See You Starside: The Marathon Soundtrack Reimagined (based on Alex Seropian’s 1994 Bungie OST)

Expanded arrangements of Alexander Seropian’s soundtrack for Bungie’s 1994 game. Downloads, credits, and track list below. See pinned comment rē ads. This album takes substantial artistic liberties with Marathon’s music and will likely severely disappoint anyone who wants the originals’ mood and atmosphere faithfully preserved (or, I should add, wants a ‘modern’ soundtrack: this is more influenced by 1974 music than by 2014 music). I categorise it as an arrangement album rather than a remix album to emphasize its profound differences from its source material.

Marathon’s OST runs for 40’16”. This album runs for 77’77” (OK, 78’17” – i.e., 38’01” longer) and makes major stylistic changes. I took the ’70 rock influence up to eleven; plus, “Aliens Again” is jazz fusion; “Flowers in Heaven” a weird mix of doom metal and ambient; “Guardians” a similarly weird mix of electronica and power metal; “Landing” borderline symphonic/atmospheric black metal; “Rushing” an equally weird mix of metal and… disco? And that’s just for starters.

I also strongly recommend against using these in a first playthrough, as they’ll substantially alter one of the game’s most memorable qualities: its atmosphere. It’d (hopefully) still be enjoyable, but it wouldn’t really be Marathon.

Caveats aside, these intricate, dense, yet dynamic mixes are brimming with retro synths, arpeggiation, musical cross-references, reverb, and entirely new instrument parts and melodies. They’re Marathon’s OST by way of ’70s progressive rock songwriting and arrangement, ’80s pop production, and ’90s Japanese games’ atmosphere, with secondary influences from genres as diverse as jazz, blues, disco, ambient, post-rock, classical, electronic music, Krautrock, and metal.

On 2022-12-05, when I began remixing Marathon’s OST (again), I planned to do simple remixes that just replaced the familiar instruments with retro synths in GarageBand, but as I gained familiarity with its surprisingly robust feature set, my ambitions grew considerably. I radically rearranged and expanded the songs with two self-imposed rules: 1. use each existing melody at least once in its original track; 2. don’t change existing melodies. I broke these only once: the pitch bend in ‘Aliens Again’ simply didn’t fit my arrangement.

I think retro synths match Marathon’s ‘used future’ aesthetic nicely, so I used plenty of Mellotron samples, voices that resemble the Moog and CS-80 (but aren’t directly derived from them), and classic Roland drum machine samples (CR-78, TR-606, TR-707, TR-808, TR-909). My production employs tons of details and reverb (if my drum production wasn’t a giveaway, I was born in the ’80s) but little to no dynamic range compression (only one track even scores as low as DR11).

Marathon’s OST has been surprisingly popular for remixes within its relatively small community. I think one reason for this is that its music is extremely memorable and effective, especially given its simplicity. That’s another reason: it offers ample space for arrangers to add their own stamps. I hadn’t done that to my satisfaction before, certainly not to an extent that I felt matched my abilities as an arranger, and it’s been immensely satisfying.

I have more Marathon arrangement albums in the works. Subscribe if you want to be notified when I release them.

Download in FLAC (for listening) and Ogg Vorbis (for in-game use): https://1drv.ms/u/s!AuD0MykSsmaRph-QW...
Liner notes: https://1drv.ms/b/s!AuD0MykSsmaRqHp4u...
Simplici7y page: https://simplici7y.com/items/see-you-...
My discography: https://aaronfreed.github.io/aaronfre...
Marathon soundtracks: https://aaronfreed.github.io/aaronfre...

I paced and structured this album as if it were a ’70s/’80s double LP, so that’s how I’ll list its tracks.

Side A (22’33”)
00:00 A1. Aliens Again
04:20 A2. Chomber
08:15 A3. Fat Man (ft. Trey J. Anderson)
12:51 A4. Flippant
16:07 A5. Flowers in Heaven

Side B (18’41”)
22:33 B1. Freedom
27:49 B2. Guardians
31:09 B3. Landing
36:09 B4. Leela

Side C (18’17”)
41:14 C1. New Pacific
44:54 C2. New Pacific (reprise)
49:44 C3. Rapture
54:14 C4. Rushing

Side D (18’46”)
59:31 D1. Splash (Marathon)
1:04:53 D2. Swirls
1:09:58 D3. What About Bob?

Marathon’s OST composed by Alexander Seropian. Additional composition by Aaron Freed and:
A3: Trey J. Anderson, Johann Sebastian Bach, Geddy Lee, Neil Peart
A5: Phil Collins
B1: Vince Guaraldi
B3: wowbobwow
B4: Thomas Barth (Tobacco)

Aaron Freed: arrangement, mixing, mastering, production
Trey J. Anderson (‪@TJ_ax‬), track A3: arrangement, mixing

Lastly, thanks to Midjourney, khfiva, Sue Colvert, Don Fabisiak, Apple, Bradmatic, Roland, Yamaha, Johann Sebastian Bach, Vince Guaraldi, Phil Collins, Geddy Lee, Neil Peart, wowbobwow, Thomas Barth, Trey J. Anderson, Alexander Seropian, and Bungie for reasons stated above and/or in my liner notes.