with shimmering crystals… all are fixed strongly in my mind due to the powerful emotions expressed through this music. For years afterwards i listened to it day and night, for many lights i’d leave it on while i sleep hoping that somehow it would burn into my brain and I would be able to myself create a fraction of the beauty that the guys at Straylight Productions put in there.
Later on I realized that several other soundtracks that I liked were made by the same people (Crusader, Jazz the Jackrabbit, Unreal Tournament…). Alexander Brandon, Michiel van den Bos, Andrew Sega (Necros) and Dan Gardopée will forever remain my musical heroes, to me more precious than most of the big band/singer names which everybody has heard of. I wish I could tell everybody at the top of my lungs of them and see the recognition in their eyes like they do for some well known bands.
I was all the more impressed by their magic after Marius showed me how they were actually modules, how they had managed to create such amazing music, trully high quality, and yet put it in a restrictive format that managed to have a low CPU footprint and with songs taking a fraction of even compressed audio like mp3. Mindblowing. Seeing all the channels that they used to create panning shifts or echoes & reverbs, loops and audio gradients… aaaamazing!
I have just discovered you can actually listen to (part of?) the soundtracks online… trully amazing! Meeting any of these guys even through a email or message board is a lifelong dream of mine… maybe someday…
As I’m writing this the music is running and even after so many years and so many hundreds of listenings I’m amazed how my eyes tremble on the virge of tears of joy and how my mind is alive with visual imagery & emotional snapshots of the moments they described in the games… WOW! And the way they can so seamlessly transition from meditational and contemplative to the adrenaline that makes one feel so alive with the need to respond urgently… WOOOOW.
Some of my favorite songs (though it’s so hard to name) would have to be “All hallows sunset”, “Chizra”, “Dusk Horizon”, “Surfacing”, “Isotoxin”, “Vortex rikers”… sorry… i may find myself naming them all. The Unreal Tournament soundtrack I also found very fit for the adrenaline gameplay, though I can’t say it moved me quite so much. Still, it had some songs like “Razorback” which really rock my world and made me feel amazingly alive, and they were all pretty much what kept you going when you had reached the repetition and familiarity…
Big biiiig shout out for Straylight Productions and all their friends!!!
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Unreal Soundtrack
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