I like to be taken out of my comfort zone, and working on IMMORTALITY was no exception. Every aspect, from formulating the music system and tonal direction, to the choice of palette, was unique. Taking techniques from filmmaking such as the match cut, we blend traditional storytelling techniques with the non-linear aesthetics of gameplay, keeping you actively engaged in fresh inventive ways.

We initially discussed the potential to score each of the movies in the same styles as the films’ respective genres, but had to park that concept because the player switches constantly from scene to scene between movies. We had to bring all these films together and glue the narrative together. The themes are connected to the concepts of the game and Marissa’s experience. We decided to have one style of music throughout that functions as a unifying piece that captures Marissa’s shifting role in the movies, from temptress to muse to star.

Sam likes to have the music early on. He would play the music for the cast before shooting or listen to it when writing the script. So in terms of creative process, the music feeds into the other aspects of the game. As the game was being developed, we would have in-depth conversations about the story, the character, and the overarching theme.

When composing, I dived into the rough script and tried to capture the essence of the story. We discussed the sound palette and didn’t want to utilise any synthetic electronic elements — this had to be pure, acoustic and raw - where you hear the intimate relationship between the musician and their instrument, and connect the player directly to the emotional core of the story. We had an orchestral palette as our foundation, and we broadened it out to bring in a couple of other unique sounds to supplement each theme, such as the saxophone for seduction in “Life,” which was inspired by noir films, the choir for “Religion,” and the harp for “Art.”

We would share musical mood boards. We knew, however, that we didn't want to write a pastiche of scores from each of the lost movies, so we connected them to existential ideas within the game.

Some favourite films of mine are Brian De Palma’s Body Double, The Eyes of Laura Mars, and Basic Instinct; films with Neo Noir influences that definitely found their way into some elements of the score subconsciously. I wrote a theme that connects to each of the three movies that Marissa stars in, dealing with Marissa’s story and her grappling with how she engages with mortality.

Each theme represents a different type of ‘magic’ in the game, and there are also three subverted themes which all contain a form of sadness as the magic fades or fails. Each subverted theme is the opposite of its main theme in terms of emotion. We shift seamlessly between the main themes, the subverted themes, and the supernatural themes that run in parallel to the main and subverted themes.

RELIGION connects us to the 1968 film Ambrosia, which is based on the notorious Gothic novel The Monk, that deals with life after death. The idea is that there is something purer, more abstract, that lives beyond our physical existence, that transcends it and is infinite. A purer, spiritual existence removed from human suffering. The music describes the lightness and spiritual power of characters untethered by physical concerns. It’s slightly fantastical, with a little sprinkling of magic and a sense of the divine, of rapture, miracle and awe.

I always try musically to stay away from cliché. When you think of religious music, you instantly think of choirs, so we integrated them in a more unusual way. Sam’s analogy was "it's a little like staring at a religious painting long enough to feel something of the transcendent pure feelings it is trying to evoke; as if you’re sitting in an art gallery just staring at this painting for ages and ages.” The music should describe Marissa embodying the divine, the lightness and spiritual power of characters untethered by physical concerns. Here the subverted music represents the sadness of the sacred, the negative aspect of organised religion, to control and inflict cruelty.

LIFE is linked to Minsky, a NYC thriller about the death of a famous artist. It’s about living in the moment, engaging in the physical pleasures. The mood I had to imagine was “a Jesus that lives physically and hangs with real folk drinking wine.” The music has a sense of abandonment, where Marissa gets wrapped up in hedonistic activities revelling in the beauty of dance, sex, food, alcohol and drugs. Like Basic Instinct and Body Double, the theme of “Life” is dark, orchestral, and there's a cold emptiness behind the sensual façade of the main theme.

As a contrast, the subverted version reflects the hangover, the feeling of having flown too close to the sun and missed. It reflects the difference between really being in the moment and just going through the motions in a mechanical, hollowed-out way. Imagine if you've been to a party, enjoying the party, and waking up the next morning with a hangover. What felt free and natural at first feels contrived and artificial. Films such as Klute, Sea Of Love and Blow-Up were film touchstones.

ART is inspired by the subversive thriller Two Of Everything, about a pop star and her body double, reminiscent of the 1992 film The Bodyguard. It’s about creating something that lives on forever in others and has a life of its own; an attempt to capture or recreate things in a purer form, synthesising the worlds of Religion and Life. If you think about Picasso painting and repainting to get the perfect line, it’s the magic of the synchronisation between the hand (working at sculpting, painting or typing), the brain, and the imagination; the magic of creative inspiration.

Marissa attempts to make art that will capture her life and see it live on. She believes she has to tell her story of multiple lives, of rebirth; but also of her frustrations as an artist and the pursuit of authenticity. Marissa has the vampiric immortality of living forever; but her real dream is the substantial immortality of living forever through an idea or story, that way she would live on inside of so many.

The subverted version is about the dark side of being artistic, where it’s torturous and exhausting. The artist’s struggle and toil and the failure to achieve perfection in art that you can never truly achieve where perfection is unobtainable. The torture to create art out of the intangible — the music is less magical and heavier to reflect the toil of creating art.

The supernatural versions of the themes add another twist to the themes, manipulating and mangling the orchestral recordings to evoke a ‘hidden’ side to the narrative. This is Marissa bringing us into her world, a synthesis of all three themes, where she has found a new kind of existence, alive and freed of flesh but direct in the minds of the viewers. It’s something beyond human, slightly threatening to us. She’s a ghost in our heads. We were inspired by David Lynch where he creates this world of the perfect American Dream, and then you dig beneath the surface of small-town America, where there’s a darkness there that is quite insidious. These are versions of the main themes that feel alien and distorted. Beyond human, something digital and slightly threatening to us.

You will be able to buy the music on cassette, vinyl and CD here: https://www.lostincult.co.uk/i...

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