Fate Tectonics OST - SNES inspired electronic music by Robby Duguay

September 28, 2015 genoboost

Fate is calling.

Robby Duguay had me at 'SNES-style symphonic mix.' Listening to the album helped a lot too of course. you might remember Duguay from my praise for his previous OST release. Much like We Are Doomed from earlier this year, Robby has taken one of his dynamic game soundtracks and organized them into a soothing trek reminiscent of classic 16 bit RPGs in his newest album.

I'm only describing half the album though. Tracks 10-18 of this 19 track album are collectively known as (Chaos) and feature a much heavier electronic vibe that gets surprisingly intense as Duguay's instrument choices vary wildly between tracks. So varied in fact, that before I looked at the track list I thought I was listening to a completely new set of songs. I can't help but be drawn into the synthy dubstep boss battle or whatever it is that is happening in the chaos version of "Pestilence," of course, the ominous squarewave wailing of the Serenity version has a place in my heart too.

Killer cut though? On first listen it was definitely "Fire (Chaos)" with that grinding march of an opener it's tough not to be immediately pumped before the song is even in full swing. As I listen again though, I am actually falling in love with the deep, driving sounds of winter in "Ice (Chaos)." In fact, I'm pretty sure I found all the background music I need for a future podcast thanks to these epic closing tracks.

Unlike many albums, Duguay closes with the titular Fate Tectonics, which comes as a restful reprise after the tracks I just mentioned. You can check out the Fate Tectonics game by Golden Gear over at FateTectonics.com and buy Robby Duguay's music on his Bandcamp music page.

I pitched the idea of dynamic music to the team and they loved it; it turns out that they already had a robust audio tool in place, so it wasn’t much work to get the first tests running. The 16-bit style really inspired me to reach for the kinds of sounds I loved hearing on Super Nintendo. After a few sound tests, I settled in on the voicing and the style, and the sound of Fate Tectonics was born. I’ve had to tweak the voices a few times to get the sound I want. The last additions were Fortuna and Ragnarosa, since their game mode was created fairly late in the development of the game. They are basically goth ravers dancing under a bridge, so I figured a layer of raver beats never hurt anybody… When it came time to compile a soundtrack, it was actually fairly difficult to arrange, because the music only existed as stems – I had to imagine a story from the gameplay that I wanted to tell, and mix the voices in a way that would work as linear music. I decided that because there were so many options, I would give listeners a choice of whether they wanted to hear the symphonic style of Serenity, or the dance beats from Fortuna and Ragnarosa (distinguished on the album by the ‘Serenity’ and ‘Chaos’ titles in brackets on each track).

Robby Duguay