Music
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| The original promotional CD. | |
Oni's soundtrack is a mix of symphonic/cinematic, electronic/techno, and atmospheric/ambient pieces. As for the question of who composed it, these are the names credited on the back of the CD, but see below for an in-depth investigation:
| “ | Martin O'Donnell, Michael Salvatori - TotalAudio Paul Sebastien - Power of Seven |
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TotalAudio
TotalAudio is a music and sound production company founded by Martin O'Donnell and Michael Salvatori, apparently incorporated officially under the name O'Donnell/Salvatori Inc. The company was contracted to score Bungie's games starting with Myth: The Fallen Lords. In 2000, Marty would join Bungie as an employee, but TotalAudio continues to operate (at least for the purpose of copyright maintenance and royalty collection) while O'Donnell and Salvatori have individually gone on to compose for various games.
As for the music written for Oni, O'Donnell stated in this interview that he personally composed the half of the soundtrack which Power of Seven did not. It's not clear if Salvatori did any composition for Oni. In the same interview, Salvatori is referred to as a producer and engineer working with O'Donnell, not as a composer, but then again, the interview happened three years after Oni released. O'Donnell seemed to take credit for "Oni Anime" and "Farewell" on his mp3.com artist page. When O'Donnell released the Oni soundtrack on Bandcamp for a short while, the sheet music for "Hurry" was included as an extra, credited to O'Donnell/Salvatori Inc. but not either specific person. Since O'Donnell and Salvatori worked closely at times, we do not attempt to distinguish who composed which piece in the table at bottom.
Based on findings by Odyssey Sound Team, who are recreating unreleased music that was produced by TotalAudio for Oni and other games, certain tracks can be assigned to TotalAudio based on the same synthesized instruments being used for Halo CE. These tracks include Searching and The Hunt, as well as the music in the amasian and xgrv OSBDs (named by fans as "Up and Away" and "Porn Groove"). The unused Halo CE tracks HERE and HERE use the same samples as Searching, The Hunt, and "Porn Groove". The Hunt also shares samples with Perchance to Dream and A Walk in the Woods. "Up and Away" also shares samples with Perchance to Dream.
Power of Seven
The name echoes Bungie's "cult" of the number 7, but Power of Seven was an independent digital music content publisher founded in Minnesota and headed by Paul Sebastien. Bungie fans also know them for producing the opening themes to Marathon 2: Durandal and Marathon Infinity.
In 1996, Power of Seven was acquired by audio company Headspace, Inc. and the studio was relocated to Headspace's HQ in San Mateo, California. In 1999, Headspace renamed themselves Beatnik, Inc. (The California company which currently creates meditation audio programs under the name Headspace is unrelated.) Beatnik became defunct in 2011.
The "trio"
Although the original entity known as Power of Seven ceased to exist when it was integrated into Headspace, Paul Sebastien was allowed to use the name for contracted work outside of the Headspace business. When Oni's upcoming soundtrack first began to get some press, this article from spring 2000 called Power of Seven a "trio, consisting of musicians NVerse, Brian Salter and Kim Cascone."
Cascone is a famous experimental electronic composer, and his work is way more avant-garde than what you'd expect to hear in a game, though he did score Obsidian, a 1997 surrealist puzzle game. Cascone briefly mentioned that he was working on "sound design for a Japanese anime game" at the end of this 1998 interview, which he confirmed by email in 2022 to have been Oni, however he referred to his contributions as "spec work" and didn't think that his "sound design" was used in the final game.
Salter, who has composed for other games, also released his own album called "Missing Scenes (1997-2005)" under the artist name Plektric in 2005. The following tracks are very clearly alternate versions of tracks from Oni:
- 1. Furies (Konoko Chase)
- 4. Two New Villains (Whirled Piece)
- 5. Ellipse (Oni Fever, aka Strikers)
- 6. Mr. Bailout (East Wind)
- 7. Drop Zone (Pursuit)
Salter released additional alternate versions of two of these pieces on Smartsound.com: Terminus (Konoko Chase) and Crucial Dossier (Whirled Piece).
"NVerse" was apparently an alias for Paul Sebastien. In 2023, Sebastien confirmed by email that he created Trailer as well as other possibly unreleased tracks. Sebastien was also a founder of the techno band Psykosonik; over the course of the band's existence (1992–1997), four of their electronic dance songs charted in the Billboard Top 40, but they only released two albums. The style of Trailer resembles the output from his band, as exemplified by songs like Teknojihad and Killjoy.
Tentative attribution
Based on the styles of the musicians, their public statements, private correspondence with them, and their released music, we can confidently attribute some tracks and speculate on the rest:
| # | Name | Composer |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Oni Anime | O'Donnell/Salvatori |
| 2 | Trailer | Sebastien |
| 3 | East Wind | Salter |
| 4 | Searching | O'Donnell/Salvatori |
| 5 | Pursuit | Salter |
| 6 | Loss | O'Donnell/Salvatori |
| 7 | Hurry | O'Donnell/Salvatori |
| 8 | Fight | Sebastien or Salter |
| 9 | Ambient Suite | Cascone or Salter? |
| 10 | Internal Space | Salter? |
| 11 | Farewell | O'Donnell/Salvatori |
| 12 | Konoko Chase | Salter |
| 13 | Oni Fever | Salter |
| 14 | The Hunt | O'Donnell/Salvatori |
| 15 | Whirled Piece | Salter |
| 16 | End Titles | O'Donnell/Salvatori |
| -- | No One Left to Trust (bonus) | Salter |
When it comes to the ambient tracks (collected here), attribution for the ones starting with "atm_" remain a mystery. However, about nine days before the press release that named the Power of Seven "trio" who would be making music for the game, Paul Sebastien stated in an interview (now lost) that Power of Seven would also be making "atmospheric ambient" tracks for the game. We can say that the tracks starting with "mus_" are largely or entirely written by O'Donnell, which we can say because five out of nine are reused from Myth I/II and another one (amasian or "Up and Away") shares the same synthesized instruments as his work on Halo (see "TotalAudio" section above).