Plaid are an electronica duo loved the world over, a Warp Records staple who also have an avid love of videogames. They possess a sound quite unique to them and I put my hands up and admit that I am a massive Plaid fanboy. This is no fleeting love affair: I tried to work with them before on the sadly canned Lionhead / Jeff Minter project, Unity. I had the pleasure of producing on that title and Plaid were in discussions to write the music, so when we started to think of new artists for Chime they instantly leapt to mind. Luckily, their desire to work on a game was still ardent and they signed up without hesitation. Chime was just what they were after to satisfy their game itch.
The first technical conference call with Plaid was a dream; they clearly got the game and how it worked right from the start. By the end of the call, audio director Ciaran Walsh and I sat across the room grinning at each other; we knew this track would be special. We had given them only two rules to adhere to, which meant they had huge freedom musically, and we could hear instantly from what they were saying that thoughts were already firing.
Plaid sent us over a couple of ideas they had been playing with, we picked one and they got to work on the song. As the track was built with the game in mind, it was one of the easiest for us to add; Plaid had very much written a Chime level from scratch. Titled Tender Hooks, it's my favourite of all the new tracks. It may take time for people to love (especially as its associated grid is insanely hard) but everybody does without fail. It's classic Plaid and uniquely Chime. It is hypnotic, it grows on you, you get lost in it. I love it.
For Chime Super Deluxe we also decided to include two internally created tracks. We are blessed at Zoë Mode with having an enormous amount of musicians and composers through the staff. Nathan McCree is a veteran of videogame sound design and composition, including the music for the first three Tomb Raider titles. Nathan’s piece, Machine Dreams, is a very chilled piece of ambient electronica and is pure Chime. It really enhances the unique blend of sensations that the game creates; relaxation from the music while the clock gets you sweating.
Joe Hogan is the lead audio engineer on Chime and has been on the project since the original prototype. In fact, his track, Sympathy, was written to test the prototype. We'd always intended to get it into the original game, but ran out of time. Reworked and polished up, it's not only beautiful and hair-raising but also brings more diversity to our soundtrack. The game just eats up this cinematic orchestral piece.
We feel the five new tracks are a perfect addition to the old, creating a soundtrack that is more than a disparate collection of artists and genres; it all works together in harmony to make Chime Super Deluxe. One day, we'll have to release the album.
As we worked on getting these great artists lined-up and signed there was other vital work being carried out on Chime; new gameplay features and improvements to those that already existed were a huge part of the project. Work in these areas had to be approached with caution so as not to take anything away from what people loved in the original while still making the upgraded version better. My next entry will look at how we achieved this.
Brynley Gibson, a game director at Zoë Mode, has been making games for around nine years and working on various creative endeavours for 14 years. He has produced titles such as The Movies and The Movies: Stunts & Effects, Battalion Wars 2, Art Academy, Grease and the Chime series. Outside of games Brynley likes to grow things, drink and write about coffee and curates the art show Art In Industry. You can find him on Twitter @brynleygibson. See all the columns in this series on our Chime Super Deluxe topic page.