Sabre Team Soundtrack (Atari ST)

Sabre Team Soundtrack (Atari ST), Matt Furniss, 1992

During the second half of the 1980s and into the 1990s, video games starring burly soldiers defending the Western way of life were everywhere – and we can at least partly thank Rambo: First Blood Part II and the wave of imitators that followed. By 1992, however, the formula needed some adjustment if it was still to generate excitement, so Krisalis Software made the smart decision to turn Sabre Team into a turn-based strategy game. Players assemble a squad of four elite soldiers, making careful use of limited action points to move them across isometric maps and attack enemies. Details such as the amount of noise produced by different weapons and the weight of their ammunition added a surprising degree of realism, helping to make Sabre Team one of the Atari ST’s finest strategy titles.

As one would expect from a Krisalis title, Matt Furniss provided the Sabre Team soundtrack – or rather, its various incarnations across multiple platforms. Most multi-format releases of the period presented essentially the same score in different sonic guises. With Sabre Team, Furniss took a more ambitious route. On the Amiga, he pushed the machine’s sound capabilities with a largely atmospheric, texture-driven score that conjured a gritty urban environment. That innovative approach yielded an intriguing soundtrack, though not always a wholly gripping one, since the ambiences were not consistently compelling enough to sustain the tracks’ considerable length.

Of the various platforms that received Sabre Team, the Atari ST was easily the most sonically limited. Simply downgrading the Amiga score would have made little sense, since there was not much melodic material for the ST version to latch onto. Furniss therefore wrote a different soundtrack for this release – though, to be clear, it is not confirmed whether the Amiga or Atari ST score came first. It is considerably shorter than the Amiga soundtrack, but that turns out to be one of its strengths. Nor is it any less resourceful a work, as Furniss finds exactly the right balance between rhythmic drive, inventive melodic writing and convincing atmosphere.

If anything unites the first three tracks of the Atari ST Sabre Team soundtrack, it is a sense of controlled agitation and nervous restraint – exactly right for what is effectively a stealth game. Many scores in this vein struggle to turn their necessarily subdued nature into compelling listening and simply fade into the background. Furniss elegantly avoids that trap, crafting chiptune compositions of quiet complexity and subtle sophistication. His densely layered rhythms push the music forwards as expected, but they also generate syncopated, surprising patterns that complicate its momentum. The melodies are assured without ever becoming swaggering; instead, they move warily, often by way of unexpected intervals. “Track 02” makes especially strong use of the contrast between chunky, rhythmically intricate beats and a sneaking lead melody. The generally languid pace of these melodic lines also allows Furniss to develop them at length, something he does to deeply satisfying effect on “Track 01”.

The Atari ST may be unable to reproduce the Amiga’s sampled atmospherics, but that does not mean this version of the Sabre Team soundtrack lacks scope. “Track 01” begins with ominous bass drones and a nervously rising and falling arpeggio, only gradually introducing melody and rhythm, thereby setting the scene for the espionage mission in properly cinematic fashion. “Track 03” is more enigmatic still, opening with calm yet tense high-pitched sustained notes enhanced by beautiful vibrato effects. It is a fitting beginning to a taut, pressing cue that takes real pleasure in tweaking the conventions of chiptune action music. Listen to how, at 0:54, the melody twists into a distorted, almost collapsing line before trailing away on a dissonant final note. Furniss then cleverly hints at the arrival of a more reassuring melodic lead that never actually materialises.

There is no doubt that this is action-game music, but of a kind that never breaks into straightforward heroism, preferring instead to keep player and listener alike on edge through perfectly judged ebb and flow. This even applies to the two tracks that appear to underscore victory. “Track 04” initially seems to echo the opening of “Track 01”, but then shifts into a more upbeat mode that at first feels like a break from the rest of the soundtrack. Yet tension remains embedded in the cue’s unpredictable melodic turns and in the way its agitated arpeggios continue to simmer just beneath the optimistic surface.

Even the seemingly relaxed, contented mood of “Track 05” is soon undermined. Its introspective lead melody suddenly moves into chromatic, uneasy harmonies that give it a hollow, eerie quality. Insistent staccato figures repeatedly interrupt the line, before the cue closes on a sequence of sustained, vibrating notes that leave both emotional and narrative resolution suspended. Such an open-ended, fascinating conclusion suits this fiercely inventive score perfectly – a soundtrack unafraid to subvert expectations and genre convention, much like the game itself.