This OST was quite the experience to work on for Leyline press. After hearing about the concept and writing the original concept music during the first lockdown of 2020, and then beginning work on the soundtrack back at the start of 2022. That was quite a ride, I think I wrote close to 2hours of music which we then worked down to a comfortable hour long experience for the players to listen to during their campaigns in the SU universe.
The concept art that was sent to me was such an inspiration and reading through the different versions of the core book, and some of the concepts of the different factions and enemies you might encounter is the SU verse too. My brief was to think of something like Techno Salvage, and that should sum it up nicely. I used lots of synthesizers both my SV-1 Lifeforms by Pittsburgh and things like Vital, Serum, Hive and Pigments. Not only that but I got to record a lot of guitar parts and bass parts for some of the cue’s which is always fun for me.
After I finished the writing for the album we had to figure out how to order the tracks, part of my brief was to imagine scoring a hero’s journey. I feel from start to finish the album captures this with lots of ups and downs, tense sections and full on techno head banger’s. Although I think my favourite track was actually the last I wrote called “Good Haul”. I imagined this as a type of well wishing statement used in the SU to wish a Salvager success on his voyage into the deserts and beyond. It took on a type of Cowboy Bebop vibe in this track, which I guess I was just itching to move into by this point of the writing process.
I was thinking about the different types of genre influence for this whole project, I feel like if you would take; Bluegrass, Techno, Ambient, Cinematic, Lo-Fi, Americana, and a splash of Native American music. Mix them into a pot then that’s what the sound of the Salvage Union universe is; the surviving musical styles that are listened to by the operator’s and occupants of these wandering nomads as the piece together old technology from the past to forge into the technology of the wasteland.
The OST has gone out to the Kickstarter backers and will be released on streaming platforms after the physical copies have been received by the backers of the Kickstarter campaign.
-Greg
Greg Illidge 