VOCAL CHORDS

The human voice is one of the most crucial components of Rohrmann’s score and sound design. It partly stems from the use of Sacred Harp singing – a type of religious choral music originating in North America, but which through missionaries has become traditional among Pacific Islanders – from the soundtrack of The Thin Red Line. As Rohrmann began to dabble with synthetic voices, Adams became keen to find a way to them more prominent. “It seemed like it was definitely part of Jett’s DNA,” Adams says. “That this technological science-fiction story should have this heartfelt spiritual dimension. And we told ourselves for years, if we ever have any money, we should spend it to upgrade the voice aspects somehow.” Familiar with their work on Bandcamp, Rohrmann contacted Priscilla Snow (aka Ghoulnoise) to see if they would be interested in working on the game. “I said, ‘Would you be interested in this? Here’s the general gist.’ And they were really excited about it,” he says. “And then they let it drop that their greatgrandfather literally wrote the song book that all Sacred Harp singers use in North America!” Snow’s industry experience made them an even more perfect fit for Jett – having worked with Camouflaj (République, Iron Man VR), they had already spent time as part of a larger indie game studio and were accustomed to working with Unity. Significantly, they also had language expertise. “We had this voice system that went back years, and I had gotten a friend of mine who speaks Arabic and another friend who speaks Inuktitut to provide samples and we chopped them up,” Adams explains. “For years, we had just them as all the characters in the game. But Priscilla took it to the next level. They composed the choral music and sang the choral music and came up with the language and then even directed all the voice actors.” The official name for the dialect, in case you’re wondering, is ‘Space Bulgarian’. It’s Snow, then, that you can hear within the hymnwave – it’s their voice, “filtered through Scntfc’s laboratory,” Adams says. “Not to get too deep, but a big influence on that for me is Stanislaw Lem’s book, Solaris. The way the alien planet communicates is basically by filtering through everything it’s reading in people’s minds and recreating that.” The anchorites’ songs, in other words, are echoed back at them by the world on which they intend to settle. “In a sense, it’s like the planet going, ‘Huh, what’s this stuff?’ And then, ‘I can sing too, you know’,” Rohrmann says. “[Solaris] was an influence on that: it’s like, what’s in that mirror, reflected back when it’s not a physical mirror, but one that’s mirroring more abstract concepts?”