Just happened to twinkle some additional keys to Orkidea‘s brilliant remix of Solarstone‘s “Touchstone“. While mixing and adding the final touches, I grabbed my newly rebuilt Oberheim Matrix-12 (thanks to Mikko Köykkä, an electronics wizard and an extremely cool dude) midied to Xpander and damn, it sounds good.

I hope he doesn’t blow his fuses for me being a mix-and-tell guy, but Orkidea‘s Logic sequence layouts are probably the most organized I’ve ever encountered. Myself, I never name any tracks or channels, whereas his are always named appropriately – and even colour coded. All samples always tidily in their appropriate folders… Neat and clean, and most of the time everything necessary is already there, and you just put some SSL or Neve compressor on, add some eq’ing. Easy job.

By the way, a while ago I was bouncing Slusnik Luna‘s “The Sun 2010” (a re-make of a classic year 2000 trance track “The Sun“, by Niko Nyman) and Matrix-12 was still in a state of limbo. Then Mikko recapped most of it, replaced the EPROMs with his patent tricks – and it’s been working ever since. (I think I better have another go with “The Sun” now that it’s working.) See Slusnik‘s web site here: http://bit.ly/9dCL05

Anyway, once you’re surfing, go check Orkidea‘s site here: http://bit.ly/arXISl – and make sure you have a listen to one of his DJ webcasts. His way of mixing tracks together is a form of art. Period. Anyone can use decks and a crossfader or a laptop with controllers, but to make DJing a musically flawless act is a totally different thing, and that’s where Orkidea‘s very good at.

A slightly more freeform interview was put online a few days ago, this time it was done by G4TV, and the questions weren’t easy at all. http://bit.ly/91Yyg4

I also think I better do something for those promo pictures. Like burn them.

What really amazes me is the sudden depth of some questions – I started answering them and after two sentences I realized I have to open up quite a few other crates as well, not just the one I’m handling. An easy “synth or orchestra” question really became a struggle and I tried to be as short-mouthed as I could. Which, unfortunately isn’t much.

Alan Wake OST composed by yours truly is finally, officially out – now. Get it from here:

Amazon (as a CD)
Amazon download
BestBuy
iTunes (link to USA iTunes Store)
and straight from Sumthing Digital.

So there. Unfortunately, for us Europeans, it’s Amazon.co.uk only.

Also, I have to notify that iTunes USA quite falsely advertises flute solo recordings also done by a guy with a same name, although we’re not even related. His recordings are top-notch as well, but be warned that it’s not me. I better charge him some royalties for promotion duties. 😀

Ok. While you’re there, try finding some concert organ stuff by Kalevi Kiviniemi as well, with a hint of Osmo Vänskä & Sinfonia Lahti thrown in for some Scandinavian taste. End of promotion.

SEMO (Square Enix Music Online) published a recently made interview by yours truly. Go check it out. Damn, that’s a long one.

Top Dollar PR announces it now officially: Alan Wake OST will be out soon, both as a digital download from iTunes and Sumthing Digital, and a physical CD as well for those who prefer to read the cd sleeve whilst listening to some great tunes.

There are 18 tracks total, some of which were taken from in-game music and meticulously edited into one piece of music – a challenge in itself, by the way – but everything seems to fit in, pretty nicely, I’d say. Some of the track still bring the tears to my eyes – even though I’ve heard them literally hundreds of times, first composing, then arranging, recording, mixing, playing AW… everyone making music knows what I’m talking about. As a composer/produces/engineer one-man-does-it-all combination I face the challenge of arguing with myself on artistic values over technical aspects, the stuff normal people usually do in a group, or with a team. But, I’d like to emphasize there never were any real problems, just some choices to be made.

Check the whole thing on the Top Dollar PR site.

According to Amazon.com, my Alan Wake Soundtrack will be finally released 20th July – which is pretty soon. I’ve heard the mastered files a few times on different sound systems and it sounds really damn good. Besides, it seems that the Amazon pricing is quite competitive, at least for a physical CD. Sometimes I feel a bit baffled about all the marketing and promotion stuff, as this link came my way by accident. Literally. I just clicked a wrong link. The usual “what the…” moment.

Also, Sumthing Digital has a link for the soundtrack download already (although the tracks aren’t yet available for download). They have also wisely included a listening station with enough audible clips to close a deal. 😉

Yay!

9/10 for the LCE package. Nice!

Read the article here.

Also, I came across an article in which Soundelux Design Music Group finally get their props – usually they were never mentioned in a review of the game. Oscar nominee Alan Rankin and his team did some brilliant work and helped create Alan Wake’s ominous atmosphere. Head to mi2n.com. In the same article, according to Mr. Mark Yeend (of Microsoft Game Studios) “(the game has) one of the best and most memorable I’ve ever heard in a video game.”

Thanks, Mark!

Speechless am I now.

Originalsoundversion.com’s Gideon Dabi has reviewed Alan Wake OST, read the whole article here.

Kind words out of the blue feel really, really good. Thank you.

If some of my comments and “thank yous” seem overwhelming, it is just due to the natural fact that I know I’ve chosen quite a strange way to decorate a psychothriller – a choice I was originally a bit concerned to take. The more I browsed through my soundtrack CDs and mp3s, the more confident I became, and the choice to leave the obvious path lured me even more. I wrote in my SEMO essay “(the composer’s) …always on the edge, leaning towards the wind”, and it sure as hell felt like that. There were just too many things that could have gone wrong, especially when putting some beauty into madness – but after all, that’s life in itself (although not in a usual setting): finding order in chaos, a reason to survive.

I wrote a lengthy post-mortem article for Square Enix Music Online, which is now online. It’s principally written about the scoring itself, with a slightly different point of view, I’d say.

One should think that as my box of mental tools, wide open. Also included is a healthy dose of criticism towards the catalogue music and its careless usage, but most of the time I happened to stay on the right tracks, it seems. After reading the article myself, I feel it reflects pretty well the train of thought and the amount of effort put into what I think I do best.

Read the whole article here.

Note: In the article, orchestrator David Christiansen is mentioned, but his name is erroneously spelled as Christensen. My bad, sorry David!

WhenSpamAttacks.com reviews the game with some kind words on the soundtrack: “This game has a GREAT soundtrack. Props to Petri Alanko, the soundtrack composer, for providing some of the best music in a game since Fallout 3.” Thanks, anonymous, for the link.

By the way, Fallout 3 is among the very few games that I’ve ever had enough stamina to play through, twice, and thus I appreciate the comparison. So: thanks!