Motherboard

Amidst a desolate landscape of barely-stimulating apps made with boring train rides in mind, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (read our review here) stands as a testament to the amazing potential for seriously expressive videogaming on Apple’s iOS platform. Unlike the fruit-slicing, bird-catapulting monotony of its peers, this Canadian indie collaboration is designed to hijack your senses, assembling visuals, audio and gameplay with synaesthetic cohesion.

At the helm of the game’s hypnotizing sound is singer-songwriter Jim Guthrie. A Juno award-winning indie rock hero who has had a hand in the rising of Canadian artists like Feist, Broken Social Scene and Owen Pallett (née ‘Final Fantasy’), Guthrie isn’t normally a game composer by trade. But for S&SEP, his alternate take on the videogame soundtrack — which I still hesitate to call a “score” — offers what many examples of game music have been unwilling to dish out: Full-on audiovisual immersion via a collection of arresting interactive soundscapes. And if that wasn’t enough, his upcoming LP release for the game, S&SEP: The Ballad of the Space Babies, presents us with the other side of the coin: music from the game assembled into a collection of awe-inspiring standalone arrangements.

We chatted with Jim over email to see what it’s like putting on the videogame composer hat for the first time, and what the future might hold as the worlds of pop music and videogame soundtracks collide.

Motherboard: So you’ve been pretty established in the indie music scene for a while and now you’ve gone and done music for a videogame. Was this an easy transition for you? What’s your background in videogames and what about them fascinates you?

Jim Guthrie: This game was such a natural transition for me. I wouldn’t even say there was a transition because Craig was making pixels to my music even before I got started on the game. I have no background in gaming other than having played on computers and home consoles my whole life. From a PET to a Vic-20 to a Commodore 64 and up. The medium is still so fresh and there’s so much to get excited about. If you compare the history of gaming to the history of music, movies or other visual art we’ve still got a long way to go, but even in the short time that people have been making games some pretty amazing things have happened.

I felt a lot of the sound in S&S:EP was refreshing because it didn’t strike me as ‘videogamey’ in the traditional sense. We’re so used to hearing videogame “themes” and these sweeping orchestral scores that sound like they could have easily been made for a movie or something else. But rarely do we hear audio that attempts to become an integral part of the gameplay. Was taking the latter path something you decided to do early on?

I really have to give half the credit to Craig. We sort met in the middle and it was a conversation between the music and the art style the whole way through. I guess the music sounds different because I wasn’t going for a particular style or genre of music when I looked Craig’s art. I was really reacting to it emotionally and that’s not something that the bigger studios can really do. They have totally different agendas with totally different motives and goals. The end product is still a “video game” but that’s where the comparison stops. We only had to please ourselves and when you have that luxury then interesting things happen.

What was it like collaborating with Capy and Craig Adams? The interplay between audio, visuals and gameplay makes it almost seem like you were all living together in a house and making this thing as part of some crazy sitcom…

It was the best experience. This game is a little triumph in so many ways. Craig, Kris Piotrowski and everyone else at Capy really came together on this game. It’s the product of all three entities hammering out a bunch ideas in a way that doesn’t seem to happen in game development very often. I’m pretty new to a lot of this but we had a pretty special group of guys working on S&S and I hope the game reflects how unique a collaboration it was. It wasn’t always clear what we were making but we all respected each others work enough to ride out the dark times and I have more respect for these guys than I ever have. I’ll stop gushing.

Let’s talk about your LP release for the game, Ballad of the Space Babies. Did these arrangements come first? Or were they assembled from the bits you had already written for the game?

It was a bit of both. Every song was different. In some cases I’d have a complete song for Craig and then either Craig would chop it up and try and ram it into an early build to get us all going or I’d get some of the art and write something that I felt worked. I always wrote it with both the game and album in mind but I was also sort of swinging in the dark the whole time. It was pretty exciting for me to see how the music would actually come off in certain parts of the game.

There’s a lot of discussion over whether game soundtracks can stand on their own or whether they need the context of the game to make sense. Would you say you were going for the best of both worlds here? What are some ways it succeeded/failed?

Game soundtracks can stand on their own but it really comes down to the game, the game designers and their intentions as a group. We were definitely going for the best of both worlds and I think we did pretty good on that commitment. I know it’s not perfect but it’s such a unique experience that it feels wrong to point out its flaws. I’ll gladly take a step back and let someone else tell me where it’s “leet” or “weak sauce”.

Were you digging on anything in particular when you wrote all this? A lot of the tracks seem pretty different from your earlier work, and those gorgeous string parts reminded me of Godspeed You! Black Emperor a bit

Aside from Craig’s art and my own sense of self exploration I was mostly influenced by other soundtracks and films. John Carpenter, David Lynch, Angelo Badalamenti, Philip Glass to name a small few. I think I was also influenced by my own subconscious and nostalgia for the past. Craig’s art has a way of doing that.

You’re using a lot of nice synthy textures too. Do you have a favorite piece of gear or tech? What was your setup like for this project?

I guess I’d have to say my PSone with MTV Music Generator was my favorite piece of gear on this game. I also used a lot of softsynths and other crazy plugins via Garageband. I really see DAWs as an instrument as well. It’s just so easy and fast for me to use Garageband that I can’t bring myself to open Logic even though I own it as well.

You’ve associated with a lot of other talented people up north. Do you think artists like Owen Pallett or Feist could get into making game music? Do you think there’s been any kind of increased attraction to videogames amongst indie musicians?

Owen would be the best at making music for a game. Feist, maybe not, but she rules so hard at writing songs that why would she bother messing with that? I think there’s probably more indie types thinking about video games but there’s a lot more of everything these days. It’s hard to get into doing music for games if you don’t know people already making games.

Composer Christopher Tin, who won a Grammy this year for his song in Civilization IV, was recently asked about the differences in composing for a videogame, but he gave this sort of uninspiring answer that basically amounted to “you need to make everything loopable, compose for what the player is doing” — that sort of thing. What do you think are the real challenges when composing for this medium, and where would you like to see it go?

Ha. I think he’s half right. I think the biggest challenge is understanding what you are trying to communicate with any game or piece of software for that matter. Most software relies on interaction with people so there’s a human component that always has to be considered. Movies and music sort of play ‘at you’ and they’ll continue to play if you walk away but software requires input and therefore has to be designed in a way that speaks to the user in order for the experience to continue. Music can help a great deal but there’s so much to consider. I have no idea where it’s going but I’d love the opportunity to be a part of it in the future.

Listen to selections from the Sword & Sworcery soundtrack below, and hear more from Jim here.