Bio

Games

I think my first meaningful encounter with any kind of game soundtrack came when I discovered that you could play a game CD with a Hi-Fi CD player. It was the same moment that I discovered the brooding sonic works of Trent Reznor, it was a good day.

I’d just bought, well, persuaded my mum, to buy the original Quake. As any inquisitive child would do, I wondered what would happen if I played the game CD with my dad’s Hi-Fi system. To my delight the room was instantly filled with the harsh, gritty tones of the ‘Quake Theme’. Until this point my ten year old self had never been exposed to anything like this beautiful cacophony of discordant chaos and I was instantly hooked.

As the soundtrack played through, the bleak, grinding soundscapes took me back to the dark levels of Quake, keeping all of the suspense and mystery that made it such an utterly terrifying experience. As I stood, slightly unnerved, in my front room I couldn't believe how music could have such a huge impact on the way I felt.

Over the next few months the first track on the CD, ‘Quake Theme’, became one of my favourite songs to listen to (which isn't surprising considering the competition at the time was Eifel 65 – ‘Blue’ and The Spice Girls – ‘Wannabe’). When compared to everything else I was listening to at that point this song just had so much more depth. It was ballsy and dirty but most of all made me want to kick the shit out of some demons! 

I played a lot of PC games when I was younger and from those early years I took a keen interest in the soundtracks. Carmageddon 1 and 2 were firm favourites of mine with tracks from well-established bands such as Fear Factory and Iron Maiden. At the time I had no friends who were into this type of music and gaming gave me a conduit from which I could hear these rousing, often aggressive tracks that seemed to fit so well into the computer game world.

Electronic music

So you could say that my first passion is computer games and equally the sound that accompanied them. I discovered my second passion when I was about 14. At the time I was listening to a lot of Techno and Trance, think Zombie Nation – Kernkraft 400 (Yes it’s called ‘Kernkraft 400’ not ‘Zombie Nation’, this shocked me recently!) and Darude – Sandstorm. This is like ’99 /‘00 when they actually sounded fresh and weren't recycled on every ‘Ibiza Anthems’ or ‘Ministry of Sound’ compilation CD. I remember being gripped by the pure energy of these tracks and thus began my journey down the rabbit hole that is electronic music.

From a young age I was taught classical piano so had a fairly musical ear in terms of tonality and pitch but what intrigued me with electronic music was the otherworldly sounds and effects that the artists were able to create. I listened for hours trying to deconstruct and identify how these sounds were made but could not comprehend how these tracks were composed. That was until a friend introduced me to Ejay.

For those unfamiliar with this word, Ejay was a basic sequencer program which enabled the user to create music from various pre-composed loops and one-shot sounds. I still remember the excitement I got from creating my first track, it sounded like shit (think three 8-bit ice-cream vans repeatedly crashing into each other) but it finally lifted the veil of mystery that had surrounded electronic music for me for so long.

Obviously I had only experienced the tip of the 'tip of the iceberg' but this set into motion an overwhelming passion for writing electronic music that still excites and drives me to this day. 

Games and Music?

It was in my third year of university that I was introduced to sound design in a game context. I had a module called ‘Audio for Games and Interactive Media’; this module combined various disciplines in sound design with practical applications in a game environment using the FMOD API and designer. For the final piece of work we were given a Unity driven third person shooter and tasked to provide all of the sound design needed for a full and immersive gaming experience.

As soon as I started this project I knew that there must be a job somewhere involving this type of work and I knew that regardless of what it would take, I wanted that job.