Music

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	„

Subpages

Promotional soundtrack CD

In-game music data

Myth music in Oni

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 mus_amasian and mus_xgrv OSBDs (named by fans as "Up and Away" and "X-Groove"). The unused Halo CE tracks HERE and HERE use the same samples as Searching, The Hunt, and "X-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.

The ambient tracks starting with "mus_" (collected here) are probably written by O'Donnell/Salvatori, which we can say because five out of nine are reused from Myth I/II.

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."

"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 even though they only released two albums. The style of Trailer resembles the output from his band, as exemplified by songs like Teknojihad and Killjoy.

Brian 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).

When asked by email in 2023 about the bonus MP3 "No One Left to Trust", released as promotional material, Salter recognized it as his work.

The atmospheric ambient tracks in Oni starting with "atm_" (collected here), some of which were strung together to make the CD's Ambient Suite and some of which are only heard in-game, are quite different from the other music in Oni. However, about nine days before the press release that named the Power of Seven "trio" which 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. Some resemblance to Salter's atmospheric work for Headspace can be heard, for instance in Headspace Vol. 8's tracks Creeping Fear, Curious, Grandeur, Mystical and Quietude (note that these are recordings of RMF files, Headspace's proprietary MOD music format, so they are limited in terms of sonic complexity). The track Then The Moon Fell, from Salter's album "Missing Scenes", is another atmospheric piece. Although it is more structured than Oni's ambient pieces, the bell tones heard from 00:12–00:31 are a close match to the tones from 2:47–3:11 in Ambient Suite.

Kim Cascone is a famous experimental electronic composer, and his work (some of which can be found here) 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. Sebastien's recollection in 2023 was that Cascone's work was on "audio sound FX areas such as gunshots and foley sounds etc. primarily — not music".

Tentative attribution

The art used for Marty O'Donnell's Bandcamp re-release of the OST (no longer online).

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:

CD track	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	Salter?
9	Ambient Suite	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 MP3)	Salter
--	In-game ambient "atm_" tracks	Salter?
--	In-game ambient "mus_" tracks	O'Donnell/Salvatori
--	mus_amasian ("Up and Away")	O'Donnell/Salvatori
--	mus_xgrv1 ("X-Groove")	O'Donnell/Salvatori