Jon Everist says the obvious choice for his soundtrack for BattleTech would have been pounding synths and walls of guitars, but since the game's story is so well written by the team at the studio Harebrained Schemes, it allowed Jon to really bring out the emotions of the characters

Kate's conversation with Jon

BattleTech is a timeless story of a ruler, High Lady Kamea Arano, who's been dethroned in a coup and gathers a band of mercenaries to reclaim the power that's rightfully hers. Jon says he approached scoring the cutscenes in the game as if he were writing for an intense, multi-part drama.

Although the budget for his soundtrack wasn't huge, Jon made the most of it by planning which cues he wanted to record with orchestras, soloists and a chorus, and he was able to reuse those recordings by blending them with synths, and with his homemade "franken-string," created from a cheap violin and some unusual parts from the hardware store.

Jon's BattleTech soundtrack is available on Bandcamp, and he's offering a generous discount code for Music Respawn listeners! Just enter the code musicrespawn2018.

Episode tracklist

All tracks by Jon Everist, performed by Erika Kadi, cello; Emily Ridgeway, vocal soloist; Budapest Symphonic Scoring Orchestra; Brandenburg State Orchestra Frankfurt; and the Latvian Radio Choir

BattleTech: Cost of War; I Didin't Know; Coronation Day; Remember Me; The Vast Expanse; Mercenary Blues; Raju; Vox Nihili; Past as Prologue; Who Will Watch the Watchers; For All Mankind (cinematic opening)

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Thanks to Dick Roberts for production assistance