Game

Neon White wouldn’t be ‘weird’ without Machine Girl’s music

A chopped-up character in Neon White stands in front of an ominous clock tower.

Screenshots: Angel Matrix

White neona quick laser first person shooterunfolds in a Paradise where angels threaten to explode your face and the experimental musical outfit Machine Girl pierces your missteps with saturated beats.

The game inspires you with flashy visuals — turquoise waters, cold-blooded girls with rainbow hair, buildings cast from pure porcelain — to move through levels fast, like You’re in a nightmare, but Machine Girl’s sparkling music will keep you moving. I was obsessed with the soundtrack, so I asked Ben Esposito, White neonIts developer and Matt Stephenson, the producer behind Machine Girl, made it happen.

It started in 2020, when modern life was booming and Esposito sent Stephenson, someone he had no previous relationship with, an email.

“I’m making a PC game with no notifications right now,” says Esposito, “and I think your music has the perfect power to it (it’s a first-person shooter from the Deviantart anime of the year). 2000 … feels like a lost PS2 game for the overall tone and style). Is already a fan since Gemini but I heard ‘Cyan Hardcore“I was like….this is it.”

Albums of 2015 Gemini and the track “Cyan Hardcore” from 2020 EP Phantasies RePorpoised both are speckled with landmark Machine Girl sounds, like shattering, glass synth patterns, and the sputtering and breaking of drums. In particular, “Cyan Hardcore” has the same quality as “I’m in the game, underwater” for many tracks on White neonThe soundtrack consists of two parts, Evil heart and Burns can be cured, yes. Cyclic melodies echo through steel drum plugins and hum through low-pass filters; it’s very aquatic, but it becomes small and bright, like the sound you hear when unlocking PS3 achievements.

Because of this sonic parallelism (and perhaps emotional parallelism—Machine Girl songs are filled with the same cohesive energy you get when playing a game like Death), Machine Girl fans have associated Stephenson’s music with the game for years. In 2020, an independent development team released NightmareAn amazing first person shooter game it says “so much inspired” by album 2017 … Because I’m an arrogant kid and hate all you haveleaning heavily on the aesthetic of the bloody shooter.

Elsewhere online, Machine Girl fans create extended versions of the song use video game templatesand you can also find Stephenson’s 2014 remix of action game Sega Jet station soundtrack.

The video game and the Machine Girl record are best friends and their relationship is treasured. Eli Schoop, a experimental songwritertold me that “Machine Girl got sick because they used breakbeats and MIDI instruments from the original PS1 and [Sega Saturn] game and infuse it with annoyance and frenzy in a way that a few others have. “

“I think it could be an intrinsic thing for anyone like hardcore digital and gaming to synthesize those loosely interwoven subcultures,” Schoop continued. “[Stephenson] Definitely a true fan [of both]so it feels authentic and dope. “

Stephenson acknowledges his influences and the strength in his fandom, telling me “I think it’s pretty clear in all of my music that it’s been heavily influenced by video games.” .

“I loved video games as a child, and some of the soundtracks (especially on the Sega Dreamcast) are very informative for me. But I didn’t really begin to consciously think about video games while making music until I worked on it. White neon soundtrack,” he said.

“I think for anyone who grew up with video games, we form an emotional attachment to the video game OSTs of our youth,” he continued. “If I can offer that to anyone, that’s the most important thing to me.”

Back in 2020, Stephenson accepted Esposito’s email offer after determining that he wasn’t “just a kid in his bedroom doing video games,” and the two began collaborating on soundtrack. The process was difficult, but it paid off in the end (obviously… did you hear it?)

“When we started working on the track, Matt sent it over to a Dropbox folder containing some incredibly scary incomplete tracks,” Esposito says. “Must have at least 50 tracks with file names like ‘mg2019 alpha 16 2020 D.mp3’”

After sorting through the dense filenames, the two walked out with incomplete bursts of music, fireworks waiting to be lit.

“In the end, probably about 50% of the soundtrack is built from pre-existing materials and the other 50% is made from scratch for the game,” Esposito said.

But casting and finishing that material is special for White neon introduced Stephenson to a series of unique obstacles. He has never composed music for a video game before and currently has no plans to add any soundtrack (though he would love to change that), so working under his creative vision. Others need a little adjustment.

“Sometimes it feels like trying to solve a puzzle, trying to find the right feel for certain songs,” says Stephenson. “Every song in the game has a prompt about where it should fit, so I had to focus and try to create songs for specific levels, cues, or menus. I usually make things more stream of consciousness so more discipline and focus is needed. “

Sometimes it’s hard to follow Esposito’s prompts and the tracks get cut because they’re “not the vibe,” says Stephenson. But his renewed focus turned to and translated into the final soundtrack that both he and Esposito were satisfied with.

Stephenson calls the finished product “colorful, lush, energetic, stretchy, fast-paced, over-the-top, maximal, delightful, danceable, and low-fat.” The description matches how you feel playing through it — giggling angels, darting through the air shooting skinny monsters until you reach the end, all guided by Machine Girl. You feel as if you’re riding something weird and aggressive, beastly yet buoyant.

Music is also quite practical. Esposito notes that the songs come with realistic gameplay, requiring speed and precision, and flying, in particular “hard, maybe harder than you might expect at first, but that’s the intention,” he said. . You don’t want to be slow when it comes to overcoming demons and yearning for deliverance, as the game’s premise is. Like heaven itself, Esposito says the soundtrack is meant to be “aspirational.”

“If the music feels too fast, you’re not playing fast enough,” he says.

Salvation, the devil, and tropical forest Music. When added together, they sound like a goddamn subreddit. But like the careful planning of the soundtrack, this is also intentional. At last, according to Neon White’s marketingthe whole game was born with “freak” in mind.

I asked Esposito about this, how “monstrous” lives in every aspect of White neon.

White neon makes no sense on paper,” he said. “It shouldn’t work, but it works because it’s not trying to appeal to everyone. It’s a tribute to gameplay and off-the-beaten-path aesthetics. You don’t have to be a weirdo to enjoy it at all White neonbut it’s made for weird media lovers, nothing out of the ordinary and 100% true to itself. “

The game’s music, a crunchy, sugary sandwich delivers hyperactive gameplay to freaks with solemn passion.

“It wouldn’t be like a game without Machine Girl,” Esposito said. “Not just because Matt is a wonderful and prolific producer, but because [Machine Girl’s] The art reflects the same passion for the extreme, unedited, and shoddy media that the game was built to celebrate. “

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