Hadley's Run: A Starship Saga Soundtrack

1 & 2. Hadley's Run

Theme song

I decided to use a lot of D&B in the game. I love the drive and playfulness of the genre, and I think there's a huge gap for it in fast-paced gaming. Millennial me remembers the days in Uni when we would hit up underground D&B parties at Purple Turtle in Cape Town and Mystic Boer in Stellenbosch. There’s something magical about losing your kak (shit) on the dancefloor to those chaotic, fast-paced beats… you don’t have to think about the moves—you just lose it!

It’s definitely a genre that needs a resurgence. This was the first real D&B track I ever composed and produced, and it gave me the oomph to keep developing my skills and sticking with it.

3. Mandela's Meteor Mantra

Galaxy: New Jozi

This beat is inspired by Kwaito music, a genre that originated in the townships of South Africa. Any South African can tell you it's the most common beat you'll hear pumping from a minibus taxi or a tuck shop in Cape Town or Johannesburg.

The name comes from the Cape Afrikaans slang word "kwaai," which directly translates to "angry," but in slang, it means something is cool. If you didn't guess it already, the audio sample that's chopped up in this track is none other than Mr. Mandela himself.

4. 888

Galaxy: Ezstia
Feat. Juan Otto & Roman Gombraikh

This track features a deep dive video (see above)

This is by far my favourite combat track. I like dark things, I like ancient things... and I love the sound of the Russian language! I would say it's a combination of techno, tribal, trance, and EDM. The track has many different interesting elements, such as counting in Old Sumerian, a Russian speech, some throat singing, and even a Shiva mantra.

5. A Starship Saga

Galaxy: Nexus Xyro

A lazy track.

A kind of Cinematic "Neo-Western" or "Spiritual Western Trap".
Played a bit between darkness and light. I wanted the kind of “stick em up” shooter feel to the music. A whistle and a hum, some church organ for dramatic effect, a “lekker” laid back beat.

6. Opskop

Intense, hardcore, old-school D&B. This track probably has the most “chopped up” audio samples out of the entire soundtrack. I used many samples from the other tracks in the game to create a kind of “mash up”, and then added some new fun ones (including a little Afrikaans easter egg :)

Friend of mine compared it to old school “Prodigy”... though I wouldn't be so brave as to label it with that much prestige myself, it's a good reference for the 90s kids I guess.

Opskop (Afrikaans translation): "Op" - Up, "Skop" - Kick.

What is it?
A dance party.
A boozy, raucous, late-night dance party which, if you know Afrikaners, means there will also be a lot of fist-fighting amongst the boys.

7. Siya Koyisa

Galaxy: New Jozi

Siya Koyisa! - We will overcome!
First combat music I composed for the game.
Was basically shitting myself throughout the process as I had never composed a 10 minute hyped up electronic track before, I am also used to ProTools and Cubase and had to switch over to FL studios for the game so… did a thing that does its thing to the best of my abilities.Cudos to FL studios for making making composing music for games particularly.

8. Walkie Talkies

Galaxy: Nexus Xyro

Walkie Talkies: In our country, it's quite common to eat chicken feet and heads. They're best when boiled until soft, spiced, and then cooked on the “braai.” (If you don’t know what a braai is, Google it—I can’t spend half my OST description explaining the most important South African activity known to man.)
Anyway, we call this dish "walkie talkies" :)

This galaxy was always meant to have a quirky element, especially since it houses a church that worships a chicken god.

9. f=1t

Galaxy: Ezstia

So, NASA has a SoundCloud page :)

They’ve taken waves captured by their equipment—like Chorus radio waves and plasma emissions from Saturn—and sonified them.

The interrupted, random sounds hint at the presence of wormholes—or "holes in atoms"—opening gateways to other dimensions. Some are from the future, others from the past, and a few are echoes of distant worlds, leaking into this strange and ancient galaxy.

Added some of my own voice as well, and a little bit of classical music here and there.