Rob Playford in Hollwood

Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
http://www.nativeinstruments.de/index.php?id=domroland_us&flash=0

Dom and Roland:

"Have you ever been attracted to composing music for video games or movies?

I would love to do some movie music! Actually Rob Playford has been doing stuff for some Hollywood blockbusters and I have been nudging him to bring me in, but is has not happened yet. He did get me some work for Rockstar Games a while ago, when Playstation 2 just came out. I did five tracks for "Midnight Club", which was one of the first games that came out for this platform. That was an exclusive deal, which was difficult because I was asked to write three-minute-tracks that can loop. It was a bit like doing a radio edit: trying to condense a whole track into three minutes and then make sure it still sounded good when it turned around, and also add enough to it so if you get stuck at a level while playing the game you don't get bored of the music. It was quite a challenge to do, and it was fun!"

Came to mind when hearing the instrumental Danny Weed did for Dogzilla's "Hello" which is (though wonderful!) a masterpiece of top-qwality chuck in the kitchen sink maximalist studio wizardry. Its funny but I can see Danny doing Hollywood too, just as long as he makes some more decent music first for a few years ;)
 
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Blackdown

nexKeysound
loads of the d&b guys are also into licencing their music to game. AI have some hook up with Rockstar i think, or one of the other big ones. if you think about the marketing opps here (3m sales) it's huge.

sadly it also worsens the sense that d&b has gone from a grass roots multicultural sound to a cyber, DOA-based, virtual community.
 
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droid

Guest
This has been going on for quite some time now. There was also that Sega Saturn 'Athlete Kings' (an underated update to the 80s classic 'Daly Thompson's decathlon') EP on Subbase. The Kenny Ken tune on it was actually alright, Loads of 'on your marks, ready, set, go!' sample business...

Photek did a tune for one of the Wipeouts too if I remember correctly. Think its quite rare now....
 
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[b]racket

Active member
The Photek Track is on Wipeout 2097 - The Third Seqeunce. Think it was only available on the Wipeout album. There was a couple of really good FSOL tracks on that album as well.

I remember that Moving Shadow provided the sound for another PS2 game, think it was called Rollcage..?
 
S

SIZZLE

gasoline for haters
That photek track is one of his best. And yeah Wipeout is kinda the daddy of all dance music for video game crossovers. That first wipeout game was actually a pretty all star affair, game by psygnosis, design by designers republic and music by photek, fsol, prodigy. I think that's only gonna continue since now all games are DVD based and therefore have way more data storage than they can shake a stick at. The GTA games 'radio' function is a great example of this, something I really loved about that game, being able to change the in game music when you got tired of it.
 
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DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
GTA 3's DnB radio station is Moving Shadow stuff.

I can't really think of any dnb in Hollywood movies. In fact have you noticed how soundtracks changed? You almost never hear synthetic sounds anymore. It's all either orchestras (even if sampled) or pop music from the radio. Same thing is video games, the abandonment of original soundtracks for cross-promotion potential.
 
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droid

Guest
DigitalDjigit said:
GTA 3's DnB radio station is Moving Shadow stuff.

I can't really think of any dnb in Hollywood movies. In fact have you noticed how soundtracks changed? You almost never hear synthetic sounds anymore. It's all either orchestras (even if sampled) or pop music from the radio. Same thing is video games, the abandonment of original soundtracks for cross-promotion potential.
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Another casualty of the format wars...

Once the big console makers started using CD's instead of Cartridges in the early 90's with the 3DO/Playstation 1/Saturn, there was suddenly no need to write original music any more. All that extra storage space (and the music takes up a lot of space on most discs) can be used to store loads of high quality copyright free elevator music, or whatever happens to be in the charts at the time. Back in the 80's the sound of game music was defined by whatever chip happened to be in each machine, and by the ingenuity of the programmer in ekeing out melody and percussion... a process which required a lot more involvement than just throwing a CD's worth of tunes into the mix at the last minute...
 
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Diggedy Derek

Stray Dog
Interesting area, isn't it. Amon Tobin did music for a recent Splinter Cell game, sort of a stealth/strategy game, and it's pretty excellent actually, apart from when the breakbeats occasionally come in (you can't brock out with a game pad in your hand). A really enjoyable listen. The Final Fantasy games have some pretty good music, indeed Dexplicit claims they're a big influence on his stuff.

Certainly the immersiveness of a game can create some really interesting moods for an artists to work within. Let's say that some dark ambient type did some music for a horror game- now, I think I'm probably more likely to enjoy the music as part of a game than to sit stock-still listening to the album for 74 minutes. The multi-media aspect of game-music definitely appeals to me, at least in theory.

Has anyone read that book Trigger Happy about computer games? Very good it is.

And I know they're jsut compilations, but the Grand Theft Auto soundtracks are absolutely wicked.
 
Woebot

Woebot

Well-known member
Badmarsh said:
photek's been doing alot of film and computer game music - and made an absolute packet doing so!
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wonder if he's been able to pick up his ferrari from the pawn shop yet?

;)
 
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