Have you ever wondered what it would be like to walk into a sweaty, dusty club on a desert planet from Star Wars? What would be played on the radio in a casino on a planet like Las Vegas? What do Tatooine’s merchants and villains listen to when they’re not working on moisture farms or fighting off Tusken Raiders? Cody Matthew Johnson’s life these past few years has been spent pondering such questions. The composer and artist has previously worked in video game music, including Devil May Cry, Resident Evil, Bayonetta, and the cult indie Akira Kurosawa’s sidescroller Trek to Yomi. Surely is credited to. However, in Ubisoft’s Star Wars Outlaws, he was tasked with creating music for a shady criminal organization.

“While the scope of musical expression within the world was limited in the original trilogy, this was an opportunity to legitimately explore the music of the time on a broader scale,” Johnson said. It was offered for his work in The Outlaws. “Creating bar music in the style of the original trilogy has its own set of ‘rules’, and while this game is certainly set in that era, we have was only encouraged. slightly Inspired by the cantina music from the original trilogy.”

We’re all familiar with John Williams’ 1977 Cantina Band music (unfortunately, the genre was commonly known as “jazz”), but it’s mainstream. Matthew Johnson digs deeper, exploring the dirt under the fingernails of Star Wars dunces and getting a real feel for the culture of those forgotten by the Empire and too demoralized to join the Rebellion. There was a need. He had to make different music for a world we were already familiar with.

“The galaxy is vast, typically with thousands (some say millions) of planets, and the last 40 years of in-universe music have only scratched the surface of the possibilities., was not only about the main character Kay Vess and what she listens to, but also the underworld subcultures she exists in, such as Toshara, Akiba, Tatooine, and Kijimi. Not only music, but also music. created By that subculture.”

The result is a full album’s worth of tracks, over an hour long, and more than 10% of all diegetic or “in-universe” Star Wars music ever created. To my ears, Songs from the Underworld has elements of ELO, Bonobo, Snarky Puppy, Kraftwerk, and Ry Cooder. It bounces between genres and utilizes weird and wonderful instrumentation. Matthew Johnson is just as happy to use the didgeridoo as he is the guitar, which is not surprising considering he is a trained ethnomusicologist.

“All kinds of sounds, textures and instruments were on the table: spider monkeys, seals, vintage carbon phone microphones, cimbalom, yair tambour, furushi, shakuhachi, gamelan arranged on a drum set…” he says of this Maxima. Let’s talk about rhythm. “I searched every nook and cranny for inspiration to best represent these worlds, and every once in a while, I heard the sounds of gamelan, trash cans, didgeridoos, and kazoos being smashed together.” Just right For the outlaws of Star Wars.”

Matthew Johnson was “making it hard on himself” to avoid having “funny alien music” playing in every den of scum and villains where the player controls Kay Vess. He seriously considered and thought about the sounds of instruments within the world that the inhabitants of these worlds could physically play. He describes “the tonal elements of different instruments, the emotions and symbolic meanings they evoke, and how they can be combined to create instruments that may have been created or inspired by the world’s natural resources and cultures.” I had to think about whether I could create sound.

For example, he explains in great detail that the sympathetic, resonant buzz of the sitar, the aggressive attack of the drumsticks of the saz and bouzouki, must be considered in conjunction with the playing style of the nylon-string guitar and charango of flamenco. I’m doing it. All these incredibly special sounds combine to give you a unique melodic instrumental sound that you would get on a desert planet. This is also the case with the track “If These Sands Could Speak.”

To create the collaborative spirit and “all in this together” attitude at the heart of so much alternative underground music, Matthew Johnson needed a band. “The joy of life is being able to collaborate with friends,” he explains. “It was a dream gig for everyone involved in this project, including musicians, engineers and instrument designers.The joy of playing and creating music is something we all share. That’s why we decided to dedicate our lives to this. Projects like Star Wars Outlaws combine my background as a record producer, performing musician, recording artist, and video game composer. , the perfect instrument for making music feel It’s like having a party.”

That’s right. The diegetic music in Star Wars Outlaws complements the equally great original score by Wilbert Roget II, providing some great musical ebbs and flows rarely seen in open-world games. The score is designed to be heard by you, the player. The music on the radio and in the bar is for Kay Vess. I think Outlaws is one of the best examples of how in-game music can add texture and depth, even to a world with as much history and lore as Star Wars.

“‘The Outlaws’ is the perfect vessel to show how music can reveal narrative information without literally conveying it,” says Johnson. “As Kay walks down the hallway and turns a corner, she hears the faint sound of a reverbed subwoofer hitting a kick drum. As she approaches the door at the end of the hallway, more musical elements can be heard. When Kei opens the door, music floods her body, and there’s a band on stage, dancing patrons, dim neon lights, and two stories of fog throughout. An underground nightclub has appeared.

“Even before they arrive at the club, the music, and equally importantly the implementation of music into the game itself, reveals a lot about our setting to the player.”

Songs from the Underworld is one of my favorite albums of the year so far. For me, it gives me a sense of what it’s like to be planetside in Star Wars, what it’s like to actually put yourself in the shoes of characters who live and breathe different atmospheres.

• Star Wars Outlaws is available now on PS5, Xbox One, and PC. the song of the underworld Available on Spotify.