Dead Space 2 Soundtrack

Dead Space 2 Soundtrack, Jason Graves, 2011

“The Same. But Different. Yet Better.” According to Jason Graves, those were the words he pinned above his monitor while composing Dead Space 2. Given the success of Dead Space’s audio – two BAFTAs and a level of media attention few game scores ever receive – his goal was clearly an ambitious one. Then again, for all the ferocity of the first game’s soundtrack, there was room for improvement. Graves’ breakthrough score was the equivalent of a horror film trying to scare its audience through jump scare after jump scare. At a certain point, watching monsters hurl themselves at the protagonist for yet another “boo!” effect simply grows wearying.

Fortunately, Graves corrects that problem and several others in the Dead Space 2 soundtrack. It is still unmistakably the score to a very frightening game. But through a more varied approach to unease and immersion, Dead Space 2 clearly surpasses its predecessor. It offers a surprisingly multifaceted exploration of the dark corridors of a haunted space station and of its protagonist Isaac Clarke’s disintegrating mind.

Graves’ inventiveness and his improved judgement about how best to maximise emotional effect make themselves felt immediately in “Isaac, Are You There?”. Here he introduces a crucial ingredient that allows the music to register far more forcefully than before: contrast. As Graves himself put it, “It’s the tonal versus the non-tonal, the calm versus the chaos.” Accordingly, “Isaac, Are You There?” opens with the mournful sound of a string quartet whose hold on tonality soon begins to collapse, giving way to tortured dissonance.

Arguably, the string quartet does not appear all that often in the Dead Space 2 soundtrack compared with the score’s more traditional horror machinery. Yet these introspective passages are vital to the album’s pacing, and they never fail to impress. They are emotionally affecting, deeply creepy, and communicate Isaac’s loneliness with real tenderness. The first Dead Space had little more to offer than the threat of someone being consumed by the terrifying unknown. Dead Space 2, by contrast, makes us care about that someone.

That emotional involvement is also built into the improved pacing of the score’s acidic action material. Consider “Titan Station Elementary”, included on the Collector’s Edition soundtrack. Its strategy – opening with something wholly non-horrific, a children’s song, and then slowly dragging that innocence towards terror – is hardly unprecedented. But this measured method is exactly where Dead Space 2 triumphs over Dead Space and its near-constant hyperactivity.

These dynamic contrasts are helped enormously by the fact that Graves’ writing for quieter piano passages has improved substantially since Dead Space. Here, the calmer stretches are genuinely mesmerising and retain enough eeriness that the listener’s attention never slackens. “The Cassini Towers” needs only echoing bell strikes to shape an unfathomable space before voices intensify the cue’s unsettled atmosphere. Disembodied singing and whispered, indistinct words heard from uncomfortably close range evoke a tangible yet uncontrollable dread that finally erupts into violent orchestral outburst.

These engrossing islands of relative calm form the foil against which the frenzy of Dead Space 2’s action cues can unfold to even greater effect. Isaac may be fragile, but this time he is more in control than he was in the first game. Consequently, the action music is less chaotic and more rhythmically focused than before. In Dead Space, the score often produced a head-spinning effect by seeming to lurch in several directions at once. Here, the rhythmic foundations are steadier and more dominant, giving the music a clearer forward drive. Dead Space 2’s action cues feel like hammers wrapped in barbed wire, barbaric unison rhythms striking again and again with merciless force.

That kind of rhythmic focus has become a hallmark of much anæmic contemporary soundtrack writing. Graves’ immense achievement here is that he makes this mode of pounding action music genuinely exciting. Often, his combat cues have the confidence simply to trust in the brutal impact of their rhythms. The key to their success is that the chords hammered out by the orchestra with such manic insistence are fiercely dissonant and physically visceral. If this music no longer dazzles in the same way as its predecessor, its single-mindedness is in fact more compelling. Rather than constantly trying to batter the listener senseless with disorienting orchestral mayhem, Graves is content to do more with less – and he does so with brutal effectiveness.

And when a funereal statement of Isaac’s theme closes the Collector’s Edition version of “Lacrimosa” – one of Western game music’s most emotionally and harmonically complex pieces – Graves shows that he has finally put every part of the puzzle into its proper place. The Dead Space 2 soundtrack emerges both terrifying and emotionally devastating. It is an achievement of rare maturity, and easily the high point of Graves’ career.