hHave you ever thought what it would be like to walk into a sweaty, dusty club on one of Star Wars’ desert planets? About what plays on the radios in the casinos of those planets similar to Las Vegas? What do the merchants and evildoers of Tatooine listen to when they’re not working on the moisture farms or fending off the Tusken Raiders? Reflecting on questions like this has been Cody Matthew Johnson’s life for the past few years. The composer and artist has flirted with video game music before, with credits on Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Bayonetta and the cult Kurosawa-inspired indie side-scroller Trek to Yomi. But for Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, he was tasked with making music for his seedy criminal side.
“There is a limited scope of musical expression in the world in the original trilogy, and this was our opportunity to explore the music canonically during that time in a much broader scope,” Johnson said, when I asked him to what extent the original trilogy had a guideline provided for his work on Outlaws. “There are some ‘rules,’ per se, to creating cantina music in the style of the original trilogy, and while this game takes place during that time period, we were encouraged to just slightly influenced by the original cantina music trilogy.”
We’re all familiar with the music of the band Cantina that John Williams released in 1977 (a genre that was unfortunately labeled “jizz” in-universe), but that’s mainstream, man. Matthew Johnson needed to dig deeper, examine the dirt under the fingernails of Star Wars’ reprobates, and really tap into the culture of those forgotten by the Empire and too despondent to join the Rebellion. I had to make alternative music for a universe about which we already know a lot.
“The galaxy has a huge scope, canonically there are thousands (some say millions) of planets, and the music in the world of the last 40 years only scratches the surface of the possibilities. The music of Outlaws wasn’t just about protagonist Kay Vess and what she hears, but rather the underworld she exists in throughout the story; It’s not just the music enjoyed by the underworld subculture of Toshara, Akiva, Tatooine and Kijimi. , but also music created for that subculture.”
The result is an entire album with tracks lasting over an hour and represents over 10% of all diegetic (or “in-universe”) Star Wars music ever created. In my opinion, there are elements of ELO, Bonobo, Snarky Puppy, Kraftwerk and Ry Cooder in Songs from the Underworld; it flits between genres, taking advantage of strange and wonderful instrumentation. Matthew Johnson is as happy using a didgeridoo as he is playing a guitar, which makes sense, given that he is an ethnomusicologist by training.
“All sounds, textures and instruments were on the table, including spider monkeys, seals, vintage carbon microphones, cimbalom, yaylı tambur, hulusi, shakuhachi, gamelan arranged on a drum set…” he says of this maximalism. “I was looking in every corner for inspiration to better represent these worlds and sometimes, yes, breaking gamelan, trash cans, didgeridoo and kazoo together sounded fair for Star Wars Outlaws.”
Matthew Johnson was “torturing himself” to prevent “outlandish alien music” from playing in every hive of scum and villainy the player would guide Kay Vess through. He made serious considerations, thinking about the sound of world instruments that the inhabitants of these worlds could physically play. He needed to consider “the timbral elements of different instruments, the emotions and semiotic denotations they evoked, and how they can be combined to create the sound of instruments that would have been created or inspired by the natural resources and culture of the world.”
For example, he explains in great detail, consider the sympathetic, resonant drone of a sitar, the aggressive attack of a plectrum on a saz and a bouzouki, combined with the playing style of the nylon-stringed flamenco guitar and the charango. . All of these remarkably specific sounds combine for a unique melodic instrument sound that you would hear on a desert planet, as is the case here on the song If These Sands Could Speak.
To generate the spirit of collaboration and “we’re all in this together” attitude at the heart of so much alternative and underground music, Matthew Johnson needed a band. “It is the joy of my life to be able to collaborate with my friends,” he explains. “It was a dream concert for all the people I had the pleasure of incorporating into the project: musicians, engineers, instrument designers and more. The joy of performing and creating music is something we all share (which is why we decided to dedicate our lives to it) and projects like Star Wars Outlaws that combine my history as a record producer, performing musician, recording artist and video game composer are the vessel. perfect for making music it feels as if you were organizing a party.”
He does it. Star Wars Outlaws’ diegetic music complements Wilbert Roget II’s equally brilliant original score, providing a wonderful musical ebb and flow rarely seen in open-world games. The score is made for you, the player, to listen to; the music from the radio, from the bars, that’s for Kay Vess. I think Outlaws might be one of the best examples of how a game’s music can add texture and depth, even to a universe with as much history and lore as Star Wars.
“Outlaws is the perfect vessel to show how music can reveal narrative information without literally telling you,” Johnson says. “Kay walks down a hallway, turns a corner, you can hear a subwoofer with faint reverb hitting kick drums; As we approach a door at the end of the hallway, more elements of the music become audible, filling the entire frequency spectrum. Kay opens the door and music washes over her as it reveals a two-level underground nightclub with a band on stage, dancing patrons, dimly lit neon lights, and a subtle haze everywhere.
“Even before we get to the club, the music, and equally important its implementation in the game, reveals a lot about our environment to the player.”
Songs from the Underworld is one of my favorite albums of the year so far. For me, it makes me feel what it’s like to be on the planet of Star Wars, to really put myself in the shoes of a character that lives and breathes in these different atmospheres.
Star Wars Outlaws is now available for PS5, Xbox One and PC; Songs of the underworld available on Spotify.