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When Jan Scott Wilkinson, frontman of the band formerly known as British Sea Power, was first asked to work on a video game soundtrack, he was sceptical. “We didn’t know much about the game, but our manager Dave seemed to think there was something interesting about this Robert guy who had been pleasantly hounding him,” he says. That was Estonian novelist Robert Kurvitz, part of a team who had just started work on an esoteric video game about an alcoholic cop trying to solve a murder in an impoverished region of a war-torn country. The game was Disco Elysium, now regarded as one of the all-time great cerebral role-playing games: released in 2019, it sat atop PC Gamer’s top 100 list for four years in a row.
Kurvitz is a Sea Power superfan. Pick a random scene from the game and there’ll be something – a bit of dialogue, a location, a theme – that has some sort of Sea Power reference in it. Wilkinson tells me that Kurvitz was “captivating and full of a bubbling passion” and that he knew an unsettling number of “strange details about our music”. Kurvitz had already embedded some of those “very obscure” Sea Power references in the world of Disco Elysium before they had even met. Whether the band liked it or not, they were already enmeshed in this eccentric Estonian’s world.
“[Disco Elysium] seemed both separate, and also sympathetic to, the band’s identity,” Wilkinson reflects. “It was a strange, fucked up, sci-fi existence parallel to the one we were inhabiting … Kurvitz seemed to mythologise the mundane.”
The game is about the perennial pull between fascism and communism; police violence; the importance of community in the face of state oppression; alcoholism; homosexuality; the politics of poverty; and a tiny, pixel-sized hole in reality. It suited Sea Power down to the ground. The band, after all, had been writing music about the slow, perilous collapse of the planet as ice shelves slid into the ocean. There had been sombre, reflective, tracks about obscure bodies of water in Orkney. They’d waxed lyrical about the virtues of being an EU citizen (pre-Brexit, naturally). The band have always embraced the miserable alongside the beautiful. Wilkinson is particularly complimentary of the game’s “strange sense of humour”, something he thinks resonated with the band – and their fans.
The initial meeting between took place in Birmingham. “Birmingham is a strange place. Its own world. Very strong in character,” reflects Wilkinson. “Maybe [Kurvitz] had been to Alan Moore for a magical blessing? [To meet us] in the spiritual home of heavy metal and Tolkien’s inspiration for the Shire … it seems oddly fitting, I suppose, now that I look back. I had never thought about that until now.”
Sea Power, new to the world of video games, took direction from Kurvitz, caught in the tidal pool of his vision for most of the project. Wilkinson tells me that Kurvitz had a plan, and “a fastidious knowledge of our albums and rare EPs and B-sides”. As such, many of the songs in the game come from pre-existing Sea Power tracks, reworked, remixed, and re-recorded to coalesce with the watercolour weariness that defines Disco Elysium’s fading world.
“Thinking about it, some of the tracks we used on the game continued their existence into our following album,” Wilkinson says. “So working on the game not only drew from our past but influenced our future, too.”
Disco Elysium’s songs are stripped down, exposing the core melodies, and a little bit less dense than what you’d hear on a standard Sea Power album. There are fewer vocal melodies and longer, dreamier sequences. Any explicit narrative is stripped away, and you’re left with a soundscape, a Turner painting as a song. “Generally, songs needed distilling down to a fundamental mood fitting the scene, doing away with anything which was in competition with that mood and usually adding a little dreamy liminal menace,” Wilkinson says.
“There is so much dialogue, and the visuals do so much, so the music really just needed to reach into the subconscious and open the gates of the mind, allowing the brain to absorb the words and images and help them become totally immersive. And that was enjoyable, artistically, to do … I love creating atmospheres and sonic textures as much as writing choruses or words. Maybe more, sometimes.”
Sea Power have also worked on film soundtracks, rescoring a 1934 Irish fictional documentary called Man of Aran – an experience that helped Wilkinson know what to expect from creating a game soundtrack, even if there were some key differences.
“Games are a little more easygoing with regards to timing,” he says. “With film, it’s often important to hit cues and you know exactly when different moods need to change direction. It can be more mathematical. The game needed more general mood textures to sit behind scenes, and blend into and enhance the feeling of various parts of the world. I would definitely work on more games. I love games like Disco Elysium, although they are a very rare thing.”
This spring, Sea Power are embarking on a mini tour named Soundtracks Live. The set will feature various Disco Elysium songs, work from the Man of Aran soundtrack, and various tracks from another documentary feature film, From the Sea to the Land Beyond. Wilkinson is excited about the prospect of performing these tracks live – especially for an audience of Disco Elysium fans.
“We have had a noticeable growth in listeners since [the game was released],” he says. “They seem like a cool and thoughtful bunch, these Disco Elysium players. They are appreciated. The odd drunken detective has been sighted along the crash barrier at gigs.”
The relationship between Disco Elysium and Sea Power has been symbiotic; they have given new life to each other. Sea Power have seen a swell in listeners as a result of the game, and existing Sea Power fans discovered a new love for video games as a result of the collaboration. And the relationship is still evolving.
“On our first meeting, [Kurvitz] did tell me that he had worked very hard on re-ordering the track list to our album Valhalla Dancehall,” smiles Wilkinson. “Hmm, Valhalla Dancehall, Disco Elysium … could there be a link of some kind?” The band are now considering this revised track list for the album’s anniversary reissue. “He is very talented and intelligent. So are all the game’s core creators. I don’t think many people notice all the little nods to the world of Sea Power through the game. It was strange when it became such a huge hit around the world, and we were proud to be a part of its story.
“And, of course,” he nods, “we got a Bafta out of it, too, which would have been unlikely to happen to us otherwise.”
