Michael Hamilton: Blank Screen Soundtracks
It's been just a blink of the eye since composer Michael Hamilton released his last work, entitled 'Pale Shadows of Forgotten Names', which I reviewed three months ago here. He's been hard at work and is back with something even more challenging than before, a soundtrack showcase in the form of an album called 'Under A Proud and Merciless Sun.'
This album begins with 'Natsukashii', a gentle start to this release. I love how the piano sound simulates the feel of the clicking of the keys. Some cello makes the piece more sombre. The idea of this being a game soundtrack is already in place, can you see the emotional cut-scene? Strangely this doesn't feel at all like an introduction piece, more like we've landed in the middle of something.
'Beauty Beneath the Blood' follows, and the mood is very much similar. Though Natsukashii had more of a pretty piano composition, this one is darker with sustained notes in the lower octaves. A keyboard is added, bringing a more vibraphone sound. Strings arrive and just as quickly are gone. This one is harder to picture in a game soundtrack. Perhaps in the moments of a Resident Evil game where you experience a reprieve from attack, examining things that don't yet make sense.
In a break from piano, 'Apogee' opens with glockenspiel, or is it more vibraphone? Breaks between bars leave unsettling silence. For the first time a keyboard line comes in that makes me think it could've been played on guitar. Michael Hamilton is an exceptional guitarist whose lead instrument has been neglected in these tracks. There is a reasonable amount of reverb in this piece. To me I'm placed in an abandoned cathedral in the daylight hours. The underused triangle is welcome, the software violins giving that sound of a bow dragging across the strings - people are so innovative in this age.
Track four, 'The Truth Will Be Far Stranger', is brought in by an atmospheric synth before piano joins. The melody here reminds me of something from a Studio Ghibli film, the peaceful beginning, but this soon evaporates as the melody develops into something more damning. The chord choices here are essential in setting the tone, like watching a realisation dawn on someone's face. I love the ending to this piece, like the sound of Armageddon wiping you out, and then hearing your own eulogy.
'Whispers Below The Canopy' begins with the sound of swaying trees, cello is introduced with a deep tone like an old grandfather clock. This is backed up by more of its brethren. The orchestral feel is heightened with the inclusion of tambourine, but the sound of plucking strings is brought in and dies down soon after to make way for something that reminds me of The X-Files. This part of the composition becomes electronic, especially the drums, and guitar is clear too in rhythmic strumming. This track is a saga in itself, with the drums getting heavier. For the first time, I can imagine this one performed on stage. Hamilton's inspired Spanish guitar is a welcome break from the heaviness of the drums and strings.
Much of the sound of 'A World of Shapes and Numbers' is atmospheric, unclear textures that could be orchestral, synthetic or guitar feedback. It's like walking through a world of intersecting mirrors. Reverb and delay had to have been used to enhance these sounds, to blend and blur the lines between them, though you would never work out where it starts and where it ends.
The beginning to 'Oceans and Fields' is actually comforting. This one reminds me of The Legend of Zelda: Ocarina of Time. The ascending notes quickly give way to 'battle' music, the chugging cello and the snare drum keeping time. Woodwind holds the melody and is propped up by violins and violas behind it. I'm clearly missing Proms season as I keep imagining this at the Royal Albert Hall, a world away from Hamilton's Glasgow living room he recorded this album in. Oceans and Fields is finished with light piano, a steep comedown from what came before.
'Of Magic and Terror' features more of that suspenseful cello, with percussion driving the beat with it. Brass makes its first audible appearance, and the army of percussionists are pelting full anger at their instruments. Then there's harp, with unsettling strings behind it, like the sound of a demented ambulance. Wherever you are, something is about to happen and it isn't good. Then the cello is back and this isn't just suspense, you're now in the thick of it. Surprisingly, Of Magic and Terror fades out which is something I wasn't expecting at all.
Under A Proud and Merciless Sun is rounded out with 'The Birds That Never Sleep.' As the last track engaged in a fade out, this one has a fade in. A full bodied acoustic guitar is welcome after the orchestral onslaught of the former. Woodwinds skating across the melody make me think of early 1970's recordings when the rock giants used a Mellotron to imitate these sounds, time-locked, yet somehow also timeless. Then we're brought out of the dream with a swish of cymbal, the marching snares are back. A touch of tubular bell, the snares are crisp, but the relentlessness of the march is broken up by sustained violins and violas. Is this a credit-roll? There is a lull shared by piano and acoustic guitars before strings bring back the march. The melody is optimistic, and ceases not long after in favour of a single guitar picking. Le fin.
These are just some of my interpretations of the music I'm hearing, what they make me think about and where they lead me. Helpfully, Michael has put together a showreel using existing game footage and has applied some of the music from this album across it to give a feel of how it could soundtrack moments from games like these.
1. Your new album is called 'Under A Proud and Merciless Sun', where did that title come from?
It’s just a line of flavour text from Silent Hill 2 that I quite liked. I played that game for the first time while I was writing the album and it really left an impression on me, easily one of my favourite games now. It’s such a special thing, the first time you play through one of your favourite games, so I thought it would serve as a nice little reminder of that particular experience for me.
2. Guitar has largely taken a backseat in this project, what was the thought process behind that?
To be honest, it just kind of happened. I wanted to focus on making the compositions as “cinematic” as possible, so I was drawn more towards orchestras, pianos, big synth and percussion sounds etc. None of the tracks felt as though they needed a guitar at the forefront as I was writing them so it didn’t even occur to me to pick it up, other than for a few subtle acoustic parts and some sound design that ended up sounding nothing like a guitar.
That being said, I did allow myself a little moment of indulgence with the solo at the end of “Whispers Beneath the Canopy”.
3. Tell us about the way you write. Is it done as you record? Or is the whole record written before the recording process begins?
I’ve always preferred writing as I record, I find it lets the music develop in a more organic way when I’m writing for lots of different instruments. Your thought process when writing something on guitar might totally change when you hear it played by an entire orchestra. Plus, I’m often more inspired by sounds that I actually hear than what I hear in my head, so the serendipity of hearing the same thing played on different instruments, or just facerolling synths to produce sounds that I never could’ve imagined is a huge part of my process.
4. The recording of this album had an exceptionally fast turnaround, did you set yourself the goal of completing this project quickly?
I did. I wrote this album as a kind of portfolio to help with getting video game/film scoring work, so its main purpose was to show that I’m able to write the various kinds of music that you’d find in those. But while versatility is important for that kind of work, so is having a quick turnaround time so I wanted this album to be a display of that as well.
5. Where does a title like 'Natsukashii' come from? In fact, what was the inspiration for all the titles in this album?
“Natsukashii” is one of those words with no direct English translation, and I’ve always thought those are kind of beautiful. It’s a word in Japanese that you would exclaim when you feel a particular kind of nostalgia, more a feeling of joy and gratitude for the past rather than a desire to return to it. I learned it during a trip to Japan earlier this year which I absolutely loved, and as I was writing this song near the beginning of lockdown when things were pretty bleak, thinking of that trip was a source of comfort for me. It’s quite a bittersweet song, but I think the sweetness comes from that natsukashii feeling I had while writing it. And like the album’s title, it’s also a little memento of an experience that is very valuable to me.
“Beauty Beneath the Blood” is an adaptation of “The beauty hides the blood,” one of the taglines from the 2018 Suspiria film which, along with Thom Yorke’s score, was big inspiration for this track.
In astronomy, “Apogee” is the point in the Moon's orbit where it is furthest from Earth is a concept that has always stuck with me. I love looking at a clear Moon in the sky, I find it oddly soothing, and I often imagine myself on the Moon at its apogee looking back at Earth when I need a bit of respite from city life. Like “Natsukashii,” things were pretty tumultuous when I was writing this track and I found myself doing that a lot, so this song ended up being a kind of soundtrack to that image for me.
“The Truth Will Be Far Stranger” is adapted from a quote by Arthur C. Clarke in the foreword of 2001: A Space Odyssey. I’ve always loved the book and the film, which most will know for its use of classical pieces in the soundtrack, so I thought it might be fun to do my own little rescore of it. Most of the song was written as Dr. Heywood Floyd floated towards Space Station 5, and as Dr. David Bowman found the monolith orbiting Jupiter and got sucked into the vortex. So the title was a little nod to that.
I began writing “Whispers Beneath the Canopy” as a quintessential video game forest level theme, but a lot of inspiration ended up coming from Ellie Davies’s forest photography. Her work really conveys that eerie sensation of time slowing down inside a forest, the sense of heightened awareness and anticipation, the presence of something intangible that makes you feel both welcome and unwelcome. I tried to encapsulate all of those elements in the music, and same goes for the title.
“A World of Shapes and Numbers” is just a line from a review of Yume Nikki, a surreal RPG Maker horror game that inspired the track. I just liked the imagery of the phrase.
I wanted to write a typical fantasy game overworld theme and “Oceans and Fields” is literally just two common types of overworlds thrown together. A bit on the nose, maybe, but I was really stumped naming this one.
This was my take on a final boss theme and “Of Magic and Terror” was just a phrase that popped into my head as I was watching footage of Link fighting Ganondorf while I was writing. I’m also a huge Cradle of Filth fan and it sounded campy enough to be one of their titles so I had to go with it.
I was playing NieR:Automata as I was writing this track and I really wanted to capture the atmosphere of that game. It has a lot of volumetric lighting in it and one of the things I noticed was how the sun shining through gaps in the clouds really highlights the dusty ruins abandoned by humanity. Victor Hugo once described clouds as “The only birds that never sleep”, so it seemed like a nice little tribute to clouds and the role they play in awesome lighting effects.
6. You've previously likened your music to computer game OSTs, are there game soundtracks that have been an influence on your music?
Akira Yamaoka’s ambient pieces from the Silent Hill games have always been a huge influence on my electronic stuff. But for this album specifically, a few would be NieR:Automata, Neil Davidage’s work on Halo 4, Toru Minegishi and Asuka Ohta’s score for Twilight Princess, and Motoi Sakuraba’s Dark Souls soundtrack.
7. The artwork for this project continues the trend of using animals for the cover art, who is this lovely creature?
That is Lilu and she belongs to my friend Csilla. She’s a wee darling and has the best head of hair of any creature I’ve ever seen.
8. Your showreels show excellent ways in which your music can be used for game soundtracks. Did you already have these games in mind when you made these tracks?
They usually came to me as the songs developed. I’d begin writing a track with a vague idea of how it might be used in a game, like “forest level” or “boss battle,” and as the sound of the song became clearer, then some ideas of particular scenes that it might fit would come.
9. You're composing the score for 'Love the Sinner' by Imogen Stirling, what can you tell us about that?
Not much as it’s currently a work in progress and I don’t want to risk saying something I shouldn’t. I can tell you that it’s a piece of gig poetry, a blend of long-form spoken word and live music which sees the seven deadly sins personified and found alive and kicking in contemporary Scotland. “Modern meets classical” is a prevalent theme throughout the show and is reflected in the music by the neoclassical-inspired score and an ensemble that combines both modern and classical instruments. It’s such a unique thing to be involved in and I’m so grateful to Imogen for the opportunity. She really is an incredible artist, an absolute joy to work with, and I’m really excited for when she’s ready to share her show with the world.
You can find Michael Hamilton on instagram @michaelhamiltonmusic and facebook @michaelhamiltonmusic1. Michael's official website is at michaelhamiltonmusic.co.uk
