Music for Post Apocolyptic game

[kristov]

Anyone have any suggestions for post apoc music to be played in the background while we play? I am having trouble coming up with some.

Ideally it would be mostly instrumental.

Currently for our D&D game we listen to Conan, Lord of the Rings, 13th Warrior soundtracks as examples.

 

[Snoweel]

Deltron 3030: The Instrumentals
(Deltron 3030)

The Instrumentalyst
(Dr Octagon)

 

[Protagonist]

Apart from soundtracks I can recommend music from the drone doom and dark ambient genres.

Sunn o)) and Bohren & Der Club of Gore worked perfectly for the age-of-worms/homebrew hybrid campaign I ran last year. You can check them out via last.fm:

Sunn at Music at Last.fm
Bohren & der Club of Gore – Listen free at Last.fm

Almost all Sunn songs should work while the newer Bohren stuff is more melodic than the old songs so you might prefer the older tracks.

Both bands have very long tracks, no lyrics and focus mainly on low frequencies, which I think fits the post-apoc tone and - as an added bonus - doesn't distract from table talk. Longer songs also mean that you don't have to worry about changing songs (or preparing playlists) as often.

For combat music you'd need something else, though.

We have also used Syrinscape (Welcome to Syrinscape | Syrinscape) during all our 4E sessions so far. The author is also on EnWorld and his program is very efficient and simple at the same time. Using some loops and "one-shot" effects it creates a thick layer of background ambience that you can intensify (by increasing the frequency and volume of one-shot effects) almost instantly with a few clicks. From the folder structure it should also be easy to add your own samples and loop tracks, but I haven't tried that yet.


If you do non-fantasy post-apoc I would suggest Nine Inch Nails instrumentals or the shadowrun game soundtrack as well.

 

[Kristian Serrano]

If you can find them, the Fallout soundtracks are really good.

 

[Rackhir]

One of the main songs from "28 Days Later" and "28 Weeks Later" is "In the House - In a heartbeat" is a terrifically menacing piece of music. It starts off very, very soft and builds to a positively demonic finish.

There's also that accordion piece that plays over the title sequence of "12 Monkeys". I think it's "Introduccion" from Astor Piazzolla's Suite Punta del Este (at least if the Wiki article on it is talking about the same piece of music I'm thinking of).

Both are available on iTunes.

The Soundtrack for "The Blood of Heroes" (Salute of the Jugger to you non-US types) has a number of possibly useful pieces. Probably not easy to track down though.

 

[Logan_Bonner]

The soundtrack to Akira. Don't know how easy that is to find...

 

[Dannyalcatraz]

Seconding Snowreel's suggestions:

Also, depending upon the mood you're looking to set:

Bill Laswell; See also Material, Chaosface "Doomride"

King Crimson tracks like THRAK.

Buckethead (most of his stuff is instrumental); See also Death Cube K.

Peter Gabriel "Last Temptation of Christ" soundtrack.

Godflesh

Helios Creed

Joe Satriani

Ministry; See also Pigface, 10,000 Homo DJs

DJ Spooky that Subliminal Kid

DJ Shadow

U.N.K.L.E.

 

[AdmundfortGeographer]

The soundtrack to Akira.

Whoa, someone else who's heard it! I never really considered how well it works for this genre of gaming . . . but it really does!

Plus, another vote for In the House — In a Heartbeat. I've only ever purchased that song from the 28 days album, but there is a song that plays during the movie (that is not on the movie soundtrack!) while Jim wanders around, called East Hastings by Godspeed You Black Emperor, you could do worse if you grabbed a bunch of anything by Godspeed You Black Emperor for some post-apocalypse feel.

 

[Punnuendo]

Well, someone already took my Godspeed suggestion.

 

[justanobody]

The soundtrack to Akira. Don't know how easy that is to find...

[ame=http://www.amazon.com/Akira-Original-Soundtrack-Geinoh-Yamashirogumi/dp/B00000116S]Amazon.com: Akira: Original Soundtrack: Geinoh Yamashirogumi: Music[/ame]

Pretty easy?