I can’t remember who approached whom in 2016 when Anders and I first connected, but it hardly matters: he was the perfect composer for Fallen Gods. I’d been struggling over what the game’s musical soundscape should be ever since discovering “Fornnordiska Klanger,” an album of prehistoric Scandinavian music created by Prof. Cajsa Lund. I knew I wanted something with that rich history, rather than just a typical orchestral fantasy soundtrack. But how to get that? Then, from Uppsala, Sweden—the very heart of ancient Norse religion—emerged Anders, the man of the hour!
Working with him over the many years since has been a joy. Like Nathaniel Chambers on Primordia, Anders is deeply committed to the soul of the game, and that strong connection means that his music not only complements the art and narrative, but helps shape it. The rawness and beauty of his score is something I’ve aspired to match in the events accompanied by that music.
Below, you can hear some of Anders's atmospheric music for Fallen Gods and learn about the approach he takes to composing it. Then stop by his portfolio on SoundCloud for more goodies.
- Mark Y.
Mark: We have no written, let alone recorded, instrumental music from the era that Fallen Gods draws upon, and very little even in the way of description of the music. So how did you go about creating a musical score that feels authentic to the game’s setting?
Anders: To get a sense of consistency to the music within a soundtrack, I try to set up a palette of instruments that I then lean upon. For Fallen Gods I simply tried to find instruments that sounded like they belonged in that era. I found a few that I liked—which evoked something that of course wasn’t unique, but was perhaps a little unusual—and then mixed those along with more common European instruments, like the Irish flute and bass recorder.
Now, I don't know how to play those properly at all, so they probably sound strange to someone who recognizes how they are supposed to be played. But I hope this becomes an asset for Fallen Gods, which lives in its own world, which would develop its own forms of expression.
It’s also a ravaged, undeveloped world, and their music would perhaps often be so as well. So we tend to leave the music quite unpolished even as we put it in-game, both in performance and structure—the tracks are often merely sketches that say their thing once and then fade away. With that as a base to work from, what seemed most important and inspiring to me was to convey the bleakness of the world, its abandonment, to have the music reach for something that’s both lamenting and soothing at the same time.
Mark: Fallen Gods consists of several different kinds of gameplay, including real-time combat, open-world exploration, dungeon delving, and standalone events. Each of these has a different pace, rhythm, and duration. Does your approach to the music change when you’re composing for these different segments?
Anders: A little bit. I feel most comfortable starting out with a few chords that convey something that’s fitting, or tug at my heart strings in some relevant way. And then I try to find a melody that can live beside them. But as we tried to make the different locations stand out a bit from each other musically, some locations called for starting out with certain instruments, e.g., percussion for the more lively towns, a couple of lonely bassoons for the wight-infested barrows, or a plucked lyre for the solitary little villages.
Sometimes, I try to find an instrument that can speak for a certain creature or set of characters, like the low strings—to my ears somewhat threatening but also ambiguous—for one of the Firstborn, Berkanan. And little bells—lost and mindless—for the stolen children surrounding him.
Sometimes, I just write whatever strikes my fancy and send it off to Mark and Maciej, and see if they can find a place for it. I think my favorite music placement is for an innocent little piece I thought wouldn’t fit in the game, but that they found a place for in the “Idle Tongues” event, where a few playing children suddenly meet the fallen god.
Mark: Anything interesting that you’ve learned over the eight years you’ve worked on Fallen Gods?
Anders: Eight years feels like a long time to work on one thing, and it’s been a bit of a challenge sometimes to stay consistent within the style we’ve found for the music, as my tastes change, what I listen to changes. But to a far larger extent it’s just been a blessing to have so much time to slowly get a sense of what the game is, how the music can support it and be a part of it. To be able to wait for the tracks to come to me (as life gets more and more hectic around me), not have to rush anything at all. Also, it’s just been a joy and honor to be a part of this creative thing we’re doing together, so in that sense too it’s just been a blessing for it to keep lingering in my life.