Eldest Souls: Original Game Soundtrack

Lakeshore Records releases Eldest Souls—Original Game Soundtrack featuring the score debut by London-based, Spanish & Italian composer and sound designer Sergio Ronchetti. The darkly melancholic orchestrated score is redolent of both Ronchetti’s classical training as well as his love of all things metal from his days touring as a heavy metal bassist. It’s a dramatic, combative musical backdrop to the envelope-pushing pixel art, boss rush, “Souls-like” video game. Developed by Fallen Flag Studio, Eldest Souls will be available via publishers, United Label, on July 29.

Explaining his approach to scoring the game, Ronchetti said, “Eldest Souls has two very distinct messages that needed conveying: the brutal, fast-paced combat and the ideas of loneliness and hope. The former was represented by each boss fight’s theme, matching personality and attitude. But since the gameplay music is limited to these combat encounters, I wanted to write a piece of music to tie the soundtrack together and give the perspective of mankind and our protagonist.”

Ronchetti created the Eldest Souls “Main Theme” track to counterbalance his more aggressive boss encounter tracks: “The ‘Main Theme’ stands out from all the rest. I love post-minimalism ideals in music and I was very happy to be able to achieve this with live vocals and cello, which made all the difference. The repeating vocal melody serves as mankind’s unfaltering, yet desperate pursuit of victory, in the face of destruction.”

Following centuries of servitude, Man finally rebelled against the Old Gods, imprisoning these colossal calamities within the sacred walls of the Citadel. But an evil stirred within… In a final act of vengeance, the Old Gods have unleashed a great Desolation upon the world. Mankind is fading, with but a glimmer of hope remaining. Heavy is the burden that lies on one lone Warrior. Armed with a greatsword… of the purest Obsydian.

ABOUT SERGIO RONCHETTI
London-based, Spanish & Italian composer and sound designer Sergio Ronchetti boldly crafts scores dwelling within realms of dusky depth, mercurial mood, and aggressive execution, drawing upon his background in heavy metal and combining his lyrical tastes with more traditional, orchestral compositional techniques for a truly singular signature style.

Sergio’s debut score for the 2021 pixel-art, boss-rush, “Souls-like” video game Eldest Souls captures the lonely and desolate melancholy of the game world while also providing vigorous, combative battle music matching the intensity of the challenging gameplay and capturing the personality and essence of each iconic boss fight. He cites artists like Trivium, Machine Head, and Gojira as direct references to his Eldest Souls score - even if his instrumentations are far removed from theirs.

The up-and-coming creative’s music path began in high school where he spent his lunch breaks jamming Metallica songs with friends and trying to recreate Cliff Burton solos with cheap distortion pedals and cheesy power stances.

With no formal musical education, Sergio decided he wanted to become a rock star instead of going to university and joined a metal band at 18 years old as a bassist, eventually touring overseas, writing albums, getting endorsements, playing festivals, and going through countless terrible haircuts. After about four years, having had enough of travelling, sleepless nights, and living his rockstar fantasies, he finally applied for a music degree in London.

Whilst studying, he met collaborators and Eldest Souls game creators Jonathan Costantini and Francesco Barsotti at a free workshop where they were showcasing a very early beta of the game. Sergio was the only one to defeat their ridiculously imbalanced demo boss (which he’s pretty sure is how he got the gig in the first place) and from then on started writing music and designing the sounds for the video game.

Since that day, Sergio began completely immersing himself in game audio and what it took to work in video games, having no idea that a publisher was going to pick up the title and fund their debut IP. Education then took less priority with Jonathan and Francesco dropping out to focus on development full time. Roughly 3 years later, after countless conventions, demos, interviews, and hours of eyestrain behind a computer screen, they got their release date.

Although Sergio’s degree took him down a more classical music path, he still references metal music and guitar as his main influence, still pouring all his teenage angst and pent-up anger into every piece of music he writes. Whether it be orchestral or electronic, his bass guitar is always in some way still involved in his writing or recording.

Sergio’s ambition is to keep leaning into his heavier influences and see how far he can push the modern, aggressive, orchestral sound.

ABOUT LAKESHORE RECORDS
Lakeshore Records is a four-time Grammy Nominated record label, and the soundtrack arm of the Cutting Edge Group. Lakeshore Records is the global independent leader in top line soundtrack album releases, including such popular, critically acclaimed and classic soundtracks as Bridgerton, Drive, Stranger Things, The Old Guard, Cyberpunk 2077, When They See Us, The Handmaid's Tale, Black Mirror, Star Trek: Picard, Bojack Horseman, Les Miserables, Mandy, Narcos, Logan, The Walking Dead, Napoleon Dynamite, Bill and Ted Face the Music, Red Dead Redemption 2, Legion, the Academy Award nominated Lady Bird and Academy Award winners Moonlight, Little Miss Sunshine, American Factory, If Beale Street Could Talk and The Hurt Locker and many, many more.

Lakeshore Records works with the most respected, award-winning artists and composers such as Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, Mary J. Blige, Hans Zimmer, Grimes, Common, Jonny Greenwood, Mica Levi, Willie Nelson, Alexandre Desplat, Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, Run the Jewels, PJ Harvey, Philip Glass, Aloe Blacc, Willie Nelson, Rhiannon Ghiddens, Daniel Lanois, Nicholas Britell, Ziggy Marley, Danny Elfman, Giorgio Moroder, Aska Matsumiya, Clint Mansell, Bootsie Collins, Thomas Newman, Kris Bowers, Cliff Martinez, Randy Newman, James Horner, Gunship, Mark Isham, Kathryn Bostic, Carter Burwell, Rolfe Kent, Josh Homme, Gustavo Santaolalla, Nina Kraviz, Dario Marianelli, Mark Mothersbaugh, The JBs, Gazelle Twin, Christophe Beck, Rachel Portman, Amanda Jones and many many more.

As a full-service boutique record label, Lakeshore Records remains dedicated to supporting a diverse roster of world-class talent, providing top-to-bottom music services & solutions, developing innovative marketing strategies & brand partnerships, hyper-specialized artist relations & development, and crafting the greatest records in the world.