Origins Week Ends
I just wanted to thank everyone for the kind words and good buzz around the Sounds for Flying: Origins soundtracks. I was looking forward to a fun week as I finished the mixes last month, but I didn’t quite expect this kind of reception. The Chronofile saw a huge jump in hits this week, most of which came from CCP’s kind shout-out on the EVE Online Facebook page.
When I started gathering music for Origins I was reminded of a post I wrote in my first few months of playing EVE that talked about New Eden as I envisioned it—how each race might equate to cultures in other sci-fi worlds. These excerpts pretty well sum up my choices for the soundtracks:
The Gallente Federation is closest to Blade Runner. It’s foggy streets give refuge to derelict smatterings of capitalism run dry by free-wheeling liberalism. A world where each turn might bring you to a Jin-Mei fish sales cart ornate in gaudy neon lights, or by the foggy pink-lit windows of an Intaki-run whore house. It’s wealthy live in skyscrapers above the clouds, never seen by the common citizen, and their slums leave no ground surface of their planets untouched, eternally darkened by a canopy of smog.
You’ve undoubtedly heard the Vangelis influence in the Gallente suite (with some actual sound samples from the film itself in parts). The theme here was definitely future-noir. Dark, sexy, exotic, and lush.
The Amarr are closest to the Egyptians of Stargate, quick to power-feed on the enslaved to fulfill some greater, but blind, spiritual existence. They’re also thick with political corruption, backstabbing in the name of divinity, with hints of classicism more like the Houses of Dune. The sheer beauty of their golden architecture and massive monuments are meant to inspire religious empowerment, but more likely serve as a facade to hide the more horrific shades of red flowing behind stone walls.
I’ve been sitting on some incredible vocal excerpts from a Philip Glass opera about an Egyptian pharaoh that read perfectly into the Amarr sound. It was important to keep a heavy vocal theme throughout, but I didn’t want this to be church/monk music. It needed the twisted, dissonant undertones that spoke to their warped religious views.
The Caldari are somewhere between the stately order of Star Trek (probably more the NG era), and the lock-and-load militarism of Aliens’ marines. In terms of visuals, it feels like the cold, utilitarian, exposed-materials architecture of the ships in Aliens to perfection. Hard edges that say “it ain’t supposed to be pretty, but it gets the job done”. But I imagine their extreme capitalistic home-worlds are more like the clean vision of San Francisco in Star Trek. Everything is in order. Everything ready when you need it. But what none of those perfectly content citizens know are to what extremes their labor force in space are working to keep things that way.
Caldari was easily the toughest to pinpoint. Military music? Lots of drums? But then I thought maybe this one is the most meditative. War, industry, strategy are their arts. They’re subtle and forceful at the same time. Cold, precise electronica was the route.
And finally the Minmatar. This is junky-clunky space faring at it’s finest. Though not space-bound sci-fi necessarily, I think the raw, rusted look of their architecture, and the desperate-but-still-fighting story lends itself to a more post-apocalyptic reality, a la Mad Max. I mean, as far as they’re concerned, the Minmatar faced the apocalypse when they were enslaved by the Amarr. I would imagine, due to this, their planets would be poorly terraformed, leaving dusty deserts spanning all surfaces. Their gang infighting born from simply competing to survive with as little as possible. Their ships built from scraps and their weapons from natures most plentiful resources: fire and powder.
Guitar. Lots of guitar. I wanted this one to be the most rock/folk, but keep a futuristic/industrial edge to it. It had to be raw and real. Also, pay attention to the lyrics in the closing track (by Vex’d). You’d swear he was rapping about the Amarr invasion.
Now that all of the suites have been released, I’d love to hear opinions. Does each one feel as varied as the races? Which one resonates most with you? Did you gravitate toward the sounds of your character’s race?
