Developed with award-winning composer Jason Graves, in association with
Rod Abernethy and under the direction of EA Redwood Shores studio;
Jason's chilling score for Dead Space enhances the horror and tension
of the game through extreme aleatoric and extended 20th Century
orchestral music techniques.
"Graves' work on the Dead Space
score is simply fantastic. The music is a key factor in the overall
tense mood of our game," says Don Veca, Audio Director of Dead Space.
"We needed an original orchestral score for Dead Space -- Aleatoric in
style, dark and dissonant, ranging from subtle creepy/eerie moods to
completely cacophonous frenzies."
Dead Space is a bold and
bloody sci-fi survival horror game that is designed to deliver the
ultimate in psychological thrills and gruesome action. In Dead Space,
players step into the role of engineer Isaac Clarke, an ordinary man on
a seemingly routine mission to fix the communications systems aboard a
deep space mining ship called the USG Ishimura. Set approximately 500
years in the future, Isaac discovers that the crew of the mining
spaceship is found horribly slaughtered and transformed into terrifying
monsters. Now Isaac is cut off, trapped, and engaged in a desperate
fight for survival.
The official soundtrack for Dead Space will be available on www.ea.com/eatrax
for purchase to coincide with the release of Dead Space on October 14,
2008. The score features over three hours of music recorded during two
different recording sessions. In the first session Graves conducted
sixty musicians of the acclaimed Northwest Sinfonia Orchestra at the
Bastyr Chapel in Seattle, and a year later Graves conducted sixty
players of the Skywalker Symphony Orchestra and twenty voice choir at
the world famous Skywalker Sound Scoring Stage. During both sessions,
co-produced by Jason Graves and Rod Abernethy, the orchestra was
recorded individually by section (woodwinds, brass, percussion and
strings) with multiple dynamic levels and variations to be implemented
as adaptive layers of music in the game. EA's audio team designed the
music system to be multi-layered so the music could be mixed at
run-time based on gameplay and situation.
"The unique
interactive aspect of the Dead Space music gave me the opportunity to
experiment and try things I've never been able to do in a video game
score before," said Dead Space composer Jason Graves. "Many thanks to
Don Veca and the rest of the team at EA for allowing me such freedom
with the score; it was both the most challenging and most rewarding
music I've ever composed."
