Remix - Mass Effect 2: Lower Club Afterlife

[SavageLand]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hUKrhOu6e28

The a Remix of a track I made a few years back that gained popularity when the original version was unknowingly featured in the video game "Mass Effect 2" in the lower level of "Club Afterlife" on Omega.

I received many, many emails from fans wanting to get a copy of the track since it was unreleased on the ME2 soundtrack after they discovered I wrote it (myself and several other composers were unnamed for musical contributions to the game); Fans discovered my name via metadata after a user extracted Lo Fi Epic from the PC version of ME2 (called the Techno Madness Mix).

I decided to rebuild the track from it's original elements and add in additional parts and layers I simply didn't have the technology to add years ago to bring the track back to life and to the fans who have been asking for it for many months.

Lyrics "Assuming control of this rave"

If you want to download it you can do so here:

http://jessejamesallen.bandcamp.com/track/lo-fi-epic-embracing-the-afterlife-mix?permalink

[Martin Penwald]

Hah, I actually asked who made the track for Lower Afterlife in the ME2 composer interview thread because I absolutely love it.

Thank you for posting this. I'll give the new version a thorough listen and post my impressions.

[SavageLand]

I posted some detail on you tube about the original track that was featured in ME2:

So for you Mass Effect 2 Fans here is perhaps one of the oddest "making of stories" you will hear. This track "Lo Fi Epic" (The lower afterlife track) was actually composed for the EA Sports Arena Football game in February of 2006 but never saw the light of day, hitting the cutting room floor after a producer nixed it for being "Too Techno" . The track went into the music archives and lived on the main server network for years.

Fast forward to 2010 when I was sitting down with my new copy of Mass Effect 2. I am a huge Mass Effect fan, I had played through version 1 many times. So one can only imagine my reaction when I walked into the lower level of "Club Afterlife" and heard this track... At first I said "hummm that sounds very familiar" then it hit me "Holy crap I wrote that!".

Sadly I was not credited in the game for this piece of music but neither was:

Saki Kaskas - Callista - Upper Club Afterlife (Originally used in Need For Speed Hot Pursuit)

John Morgan - Happiness - Dark Star Lounge

Comaduster - To Hide To Seek - Eternity Bar

This story got even crazier when I Googled the name of the ME2 planet this music was found on, there was a user on You Tube that had extracted the file from the PC version of the game and identified me as the composer; his video had over 100,000 views with many comments about who wrote it and where they could find it. EA Traxx or whoever passed along the cue to Bioware renamed the track "The Techno Madness Mix" but had left my name in file name or metadata.

I had actually met the sound design team for Mass Effect up in Canada during a sound design for video game meeting; Simon Pressy the Mass Effect audio director and I talked at length during that meeting, I expressed my interest and support for their projects. While working on Warhammer I even helped produced some sounds for their games to use. So I can't say I don't know how this all happened but in my wildest dreams I would have never imagined Lo Fi Epic making it into Mass Effect 2 much less the fans reaction to this track (Thank you all). I even got an email from the Mass Effects' main composer Jack Wall that stated he heard so many good things from fans about "Lo Fi Epic" (Of course I am in awe of Jacks score for the game).

Hearing "Lo Fi Epic" in game reminds me of the days when I use to have acetates cut of my music and taking it to clubs. That feeling of watching hundreds of people dance to something I created was beyond words... this track in Mass Effect immortalized that feeling for me. Anyway that is the crazy story of Lo Fi Epic and Mass Effect 2.

[big giant circles]

Hey again Jesse

I'm not sure if I made the connection back when you posted here on OCR initially, but I figured out at some point after that it was your name I'd seen attached with the Lower Afterlife track. Very cool work, man, I love that track a lot, and it really did work great in game

Cool story hearing about the origin. It's unfortunate that they didn't credit you or the other "club music" writers, because I thought all the club songs were phenomenal and fit the game so well. It sounds to me like since you wrote the track for that other game, there was probably a contract involved that basically entitled EA to perpetual use of your track whether by ownership or license, so they pulled it out of the vault when they needed a theme for lower Afterlife. It sucks when stuff like that gets used and you don't even know about it until after (or ever!) but unfortunately that's just how it goes sometimes :-\

Now, the other possibility is that EA just used your track without permission and now you get to sue them

I get asked occasionally if I wrote any of the club themes, and I always say that I wish I did, because they rock, but then point them to the Mass Effect wiki which credits you all properly.

[VideoGameManiac]

sounds amazing, well done!

[The Joker]

Totally bought this track, bro. Worth every penny.

[Martin Penwald]

Am I imagining things or does the intro (as well as e.g. 1:50 onwards) have a very mid-90s rave vibe to it? Sounds like something you'd have found on a Rave Base CD or one of the Mayday compilations back in the day.

[SavageLand]

Martin,

Oh there is no doubt this track has a mid 90's rave element to it, it's 157BPM and remember when I wrote the original I just wanted it to be a take your head off happy hardcore techno track. It's the kind of track I would hear in the club scene in the wee morning hours ya know where everyone is half or fully drunk and the DJ takes the tempos up before breaking it down into another set.

Fun stuff.

IF Bioware would have given me a choice as to what track of mine to submit for Mass Effect 2 I would have likely chosen:

The Infectious Groove

or

Under Fire

These two tracks were written after Lo Fi and I felt had so much more going for them; especially Under Fire...Dark Cinematic and a take your head off back beat (check it out around 1:53 in).

[Martin Penwald]

Hm, while both tracks are good, I don't think they would've worked as well in the game. The Lower Afterlife is where the real party is at; frantic music, dancing, people shooting the batarian barkeeper in the face.

"Infectious Groove" certainly has the tempo and frantic-ness to be used in such a setting, but I have two issues with it: the breakdown (the less downtime, the better, IMO), and that one sample that keeps on playing throughout the entire song, from the very first to the very last second. I think that would become really annoying if you screwed around the Lower Afterlife for 5 minutes.

"Under Fire" is simply too slow IMO. I know I'm using the word a little too much, but it's just not frantic enough. It would've been a good fit for the Upper Afterlife, though. Btw, nice panning on the guitar at ~3:25.