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How a Tomb Raider superfan found the means to produce an orchestral reimagining of the series’ greatest hits

How a Tomb Raider superfan lead an orchestral reimagining

The sheer bloody-mindedness of the videogame enthusiast is not to be denied. Tomb Raider devotee Ash Kapriélov just might top them all (indeed, Edge’s sister publication Retro Gamer named him ‘Lara’s Biggest Fan’). In his quest to fund and produce Tomb Raider: The Dark Angel Symphony – which remasters and reimagines music from the Last Revelation, Chronicles and The Angel Of Darkness games, and is available to buy and stream now – he and his fellow fans not only raised over £70,000 via Kickstarter, but additionally contributed over £100,000 out of their own pockets.

It started as an idea dreamed up at a Tomb Raider sleepover: Kapriélov and his friends were staying overnight in London after attending a concert of music from one of the games. “It was two o’clock in the morning and I was going to bed, and I sent him a text,” Kapriélov says, looking over at Peter Connelly, prolific Tomb Raider composer. They had met once, briefly. “I said, ‘I think we need to have a concert with your music and you can’t say no – if you want, I will fund it.’ I woke up at eight o’clock, and went down the stairs to where all my friends were sitting, having a tea. And I’m reading the message: ‘Yeah, let’s do it.’” With Tomb Raider’s 20th anniversary on the horizon, the timing was perfect. “And I didn’t have a choice!” Connelly laughs.

Kapriélov, whose events experience includes organising the Core Event Panel at the 2016 PLAY Expo in Manchester, set about researching venues as well as creating a proposal for the project for Square Enix to approve. A Ukrainian friend sketched concepts for the album cover. Another acquaintance in Russia worked on Photoshopping some social media promotional imagery. Others made jewellery and sculptures as Kickstarter rewards. “The whole idea of the project was always, ‘for the fans, by the fans,’” Connelly says. “Ash knows more about the games than I ever will, and I worked on them, I wrote the music! So it’s not that some diehard fans that were involved in the project – it was driven by them. I was in charge of what tracks I wanted to play, and left the rest in Ash’s hands.”

Connelly soon realised the ambition of the project had outstripped what he could do on his own at home. While the money they’d raised was substantial, they hadn’t hit their stretch goals – they had hoped for arrangements by Dr Richard Niles, who has worked with Madonna and Pet Shop Boys, and a live orchestra. “I thought, ‘This is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, so if I’m going to do it, I want to do it right.” So where did that extra £100,000 come from? “I sold my car,” Connelly reveals. “I invested some savings, I took out a few loans and borrowed some money.” They found investors, and the agreement with Square Enix allowed them to recoup some funds. “Our videographer, Tina Ljubenkov, came into [Connelly’s] hotel room with £500 and said, ‘Look, you need that,’” Kapriélov says. “I’d occasionally do that too, when he needed cash.”

With the money – and a monster spreadsheet – they assembled a 39-piece orchestra plus ten soloists, including cellist Tina Guo and vocalist Julie Elven, for a few days of recording in London. It wasn’t easy: not only was this during the July 2019 heatwave, but Connelly also had Bell’s palsy. Niles, meanwhile, was ill on the day the choir was booked, and had to direct them from Skype to recover in time for the all-important Friday session – or risk having flown over from LA for nothing. “He was messaging Ash, like, ‘Can you get them to sing a little bit more boisterous, or less arrogant?’” Connelly laughs. “And Ash was reading it and passing the information back to the choir.”

Kapriélov was travelling between his home in Manchester and London almost every day he wasn’t working. “I can’t remember much of the recording sessions, to be honest,” he says.

But the result is worth the stress. As a gay man who grew up in a country where same-sex relationships are illegal, Tomb Raider – and its music – means everything to Kapriélov. “It was so difficult to play because of the massive levels, and it was such great escapism – I learned English from it.” It changed his life, and so hearing the final recording of the theme to The Angel Of Darkness in the control room while sitting next to Ljubenkov, a friend since before his emigration to the UK, was an emotional moment. “We just sat there, going for it,” he laughs, miming tears. “That was the actual moment – ‘Yeah, it’s done and dusted.’”

Connelly’s moment came listening to the orchestra play his music in Abbey Road Studios. “When I originally wrote the music, there were always niggles, you know. Tomb Raiders 4 and 5, they weren’t scored by a real orchestra, and I always thought there were things I’d love to do today that I couldn’t do back then. I just wanted to do it how I would do it 20 years on. And I always said, ‘I don’t care if I don’t make any money from this. It’s not about the money. It’s about having this product that I can be proud of.”

“I said, ‘We need to have a concert with your music, and you can’t say no’ – if you want, I will fund it’”