ThreadSpace: Hyperbol Soundtrack

Lots of beginners as well as many experienced composers got used to inserting symphonic music really often even in those projects where it’s sometimes completely out of place. To my surprise, ThreadSpace: Hyperbol which action is set in outer space (if you want a more exact definition then it’s a futuristic multiplayer RTS with elements of action) is deprived of orchestral motives of which gamers are sick and one can be captivated at least by this fact.

One of tracks from Hyperbol is entitled "Beautiful Chaos" and in this way the whole soundtrack can be characterized. The music here consists of plenty of chaotic drums as well as melodic keyboards and atmospheric synth melodies in Command & Conquer style, so in short it’s full of such musical elements which could be described by a word “Beautiful”. However it isn’t the main flavour. The key thing is that the soundtrack to Hyperbol is the good old tracker electronic music composed in MadTracker and Renoise. This fact immediately arouses the best memories about some old games in one’s head.

It’s well-known that among the tracker soundtracks there was a bulk of shabby, uninteresting works which are already forgotten cause they’re as old as hills. Though the soundtrack to Hyperbol by all means tries to stick to the high-quality level – it’s quite a stylish music (as well as the game itself), intense and dramatic like a soundtrack to Bionic Commando: Rearmed, full of abundant bass line and all those things which are usually thought of as cyberpunk stuff.

The style of the soundtrack composed by Stuart Lawson is fluctuating from synthetic techno to driving dance music with hard-rock drums (so for example the track “Hyper Rush” is inspired by Infected Mushroom). To my mind cyberpunk-lovers have already made a note of Hyperbol. In the end we should say that Stuart Lawson’s work is rather close by its spirits to a soundtrack of a cult Russian game Paradise Cracked which is in demand among gamers outside Russia as well.