Michael Bross-Oddworld Stranger's Wrath

July 9, 2007

Finally! The offical soundtrack for Oddworld Stranger's Wrath will be released this month. Pre-orders are being taken and the album will be available starting on July 30, 2007.

You can find out more info about the soundtrack here.

March 8, 2007

I've created this page for all of you who are fans of the music from the game. Someday I hope to see an official soundtrack release. In the meantime, I've made some tracks available that have never been available outside of the game until now. The music is in mp3 format. It is free for you to download. It's my way of thanking you for all your wonderful emails and letters of support.

Feel free to email me anytime. I'd love to hear from you.

-Michael
..............

All music is provided as mp3 files.

Ambient #1
This was probably the first piece for Stranger that I wrote that ended up in the game and was one of my important pieces for setting the musical tone of the game and also a maturity of that sound I had been honing personally for a couple of years. It's a sprawling 9 minutes long, but it was that way because it took that amount of time to develop the very slow and long sounds. You'll hear that low drum far in the background: that distant drum that keeps beckoning.

A Meeting
This was for a key movie in the game and is for when the Steef meets the natives at the village. This is the place where Steef begins to accept his destiny.

Another Day, Another Fight
I had a lot of fun writing this.The guitar is raw and unbridled. I think it would be a good track to listen to while driving a car. Lorne Lanning was always bringing in CDs of electronica and dance tracks that he liked that he'd want me to listen to. I'm sure that influenced this piece, but I still kept those twangy guitars that were essential to the tone of the whole soundtrack.

Living The Darkness
This music track was for the last level of the game when Steef is inside the dam getting closer to Sekto. I came up with this after deciding that this area of the game needed something that sounded cold, foreign and almost alien. And really, this music also reflected Steef's journey into the darkest part of himself.

Struggle On The Land
Some of the music I barely remember writing and this is one of those pieces. In a way, I like not remembering my work on it, because it allows me to listen it as if I'm hearing it with ears that are not the composer's. I believe this piece ended up being used for one of the battle scenarios.

World Undone
The Stranger's secret is is revealed. His whole world falls out around him and he escapes into the cold rain, into the dark night. I was hoping to create a piece that would capture his loneliness and sadness.

The music tracks below were originally made available around the time the game was released back in 2005. I've made it available, with all my original comments, for those of you who have not downloaded it yet.

Attract Mode
We had talked about doing more of a heavy electronica-type score for the game, at one point. Though it didn't end up that way, I created a few tracks that went that direction. This composition never made it into the gameplay itself, but was used instead for at least one of our game trailers and was used for an "attract" mode in the game.

Race Against Time
When I wrote this composition, I knew I wanted to use it for later in the game but I didn't know exactly where. When the designers decided to incorporate a "timed run" towards the end of the game, it seemed to be the perfect fit.

Fighting Outlaws
This is one of my favorite tracks I created for the game. I wanted that "spaghetti western" sound to be present, but since I'm never interested in a narrow emulation of a certain musical style, I melded in some Middle Eastern percussion and electronic elements to round out this composition.

Fight for the Native Village
I performed a number of tracks of live percussion on this one. Jamie McMenamy (our other sound designer) is a fine guitarist and he laid down some subtle, chordal guitar work on the end of this piece.

In the Dam
This track is a bit of a musical precursor to the final battle theme at the end of the game. This piece begins the last level of the game. It's more of an orchestral work but has a lot of "sound design" and textural elements weaved through it.

In the Dark Sewers of Buzzarton
This composition went through a major transformation. It was a blend of two older compositions. I really twisted the percussion track around on this one in hopes of creating an interesting, moody sound. That twangy, western guitar sound can still be heard but it's not too conventional.

Quest Up Mongo River
Though this piece doesn't have an upbeat tempo, I wanted to create a feeling of urgency here. I like how the electronic elements blend with the ethnic vocals.

A Remote Town
The Clakker towns seemed like lonely, desolate places to me...not necessarily the towns themselves because there was always Clakker activity in them, but more because the towns were islands in the middle of nowhere. I wanted to convey that sense of loneliness and space with this track.

Stealth
This piece lends well to a sense of tension which is perfect for when you can sneak around in the game. I think I used chopsticks on drum rims to help create the "ticking" drum track.

The Native Villages
Though the natives are humorous characters in how they look and what they say, they live amidst a very depressing backdrop and have been downtrodden by their situation. The flute melody captures their inner sadness.