“It was set in Victorian London,and if you go into the pubs in that game,you’ll hear murder ballads about your exploits,” Edgar explains their contribution. “That was a really fun gig.”
Other collaborations followed,including a score for a first-person shooter musical that,says Hall,“none of us could really get our head around”,but they mostly went nowhere. Until that is,Wintory began working with producer Liam Esler and writer David Gaider on the idea of a role-playing game where the soundtrack was the whole point of the exercise. And Wintory knew just the guys to pen some lyrics.
But Montaigne’s route to the Grammys was a little more straightforward.
“I put out a tweet a couple of years ago saying I would like to do some music for a game,and Summerfall saw it and got in touch,” she says. “They said,‘Your name came up in a meeting a couple of weeks ago anyway,so this is great news’.
“Honestly,it was as easy as that. They were already thinking of me. I wanted to do a game. It was a nice coincidence that it was an Australian one.”
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The project was born at the start of COVID. It took two years to complete,largely because of the complexity of marrying music and lyrics to a multiple-choice interactive storyline.
“It was a monster volume of work,” says Edgar. “There are maybe 12 to 15 songs in there,almost all of which are interactive,so for a three-and-a-half-minute song you’re writing 40 minutes of material. It’s nuts,man. If you saw the flow charts you’d get a nosebleed.”
“Austin likes to say there are millions of possible play-throughs of the game,” says Hall. “But within one song I can’t really say. Can we just leave it at ‘a lot’?”
COVID conditions meant that each of the five worked alone. “Although it’s Tripod,there’s significant differences within the pieces,you can tell who wrote what,” says Gates.
A bit like The Beatles’ White Album,then.
“Yes! Here’s hoping we’ve got anAbbey Road left in us.”
The Grammys will be the first time the five collaborators have all been together in the same room. Tripod did a run of shows last year,but right now they are meant to be on hiatus.
“The Grammys have f—ed the break-up,basically,” says Gates,adding this moment feels a little like Michael Corleone’s dilemma inThe Godfather.