Fall of Troy

A Soundtrack without a Film

The Fall of ’04
It was the fall of 2004. I got a call from some of my old buddies from my Atari Games days. Some of the very best game designers, artists and programmers in the game world were assembling a dream team to create a strategy game based on the epic 11 year-long battle for the city of Troy. (Remember the Trojan Horse? Helen’s face that launched a thousand ships?) I signed on to write the music and do the sound design.
It was my first chance to write something in an epic hollywood vein. Musical ideas came to me in a flood, and I quickly had a whole series of sketches to underscore the mood of the game. The music, while intended to inspire the player’s martial interests, struck tones of sadness and loss – The Trojan War was an incredibly cruel, wasteful, and long war.
The Fall of the Fall of Troy
Just as the game was taking on substance and style, the producer disappeared on a trip to the far east to find more money. When the producer finally reappeared, it was only to shut the game down, leaving a lot of unpaid bills and a lot of unemployed and unhappy workers. I backed up my work to a hard drive and forgot about it.
The Rise of the Fall of Troy (soundtrack)
During the summer of ’05, I was traveling a lot, and I’d bought an ipod to help endure the airports and hotel rooms. A bunch of the mp3s from the game happened to have been loaded onto the ipod and they played one day by accident. I was struck by how good the music was. I ended up listening to those tunes more than any other music that summer. I fell in love with this music.
The Fall of ’05
Although I loved the music, it was quite unlike the CDs that people know me for, and it took me some time before I convinced myself that my fans and the world at large would love it too. I hunkered down in the fall, turning what had been sketches into completed pieces, and assembling the pieces into a coherent album. Although the tone of this record is very different from my other instrumental albums, it shares the same depth of emotion and melody and counterpoint – It’s every bit as rich a musical experience.