OmarPoblador

Electric guitar leads the score, embodying the vehicle's energy and freedom. Arpeggiated synthesizers and a drum-machine beat establish the underlying sense of propulsion, driving the musical progression while maintaining a cohesive sense of movement.

Electronic pads evoke the natural environments through which the vehicle moves, while a xylophone melody represents its integration into the landscape. These contrasting timbral elements bring together technological motion and the openness of the natural world within a unified musical language.

The sonic logo translates the vehicle's visual identity into sound, providing a distinctive sonic signature that guides the original music and the wider sound design. Diegetic sound elements reinforce the vehicle's physical presence and interaction with its surroundings, allowing music and sound design to contribute to a coherent sonic identity.

The soundscape was built around the physical and psychological behaviour of each environment, prioritizing diegetic sound while allowing musical qualities to emerge from the same sonic material. In the industrial opening, the portal is represented by a sub-bass system whose pitch, FM, filtering and modulation evolve with its increasing energy, culminating in the explosion.

The corridors use a Duo – Clavichord Jangle patch combining clavichord and upright piano/tremolo timbres. Sparse chords and isolated notes allow the resonances to occupy the space, while subtle tape modulation introduces micro-instability. An aggressive analogue-style synthesizer appears only in response to specific visual anomalies, using fast pitch bends, spring reverb and spatial delay. In the Pool Office, an enveloping atonal layer built from cello and vocal textures establishes the spatial condition, while sparse xylophone notes, reverse counterparts and Dulcitone tones introduce further instability. Occasional cello gestures act as localized perturbations.

The objective was to make the environments themselves feel threatening through normality, repetition, emptiness, resonance and subtle instability rather than relying on conventional horror scoring. In the Pool Office, the giant drain and whirlpool become the central diegetic event, designed from the physical consequences of such a phenomenon within a confined space: low-frequency impacts, suction, resonance and sustained room response. Music and sound design are therefore treated as different behaviours of the same sonic materiality.

Built around an ancestral 21/8 additive meter endemic to the region. The percussive design emerges from the collision of organic materiality and contemporary electronics, merging traditional frame drums and foley recorded in agricultural workshops with industrial kicks, 808 sub-basses, and synthesized impacts.

Its melodic and harmonic language draws upon traditional instruments of the era, including gaita de boto drones, wooden flutes, and other native woodwinds. Combined with Gregorian chant, these acoustic sources construct the dense textural landscape of the piece.

Folklore is not used as ornamentation, but as narrative raw material. Crafting sonic identities that are inseparable from the geography, culture, and psychology of the worlds they inhabit.

Built around an additive 30/8 meter, the score combines industrial percussion, orchestral impacts, distorted drum machines and rural Foley recorded in the agricultural workshops of a family farm. Its rhythmic architecture is tactically shaped to preserve dialogue intelligibility while reinforcing dramatic momentum and visual synchronization.

Atmospheric synthesis, sparse orchestral gestures and abrasive electronic textures are interwoven with a recurring nyckelharpa motif, reflecting the protagonists' vulnerability and emotional isolation. Original Foley and field recordings captured in a rural scrapyard contribute to the tactile materiality of the soundtrack.

Rather than separating music and sound design, both operate as a unified narrative layer. The score emerges from the environment itself, reinforcing the film’s core themes of survival, uncertainty and human fragility while remaining intentionally restrained. Carefully placed silences and tactical reductions in density allow the music to follow the dramatic pacing and visual cues without competing with the dialogue, instead entering into a subtle conversation with the characters on screen.

While the sound design maintains micro-synchronization with the visual action, the music is guided by dramatic segmentation based on narrative vectors, considerably more detailed than the global scoring approach of the original trailer, avoiding the effect of background music.

A common musical language runs throughout both trailers through recurring melodic, harmonic and timbral material. Metric and modal changes are used to adapt to the narrative. The instrumentation evolves between cosmic horror, intimate and emotional textures, and hybrid orchestral layers that build towards the final epic scale. A melodic synthetic brass acts as the main connective thread, changing in function and prominence as the narrative evolves. It also serves as a sonic identity element for the logos.

The sound redesign combines processed library material, original Foley and synthesis, together with multiple combinations of these sources through layering, all synchronized with the visual action.

The Cold Open from The Rise of Jun Aslan was moved to the beginning and connected with Mara-Yama and the remainder of the trailer to create a new audiovisual continuity from the official footage. The original dialogue was extracted, edited and re-synchronized for the new cut.

Musical material from the companion EXODUS trailer rescore is reused and reworked for the gameplay sequence, creating continuity between the two pieces while allowing the material to evolve into a more adaptive musical context.

The score is organized around functional and incremental musical layers designed to respond to changing gameplay states, from exploration and enemy encounters to spectral processing, portal interaction and boss combat. Musical density can increase, decrease or transform according to the gameplay context while maintaining a coherent musical identity.

Distinct musical states define changes in musical behaviour while preserving continuity across the sequence. Exploration establishes the base musical layer, combat introduces additional rhythmic and harmonic material, and specific states progressively transform the musical texture to reflect changes in the game world and gameplay intensity.

Short musical events and state-specific stingers are designed to respond to particular gameplay behaviours and dramatic events. Boss stingers interact rhythmically and harmonically with the underlying score, functioning as recurring musical elements rather than isolated cinematic effects.

The soundscape was rebuilt alongside the music, combining processed library material, synthesis and layered sound design. Environmental, reactive and state-specific elements reinforce the physicality and behaviour of the gameplay while remaining integrated with the musical system.

Original dialogue was extracted from the official gameplay footage and edited within the redesigned audiovisual sequence, preserving the original narrative information while allowing the new music and sound design to follow the gameplay structure.

The musical architecture was designed as a conceptual middleware-ready system, with DAW-based material organized into functional layers and states suitable for subsequent implementation in an interactive audio middleware environment.

Built around a constant underlying pulse, the score maintains a constant tempo throughout to preserve narrative continuity across successive scenes. Expressive evolution is instead driven by continuous meter and modal shifts, allowing the musical language to evolve organically with each scene while preserving the sensation of a single uninterrupted musical journey. This structural approach enables the score to closely follow the trailer's evolving visual narrative without sacrificing cohesion.

A deliberately restrained orchestration combines acoustic instruments, analogue synthesis and a minimal palette of percussion. Rather than following stylistic convention, instrumentation is driven by narrative purpose: each element contributes a distinct expressive role, balancing physical presence, territorial openness and biomechanical identity while preserving a unified sonic language throughout the piece.

Rather than assigning separate themes to individual sequences, the score develops a small collection of recurring musical ideas whose expressive meaning continuously evolves alongside the visual narrative. Original Foley and sound design reinforce Corleo's interaction with terrain, vegetation and water, creating a coherent sonic identity that supports the constant dialogue between movement, exploration and contemplation.

The composition moves from environmental presence and discovery towards a progressively clearer relationship between the human observer and the giant. Rather than portraying the giant as an external threat, the music treats it as an ancient presence embedded within the landscape. The narrative culminates in the convergence of both musical voices.

A continuous 7/8 pulse provides the underlying physical behaviour of the piece. Its internal subdivision begins as 3+2+2 and is later inverted to 2+2+3, preserving the same meter while changing the perceived directional impulse of the movement. The harmonic language is centred on G harmonic minor, with the raised seventh used selectively as a point of increased tension and gravitational pull.

The same melodic material is successively voiced by contrasting instruments, establishing a dialogue between the human figure and the giant. The human voice is represented by a more fragile and intimate string colour, while the giant is progressively associated with a deeper and more massive timbral presence. At the climax, both voices sound simultaneously, transforming the dialogue into a moment of recognition and coexistence.

Acoustic chamber instrumentation and electronic textures are deliberately contrasted rather than blended into a homogeneous hybrid palette. The orchestral material provides organic, archaic and human qualities, while the electronics contribute depth, atmosphere, resonance and monumental scale. Their interaction forms the core of the contemporary Epic Fantasy language of the piece.

Spatial positioning is treated compositionally across both panorama and register. Surrounding string motion, a central melodic axis, diffuse atmospheric layers and progressively expanding low-frequency mass create a three-dimensional sonic environment that mirrors the different perceptual scales of the artwork.

Different sonic layers operate at contrasting perceptual scales, from the breath-like presence of the bansuri and small electronic details to the mass of the strings, brass and surrounding atmospheric textures. The aim is not to represent the visual elements literally, but to make audible the relationships between fragility, scale, movement and ancient presence contained within the artwork.