Lair Soundtrack

Lair Soundtrack, John Debney / Kevin Kaska, 2007

The dichotomy of “bad game, great music” has rarely presented itself more starkly than in the case of Lair. A much-hyped PlayStation 3 title, Lair crashed and burned because of its unwieldy control scheme. In the end, probably the only worthwhile things to emerge from the wreckage were the game’s gorgeous visuals and its excellent music. Written by film-score veteran John Debney with support from Kevin Kaska, the Lair soundtrack quickly drew praise from game music reviewers. Soon enough, the music had earned such acclaim that soundtrack fans began clamouring for a complete release. Their pleas were answered in 2014, when La-La Land Records issued a two-disc edition of the Lair soundtrack with improved sound, rendering the earlier iTunes release superfluous.

In one sense, it is hardly surprising that Debney and Kaska’s work turned out so well. Debney had already demonstrated his gift for outstanding orchestral action writing on Cutthroat Island – ironically, another financial disaster. Developer Factor 5 wanted the game’s fantasy narrative to have a cinematic, widescreen feel, which led to Debney being hired to provide a suitably grand score. In several interviews, he spoke of how much he enjoyed the creative freedom the project afforded him. With the budget to record a full orchestra and several soloists at Abbey Road Studios, Debney made the most of the opportunity, crafting a score that functions both as a love letter to the fantasy genre and as an homage to his own inspirations – John Williams, Jerry Goldsmith, James Horner, Basil Poledouris, and others. As Debney puts it in the album’s liner notes, his aim was to write “Star Wars meets Conan”.

That the influence of those composers is so keenly felt throughout the Lair soundtrack has long been the most common criticism levelled at Debney and Kaska’s work. Yes, stylistically this is a derivative score, with Williams’ Star Wars prequel music casting a particularly long shadow. But that same issue did not stop Michael Giacchino’s Medal of Honor from becoming a game music classic. In the end, what Debney and Kaska achieve here is a convincing emulation of some of the greatest film composers at work in this idiom.

In fact, the Lair soundtrack contains some of the best orchestral action music ever written for a video game. More than a dozen battle cues, packed with frantic orchestral activity, form the roaring centrepiece of the album. Beginning with “Breaking the Ice”, Debney and Kaska unleash one extraordinarily dense and powerful orchestral powerhouse after another. This is clearly music by two composers who know exactly how to exploit the orchestra’s full resources.

What is especially impressive is how these displays of flurrying noise and fury never collapse into the kind of empty bombast that action game music so often becomes. Debney and Kaska build their battle cues from a multitude of short but consistently engaging melodic and rhythmic phrases. That approach allows the game’s audio engine to cut up the music as needed. At the same time, the score still flows purposefully outside the game and never lacks direction or substance. Put simply, the excitement and adrenaline rush never let up for a second.

The fierce battle cues are further strengthened by the exemplary thematic density Debney and Kaska establish. Debney provides three primary themes for Lair. The first belongs to the game’s protagonist, dragon rider Rohn. It carries a predictable but always effective sense of noble heroism, although its nearly pastoral presentation in “Rohn’s Theme” is arguably more intriguing. The theme for the antagonist, the Diviner, is equally unsurprising yet undeniably powerful: a brassy march of extraordinary force. Lastly, there is the solemn theme for the ancient Mokai civilisation, divided into two phrases.

Together with a number of subsidiary motifs, these ideas swirl constantly through the action material. They provide the melodic guidance that holds this centrifuge of raw orchestral energy together. Everything comes to a head in “Battle for Asylia”. A jaw-droppingly intense confrontation between Rohn’s and the Diviner’s themes, “Battle for Asylia” more than earns the term “epic”.

This is, indeed, an unremittingly heavy and self-serious score. Everything unfolds on a relentlessly gigantic scale, with hardly a moment of levity in sight. Thankfully, Debney and Kaska excel at more than just battle writing. As sequenced on the La-La Land release, the Lair soundtrack alternates between frenzied outbursts and calmer interludes. The resulting album pace may be predictable, but it could hardly work better – which is true of so much on Lair.

While Debney and Kaska’s slower pieces are every bit as grandiose as their frenetic counterparts, albeit in quieter form, they explore more emotionally complex territory. The standout is “Love Theme”, an impassioned string adagio of near-religious intensity that recalls Miklós Rózsa. “Prologue” and “Lair Main Menu” perform important acts of world-building, with the former in particular creating a potent musical image of the game’s barren yet awe-inspiring landscapes. Much-needed moments of introspection arrive in “The Search for Food” and “The Last Straw / Campfire Discussion”. Both tracks highlight the contributions of ethnic instruments – duduk and erhu – alongside Lisbeth Scott’s heartfelt vocals. These elements do not evoke a specific location or culture, as they do in Debney’s The Passion of the Christ. Instead, they summon a more general sense of ancient otherworldliness. More importantly, they lend Lair’s somewhat stereotypical fantasy stylings a welcome degree of character and intimacy.

Ultimately, these more reflective cues create a coherent world and narrative for the action material to inhabit, giving the conflicts raging across the battle tracks a sense of purpose. And so, when “Epilogue” concludes with a hair-raisingly intense, titanic flourish, the moment genuinely lands as the triumphant culmination of what has indeed been a monumental adventure.