Formula 1 Soundtrack

Formula 1 Soundtrack, Mike Clarke / Stuart Ellis, 1996

If you were developing a racing game in the mid-1990s, there apparently seemed to be little choice but to score it with electronic beats. Few companies understood that rule better than Psygnosis. After all, they had helped write it with the enormously successful Wipeout franchise. Those games did more than almost any other title of their time to push video game soundtracks into the mainstream.

With that in mind, it is surprising that 1996’s Formula 1 received a straight-ahead, pure-bred hard rock / metal score instead. The minds behind this revved-up beauty of a soundtrack were Mike Clarke and Stuart Ellis. While Ellis joined the project as a session guitarist, Clarke’s name will be more familiar to game music enthusiasts. As Psygnosis’ sound director, he had worked largely on Amiga titles before making the leap into the CD-console era. He would later return for the less remarkable Formula One 99. More useful points of comparison for Formula 1, however, are Clarke’s work on Lifeforce Tenka and Destruction Derby Raw.

All three scores are guitar-driven eruptions of instrumental force. But the Formula 1 soundtrack does not pursue the grime and grit of the lesser Destruction Derby Raw, nor the processed, haunted atmosphere of Lifeforce Tenka. Instead, its pristine instrumental timbres and the technical exactitude of its hundred-notes-a-minute guitar solos mirror the immaculate, high-tech precision of the racing cars this music accompanies.

Psygnosis also licensed music by guitar virtuosos Steve Vai and Joe Satriani for the Formula 1 soundtrack. That naturally meant the pressure was on the company’s in-house musicians to match such instrumental prowess. Thankfully, Stuart Ellis proves more than capable of meeting the note-shredding standards set by those guitar gods. At the same time, Formula 1 never degenerates into a hollow display of technical fireworks.

“Track 1” opens proceedings with rock-solid, crunchy hard-rock riffing and an easy confidence of groove. Its bluesy feel may be something of a rarity on the album, but it eases the listener in smoothly. “Track 7” later revisits a similar groove-rock mode. This is metal confident enough to trust a great riff and let it do the work. Of course, there is no shortage of guitar showmanship during the solos.

“Track 2” and “Track 11” are more urgent affairs. The music accelerates, and images of racing cars tearing along at impossible speeds become hard to suppress. Ellis once again shows that his riffs are every bit as strong as his solos. Like several other cues, “Track 2” briefly slows to catch its breath at the start of its final third, before flooring the accelerator for a furious finale.

When fast cars and hard rock come together, it is difficult not to think of “Highway Star”. And indeed, “Track 3” carries unmistakable shades of Deep Purple. A Hammond organ adds not only colour and character, but also underlines the influence of Ritchie Blackmore’s playing on Formula 1’s sound. Judas Priest, Iron Maiden, and Van Halen are other valid points of reference that mark the Formula 1 soundtrack as a first-rate representative of classic heavy metal.

Things get more intense still with “Track 4”, whose solos tear into the cue with hair-raising intensity. More interesting still is the central riff: a rhythmically tricky yet unexpectedly grooving showstopper that may be the album’s single most inventive musical idea. It repeatedly trades places with monolithic jackhammer riffing, backed by the album’s first pronounced use of double-bass drums. True, the drumming and bass work on Formula 1 attract less attention than the guitar pyrotechnics. Yet their rhythmic support is never anything less than flawless, and it sustains the album’s exuberant energy at every turn.

After the heaviness of the preceding tracks, “Track 5” is a welcome breather. With its carefree attitude, it barrels down the track with a broad grin on its face. Naturally, there is still room for lightning-fast guitar solos leading into a huge, euphoric finale. That surge of exhilaration is followed by the soundtrack’s most inventive concoction, “Track 6”. Here, Clarke and Ellis prove their versatility by introducing funk elements that are just as energetic as their rock writing, but lighter on their feet. The cue’s masterstroke is the way it electronically chops up its guitar riffs during the B section, scattering fragments across the stereo field in a manner that cleverly echoes the track’s opening stuttering funk rhythms while taking them somewhere wholly unexpected.

The score’s other noteworthy genre experiment arrives with “Track 10”. A particularly sludgy riff and growling bass lines make this the soundtrack’s grimiest cue yet. Unexpectedly, Clarke and Ellis balance that low-end emphasis with swelling and tinkling synth pads. At first, as in “Track 9”, those sounds give the guitar solos an amorphous, cinemascope-sized backdrop, making them feel even larger than life. But “Track 10” goes further, dropping the guitars entirely in its middle section. In their place comes an unexpectedly atmospheric passage dominated by those whale-call synths, before the music crashes back into the grinding opening riff with fierce abandon. One could hardly ask for a more satisfying conclusion to one of game music’s finest metal scores.