PAUL COLLABORATES ON A VIDEO GAME SCORE

Collectors of Paul’s music may have to add a new format :a version of PlayStation or Xbox to their stacks of LPs, tapes, CDs, DVDs and digital downloads. His next major project is the score for Destiny, the highly anticipated video game from Bungie and Activision, due on Sept. 9.

For the last four years, on and off, Paul has been working on the score for the game in a collaboration with Marty O’Donnell  – until recently Bungie’s house composer, responsible for the widely praised Halo soundtracks – and Mike Salvatori. He has also written a theme song for the game, which he plans to release as a single soon after the game is released, said Lev Chapelsky, the general manager of Blindlight, a Los Angeles company that puts musicians and game companies together.

Paul’s involvement with the project began in 2010, when Mr. O’Donnell, already at work on the Destiny music, suggested that Paul might be interested in the challenge of writing orchestral music for an interactive game – that is, musical sequences that would change depending on the game players’ actions and interactions. Paul has written four full-length orchestral scores, and several shorter classical pieces, since 1990, and has produced several albums of electronica under the name Fireman.

Although he is not believed to be a video game enthusiast, or even a casual player, he was intrigued by the process of creating interactive game music. Over the next two years, he and Mr. O’Donnell met periodically at Abbey Road Studios, in London, and at studios in New York and Los Angeles, and traded musical ideas. By last summer, Mr. O’Donnell told Edge, a game publication, he,Paul and Mr. Salvatori had written and recorded music for the game, as well as a 50-minute orchestral suite using its themes.

Paul wrote a message on Twitter in July 2012:“I’m really excited to be working on writing music with @bungie, the studio that made Halo,” he has barely mentioned the project publicly.

Judging from 70 minutes of music heard in a beta version of the game, which is already making its way around the Internet, the score is widely varied, with lush orchestral and choral sections and eerie, atmospheric passages, to fast paced, heavily percussive sections and high-adrenaline string, brass and electronic figures. It was not clear whether this was the final version of the score. The game takes place in the last city of a future ruined Earth (and occasionally on Mars), where players can load up with weapons and armor, and hone their battle skills so that they can kill fearsome space aliens who are out to destroy the remnant of mankind.

More recently, Paul decided to sweeten his part of the collaboration by contributing a theme song for the game. In keeping with the rest of the soundtrack music, the song – the title has been kept under wraps – is fully orchestrated, and was recorded at Abbey Road with a 120-piece ensemble directed by Giles Martin. The sessions for the song were produced by Mark Stent, who has worked with Madonna, Bjork, Lady Gaga and U2, among others. The song is said to be about hope.