Conspiracy, Transhumanism, and Synthesizers

It might be something of a controversial statement, but I doubt that I’m alone in my thinking that the “Icarus” track that Eidos Montreal included in the Deus Ex: Human Revolution E3 2010 trailer and subsequently released as a freely downloadable MP3 last year is arguably the finest three minutes of video game music ever produced. And that’s why I find this “Conspiracy, Transhumanism, and Synthesizers” article written by composer Michael McCann on the official PlayStation Blog (which even points to Nine Inch Nail’s Trent Reznor as a source of influence) so interesting:

Although there is a strong Renaissance theme in the art direction, most of the musical influences were modern. From the beginning, audio director Steve Szczepkowski gave me a few artists to keep in mind: Vangelis, John Carpenter, Trent Reznor and the score from the first Deus Ex. From this initial direction I needed to find a counter balance to what was predominately an electronic influence and expand into more diverse territory. To give a bunch of examples of some of the music I looked at: Dead Can Dance, Eliot Goldenthal, Vangelis, Kronos Quartet, Tangerine Dream, Cliff Martinez, Brian Eno, Ben Lukas Boysen (HECQ), Peter Gabriel, Philip Glass, Autechre, and many more.

The influence of some of these artists came more in the form of sound design within the music basically building a very strong mood in the ambient music by mixing elements that would actually exist in the environment you’re visiting. For example, in the Hengsha section of the game, I use a lot of source recordings of traditional Asian music (folk songs, street musicians) but there are hundreds of these clips all blended together to create one large piece. If you were walking through a busy urban street, like in the Hengsha map, there would be music from bars, street musicians, cars driving by, and so on. I liked the idea of bringing in all these elements but fusing them into the actual score. In the end you have a very rich musical ambiance with rhythm, melody, and harmony, but it is built from many different unrelated sources. I think doing this also ties into the larger transhumanism theme, by incorporating very traditional forms of music but using technology to manipulate, tune, and merge them into an electronic world.

Synths were important in this score, not just because they are important to the cyber-punk world of Deus Ex, but also because they are a counterweight to the more acoustic elements in the score. I needed that balance to get the story across through the music, and synths were one of the more important electronic instruments in achieving that. Also, synths became a key way of setting a stark emotional tone, while not losing the cerebral, futuristic atmosphere we needed in many parts of the game.