Doyle Donehoo is a rocker-turned composer who gets to live out one of his greatest scoing gigs to date. He grew up with the Alien franchise and that certainly made an impact. Starting with Ridley Scott‘s masterpiece – which he saw in the theater – he’s lived in this world. Ask his about his memorabilia and that would start quite a conversation. Years later, like a kid in a candy store, he gets to expand the palette established by Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Elliott Goldenthall and others while adding his own spice to the mix.
The difference in his efforts here is that his music is crafted for a video game experience. When Scott, Cameron, Fincher and the like made us uneasy and ultimately scared the hell out of us those because unforgettable cinematic experiences. With Aliens: Dark Descent there will be several nerve-shaking situations compounded by the fantastic music. Donehoo (pronounced “Donna-who”) gives players high highs and low lows spread out across a narrative they explore at their pace (sometimes highly quickened when faced with an onslaught of xenomorphs). Points to Donehoo for producing us something that works both in-game and away from it. It’s like Horners Aliens on steroids.
The composer has plenty to say about his experience working in this sound space…
One of our goals was to stay as true as possible to the musical vocabulary set down in the Alien movies by Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner and Elliot Goldenthall. These movies, and their scores which I listened to so many times, meant so much to me as a budding composer, who saw (and was freaked out by) the Alien movies in the dome theaters of San Jose. We wanted to capture as much of that unique dread Alien atmosphere as we could. Naturally we added a more modern approach as well as featuring instruments not available to the above Alien(s) composers. When gamers play this game, we want the listeners to be sonically plunged again into the bowls of the Nostromo or the shattered hallways of Colony LV-426. However in this game, we have some new locations with a similar feel to what we saw in in the Alien(s) movies. I think the true hardcore fans of the Aliens franchise will be pleased with what we have composed.
Donehoo really made a special contribution to this universe, and, very soon, the soundtrack will get release outside of the game. That should make fans very happy and we’ll update you when we get more info on that. For now, take a listen to this fun interview with Doyle! Let’s rock!!!
