As of today, the brilliant original soundtrack to JETT: Given Time is now available! A great day!
Here's scntfc's linktree.
To directly support composer scntfc, connect yourself to the scntfc Bandcamp.
On PC storefronts and here on Steam, the new songs have been bundled together with the revamped JETT: The Far Shore + Given Time OST.
You can find just the Given Time songs as a standalone release on Apple, Spotify and elsewhere.
scntfc aka C. Andrew Rohrmann has worked as a composer and sound designer on over a decade’s worth of critically acclaimed and award winning games: Night School Studio’s Oxenfree and the upcoming Oxenfree ll: Lost Signals, Broken Rules’ Old Man’s Journey and Gibbon: Beyond The Trees, VVR and VVR 2 for Tender Claws, and even the legendary Moon Grotto 7" that was somehow connected to Superbrothers original Sword & Sworcery EP.
This new Given Time soundtrack joins the scntfc score to The Far Shore, creating a seamless, sumptuous, and orchestral synth landscape, suitable not only for carving out a future for a people haunted by oblivion, buuuut also for diving into with a set of nice speakers or headphones, and just enjoying some beauty.
Some songs function as reprises, recalling the events of The Far Shore (and its own scntfc OST), from Mei's vantage point three years later, finding new angles on those memories. Other songs are bold and new, like the pulse-quickening Aloft, the sweeping and sedate Given Time, the dazzling Synthesis, and the strange mix of moods and flavors that accompany Given Time's concluding scenes.
"Feels good to be sending this monumental project off in style." says Andy, aka C Andrew Rohrmann, aka composer scntfc "Some of these songs date back nearly ten years to the start of our work on JETT, and even before, but they've found their ideal forms here. It has been a rare pleasure to get to build this universe out to completion."
"Working with scntfc's tracks on this game was a treat" says Given Time narrative contributor Dan Berry. "These tracks gave everything they came into contact with an instantly amplified sense of atmosphere, whether we needed something to indicate solemn contemplation, joyous exuberance, creeping dread or anything in-between. These songs are the primary colours that paint the JETT universe."
"I love how this album came together, it has a good shape to it." says JETT art director Craig D. Adams. "I have a feeling I'll be coming back to this album a lot over the years, it bottles up a special project and a lot of great memories of our time carving out these science fiction spaces and moods."
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꧁ ᴊᴇᴛᴛ: ɢɪᴠᴇɴ ᴛɪᴍᴇ - ᴏꜱᴛ ꧂
🎼
@scntfc
// sound on 🔊🎧
Start of album thread on @jettxyz. Note as of Feb 23, this thread is a bit unruly.
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JETT: Given Time OST - a smattering of song-by-song liner notes are accumulating below
🎶 01 ᴀʀɪꜱᴇ
A: A subtle return to our first glimpse of The Far Shore. Three years later Mei’s eyes open and recall that moment.
C: Right, this is a brief echo of the song that played as Mei and Isao deployed, way back in I. Deploy. So, this is reminder of the start of her prior adventure, and the mood of the song evokes Mei's duty as a scout, and ideas related to Jao and The Mother Structure. This song should sit well with the song Into Torpor, at the tail end of The Far Shore's OST.
🎶 02 ᴀʟᴏꜰᴛ
A: An expression of the joy of jett-piloting, full of intertwined flute and synth arpeggios.
C: This song ended up on the cutting room floor for The Far Shore, just couldn't fit it in, too peppy for a slightly dour campaign. Glad it found its place here, accompanying the player's rush of feeling as they go aloft for the first time in a while, kicking off Given Time's free-roaming campaign with some fresh energy.
🎶03 ᴡʜɪꜱᴘᴇʀꜱ ᴏꜰ ᴛʜᴇ ᴡʏʟᴅ
A:
C: This is music that accompanies our first glimpses into the mysteries lurking inside Tor, and the song should linger in player's minds. There are some discordant moods that get kicked up in here that get my goosebumps going.
🎶04 ᴀᴄᴏʟʏᴛᴇ
A: A dive into the distant history of our adventurers. Long before landing on The Far Shore their history is filled with mythic adventures, relayed to their younger generations via music.
C: Since earliest days there was some intent for this science fiction universe to have a distinct, specific-feeling past and culture that lives in the hearts and minds of the jett scouts, hence Tsosi and the tsagas, and other such gestures to an intriguing world that exists out-of-frame and over 1000 years ago. The musical language that arose feels related to Tchaikovsky and Imperial Russia of the late 1800s, a flavor that we hear late in this album in The Signal Bureau, as well as on Jhorgon Kolos from The Far Shore. This song has a great tilt and a great build, and it sounds just right echoing around the vaulted corridors of Tsosi's tomb and reading room.
🎶 05 ʙʀɪɴᴇ ᴡɪꜱᴘ ʀᴏᴇ
A:
C: Once players are let loose and are free-roaming around, it's time for music to take a backseat and allow weather, sfx and other atmospheric sounds to come in. What incidental music the player does encounter in Given Time's open world tends to be on the light side, sometimes with a bit of encouraging jett scout pep.
🎶06 ɢɪᴠᴇɴ ᴛɪᴍᴇ
A: Given Time reaches back to the very beginnings of JETT. Before Given Time and even before The Far Shore, a long outdated version of this song was in a weekend prototype dating back to May 2011.
C: This is the song that got me to commit to trying to line Andy up as a composer for the project that became JETT. I had encountered Andy's work during sworcery's production, we had a fair bit of common ground, and sworcery's moon grotto music and number station at the end of sworcery came to pass. In Andy's back catalog there were songs that suggested a vast, intricate and interesting science fiction universe. This song in particular is as broad and as deep as it gets. In our May 2011 prototype, this song played over a twilight scenario, helming a proto-jett along a coastline under starry skies. This song, that mood and that experience became a lodestar for Patrick and I, design-wise. How could we build a project that could include that song, to earn it. In the end, we weren't able to fit this experience into The Far Shore's dense and heavily-plotted narrative, but all's well that ends well, because this song, with this name, has found its ideal place as the sedate centerpiece to Given Time's campaign. Players encounter this song as they wade into Given Time's broad mid-section, zipping around at twilight, chasing after brine wisps while gas giant Ghoke rises in the sky above. Love it.
🎶07 SCOUT REGATTAS
A:
C: Love this song. A good little vibe to be doing jett scout things, sparking wisps and so on.
🎶08 ENDURE
A:
C: Nice purposeful little song to keep us trucking.
🎶09 GIVEN BRINE
A:
C: Sometimes a song kicks in and it just takes you somewhere else. This for me is one of those songs. I love how it'll just bubble up sometimes while you're free-roaming, stirring up the player and Mei's memories of past people and places, and opening their eyes to the wonder around them.
🎶10 THE SIGNAL BUREAU
A:
C: Ahhh, this song rules. Another song we had in place early on, a great bed for early 'historical footage' animatics. The song just kind of showed up one day, another scntfc miracle, and it related to ideas I had been developing. I had some intent to define this people's industrial and scientific revolutions, as part of defining its particular cultural programming. This song's name relates to an in-universe scientific institution tasked with detecting and monitoring the hymnwave over hundreds of years. The Signal Bureau's 70s brutalist buildings dot the steppes of The 13 Nations, and the institution is a forerunner of The Space Program who saw to the centuries-long construction of The Mother Structure, a tough and costly project that required a sustained state propaganda effort.
🎶11 PRISMATIC PHOSPHORESCENCE
A:
C: No better song than this to park on gelid Khovd gaze at Tor while Ghoke rises.
🎶12 SYNTHESIS
A:
C: This song goes back a long ways. We had this Flor Kolos scenario and entity in place early on, with Andy's music and sfx helping us define the synth-soaked moods of some of this alien planet's cosmic spaces. It's likely we talked about the vibe of Skytown from Metroid Prime 3, a mood that I love.
🎶13 SUMMIT
A:
C: This is something of a reprise of a song we called Persevere from The Far Shore, that plays towards the end of that campaign as the scout unit is pushed to its limits on Khovd and has to fight back from the brink, a scenario that rhymes with this one. This version has a bit of a Tor-twist, and to me it's the exact right energy to propel us towards and up Tor, through waves of griefers, alongside a Jones-like presence.
🎶14 CRYPT TO CRADLE
A:
C: It some shaping to get all this to feel right and be legible, to give players/listeners the right series of moods to take us from Tor's summit to Mei's final moment, deep inside. I love how things landed here.
🎶15 THE FUTURE
A:
C: This song goes way back to early days, as Andy and I talked about how traditional symphonic instruments -- trumpets, flutes -- might related to the vibe of our noble, hopeful jett scouts. This is another funtamental song that somehow didn't find a place in The Far Shore, we just didn't end up with a scene that could accommodate such a breathlessly optimistic and sincere-sounding song. I love that we got this in as JETT's capstone, laid on a vision of a future for this haunted people. Feels extra tidy to use the name The Future, which was JETT's name from earliest days. Now, here we are, and our post-JETT future beckons.