Hello everyone!

This is a bit of an unusual share, so bear with me while I explain. As some of you may have gathered from my user title, I'm actually a game and film music composer myself, and I happen to be somewhat unusual as such because I'm actually on here about to openly provide you with the promo soundtrack to one of the projects I'm working on recently. Why? Because I acknowledge and appreciate piracy � people aren't going to know if my music is worth their time if they have to pay money to get it. So because of that, I'm more than happy to actually provide everyone who's interested with this promotional soundtrack from the project; I figure that if people enjoy what they hear in this package and are interested in listening to more, then they will be more inclined to support me with a future release of the full soundtrack.

So that's the "why", now for the "what". What you're reading about is the promotional soundtrack to a large-scale mod of Crysis called Lost World Returns. The mod isn't endorsed by Crytek yet (and has no affiliation or connection to the Jurassic Park franchise, despite the name), but we've been featured in PC Gamer magazine and have an absolutely brilliant team working on it, so you can expect a high quality product when we're done. Feel free to Google us.

As I've implied, all the music for this project was written, performed, and produced by yours truly, and I'm very happy with the material so far. I thought that the original soundtrack, by Inon Zur, was adequate and worked well in-game, but lacked a great deal of thematic content, richness, and overall appeal for listening outside the original setting. I expect this was a product of his design guidelines, but I mention it because my own music for this project goes in a significantly different direction. I was given complete freedom and encouraged to score the mod very cinematically, with an emphasis on sweeping themes, colourful orchestrations, instrumental diversity, and so on. So you should be able to spot that contrast fairly easily. The music is still primarily orchestral, with some negligible synth elements and guitar work in some of the action material. I've also made a few nods to Zur's original themes, just as a tiny token of appreciation to the original team for making the mod possible in the first place.

Just so you know, this entire package represents only a very small fraction of the amount of music written for the mod, and is intentionally made up of many shorter stingers rather than longer, more developed pieces, because this is meant more as a teaser and a "okay, if you like what you hear then please support me" kind of deal, as I said. So, without further ado, please take a listen below if I've piqued your interest and I truly hope that you enjoy my work so far!

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CRYSIS: LOST WORLD RETURNS
Promotional Teaser Album
Music Composed, Performed, and Produced by: Marius Masalar

Size: ~50MB unpacked
Format: 320kpbs (Mp3)

1 � Main Theme
2 � Military Underscore (Looping)
3 � Johann Marches In
4 � The Chase
5 � Sneaking About
6 � Deserted Corridors
7 � The Japanese Pavilion (Looping)
8 � Subtle Action Cue 1
9 � Compy Attack!
10 � Storming the Underwater Facility
11 � Submerged
12 � T-Rex Appears!
13 � Underwater Facility Fight
14 � Move Out!
15 � The Island

Crysis: Lost World Returns � Promotional Teaser Soundtrack (http://www.zshare.net/download/5124989331b1fc94/)

Wow man i will check this out, its nice to be able to talk to a fellow composer.

BTW can you tell me a bit on how you got started composing?

Just listened to Main Theme right now, sounds superior to the previous score to me. Probably a little Starship Trooper inspiration. Very good overall. Well done, sir. ;)

More comments this weekend. THX

@ Orange: I hope you enjoy it. :)

As for how I started...I used to take piano lessons, but they frustrated me because I wasn't playing what I wanted, so I got a new teacher that let me learn whatever and from there I used to listen to game music and learn to play it by ear. From there, I started making more and more elaborate piano arrangements until I was writing my own original stuff. Then I "graduated" from solo piano writing to larger ensembles and from then on it was pretty much just a matter of writing and more writing.

It's actually quite neat — my whole musical education has revolved around game and film music, and now I'm pursuing it as my own career. That's basically the Sparks Notes version, in any case.

Feel free to add me on any messenger if you feel like chatting more, I'm usually available and I think I've got my details up in my profile...I'll check that now. :P

Anyway, thanks for trying this out and I hope you enjoy what you hear! :)

@ Arth: Thank you very much! Kind words indeed! I'm now eager to see what you have to say about the rest of the material in here.

Its sounding very good so far and i already added you to my MSN.

Thank u! Will listen then get back to you and tell u what I think.

Fantastic main theme!! I love when the strings kick in at about 1:12. Its great to hear you switch instrumentation so often within a single song. Second track reminds me of one of my favorite escaflowne track that starts out with a single instrument and builds with it. I love how your tracks have lots of movement and variety within them so there are multiple melodies moving together. The increased amount of percussion from what I am used to hearing is great. Track 4 is a great example of that as well. I love how you combine the electric guitar, techno beat, and strings. Track six is awesome, the combination of ambient noises and piano works wonderful.

Happy Theme is great. I love how you have the fast moving guitar and clarinet/flute all mixed together so nicely. It has a nice asian feel to it. I could go on but all the tracks have the same quality i love of multiple moving parts at the same time that aren't the same. Fantastic work!

You mentioned supporting you, is there an album of yours that is available somewhere to buy? I didn't get any results on amazon searching for your name :P

Wow thanks Math, much appreciated and nice work! Thank you for sharing. =)

Just finished listening to the whole thing. Not bad at all! =) My only complaint was that it was just samples. Oh and the use of electric guitar, synthesized or normal in game/movie scores drives me absolutely crazy lol. Other than those 2 things I thought it was great.

Sirus, I really appreciate your comments! I wish I could say that there is an album of my work for you to purchase but sadly no such thing exists yet, which is part of the reason I'm trying to get my name known to the community of people who love good game music — to secure some potential customers in the future! :P

I have a great deal of unused cues sitting around on my computer though, so I may decide to put them together into an album and sell it if I get around to it.

Anyway, thank you all for your support and I hope those of you who haven't listened yet will find something to your liking. I may have to post more work if it's so well received. :)

Sirus, I really appreciate your comments! I wish I could say that there is an album of my work for you to purchase but sadly no such thing exists yet, which is part of the reason I'm trying to get my name known to the community of people who love good game music � to secure some potential customers in the future! :P

I have a great deal of unused cues sitting around on my computer though, so I may decide to put them together into an album and sell it if I get around to it.

Anyway, thank you all for your support and I hope those of you who haven't listened yet will find something to your liking. I may have to post more work if it's so well received. :)
You can put your own album on amazon through their service. You pay i think a small initial fee and they make CDRs of the album and can also release it in mp3 format. As long as you make sure the album is high quality and all i'd be down to buying it.

Just finished listening, and I must say, it's a nice score, short but good. I really enjoyed it.

I don't know what sound library you use but the instruments sound very good (except a very few of them if I may, like the trumpet solo heard at 2:00 in "The Island").

One clearly noticeable aspect here is the musical variety of the tracks. When you listen to most orchestral game scores today, they have a musical homogeneity, which is often a good thing, but sometimes it makes them quickly boring to listen to as a stand-alone musical product. But in this score the diversity of orchestrations and styles is remarkable and helps renewing the listener's interest, and also diversifies the player's experience. Well done.

Overall it's an highly effective, eclectic and technically well-crafted SF/suspense/action score. I'm now eager to listen to the whole score when it's done!

Bravo, sir! :)

Thanks for the suggestion Sirius! I may just consider it more seriously and put something like that together. I'll keep you folks posted if I do end up doing something to that effect.

Arthierr, I'm happy that you appreciated the variety in the tracks. It's interesting because the project itself calls for a great deal of variety in terms of setting and mood, so I have to be extremely flexible with the music and one of the primary challenges is having that variety present without being jarring. I expect the full score will be a bit more homogenized because I will be able to arrange it so that the tracks and styles lead from one to the next without being quite so jarring as they are in this little promo.

I appreciate the comments and I'll take another look at that trumpet part and see if I can tweak it a bit to make it sound better! :)

Please reupload!!!!

Re-Upload
http://rapidshare.com/files/407535152/Crysis_-_LWR_PromoST.rar

Enjoy!

Thanks, Sirus, beat me to it! :)

can you reupload please?

Sirus' re-uploaded link just above still works fine. :)