We Need Composers

I've been trying to find Mass Effect music for years now, it feels like I've exhausted everything. I mean, as far back as fourteen years ago now I was listening to Artists whose Youtube pages contain their Scary Game Reaction Compilations during the height of Pewdiepie's influence.

zAllex btw, would recommend!

It's led me down the path to finding perhaps my two favorite albums of all-time via Comaduster, a man I discovered via Mass Effect 2 and one of the clubs playing one of his songs, as he was also a sound-designer for Bioware.

It was what led to discovering that Sasha Dikiciyan was Sonic Mayhem, and he just happened to release an EP under that name in the year I discovered that with much of that Sci-Fi aesthetic steeped into type of songs you could just imagine being played for Omega.

I was evening listening to Sam Hulick's latest EP that came out this year, and it's definitely the closest that gives that franchise vibe I've heard in a while…

But it's still not quite there.

Mass Effect is interesting because it simultaneously is and isn't known for its music.

Uncharted Worlds might be one of the most definitive pieces created for Science Fiction in history. Whenever I'm watching a Youtube video that needs to immediately communicate a sense of wonder and exploration in a faraway land, Sam Hulick's first song comes up.

There's several other pieces that get spammed quite a bit among nerds in the know too like the Saren's Theme because it played every time you died, the Illusive Man's theme that I heard at a fucking Wedding (don't ask), the end credits of Mass Effect 1 with local Edmonton band The Faunt's beautiful M4 Part II, and the second most obvious standout, the Suicide Mission Theme, which I recall Jack Wall calling his proudest work.

Rightfully so I think.

However the series doesn't have the sort of solo-status of Halo or DOOM.

Perhaps the better term is overt identity?

The kind of overt identity that makes someone think of a track as "John Wick Music" or "Hotline Miami Music."

Those two examples are like Turbo Chargers for genres that did exist, Electronica and Synthwave, DOOM obviously is an extension of Metal, and more specific with Mick Gordon's take, Metalcore and Djent.

Mass Effect is so close to having its sound be close to specific genres, to be an amplifier for them…

But it's not quite the same.

Sam Hulick's tracks in particular I think are the closest there is to Mass Effect having an overt identity with a very distinct type of synth that has its roots in works from the 80s…

But it ain't Synthwave.

Backing Mass Effect with the likes of Occams Laser, Perturbator, Makeup and Vanity, Carpenter Brut, etc, just doesn't work. It evokes some form of "Retro" Sci-Fi that Mass Effect depicts, but more through its Aliens and Planetary Alliances than its technology.

I've been thinking of an FPS for years where you play as Jack, Subject Zero, the psychotic-biotic; I'm thinking Force Unleashed meets DOOM, a Boomer Shooter that lets you realize Jack's true capability that we never got to see in Bioware's RPGs outside of Cutscenes.

And trying to find music for it, because Mass Effect has a distinct sound, but not an overt identity, it's damn near impossible.

I'd need to get a composer.

And… this is exactly why we need them.

Because despite our 200+ Million Songs produced over all the years we've existed on this planet…

I haven't found my elevator pitch of "Electronic System of a Down" for this Jack game.

Despite Death From Above 1979 having existed since 2004… there's only a handful of bands that have their Bass & Drummer duo setup, and none of them sound like DFA.

Bring Me The Horizon have been making music since then too, and yet, when Mick Gordon helps produce one of their Eps, you hear it within the first ten seconds.

In short…

I think artists are a lot more unique than we give them credit for.