Blending the natural and the digital, Ultros composer Ratvader tells us about recording in the Amazon and the challenges of bridging the gap gaming and art worlds.

Oscar "Ratvader" Rydelius hails from Gothenburg, Sweden, and is known for his spellbinding work on the music for the likes of The Gunk and Kensho. More recently, he meticulously crafted a soundscape for Ultros that breathes an organically human yet distinctly alien-esque breath into the game. The vinyl, curated by Ratvader, is out now via Laced Records. It’s a masterclass in the convergence of classical instruments, ethereal vocals and echoes of nature recorded in the field everywhere from the heart of the Amazon to a cabin on Sweden’s Gotland Island used as a filming location by Andrei Tarkovsky. 

We sat down with Ratvader to delve into the profound connection he weaves between music and nature in his work, and about the challenges of bridging the gap between the gaming and art worlds. 

Kepler Interactive: I saw in an interview you said, "I can appreciate the discussion about the game's industry taking reference and inspiration almost only from games, but there's so much more media to explore." Could you elaborate on that? 

Oscar “Ratvader” Rydelius: I was thinking about what happened to the industry and when it started to only take inspiration from itself. When did that actually change? I don't even know myself. The game developers of the '80s didn't have anything to draw inspiration from that was pre-existing in games, they took it from other places. Then my generation took that inspiration, but there is so much more outside to look to now as well. I don't know why the games industry is like that. Everyone's just so into this stuff, so you always get pulled back right?

K:How does the production timeline and other changes happening in the game affect your creative process, especially when alterations occur after reaching a certain point?

R:It's so easy to change things and to go elsewhere. Maybe in that sense the industry is still young, at least on an indie level or where the teams making games are smaller. I feel like with theatre, for example, the process would be very clear and it's more linear with the goal of what it's portraying or what it's saying.

At a theatre, you're all there together. The people doing the decoration are there and everyone is connected. But in games and with big teams the process if more amorphous. There’s someone doing something over there and someone else over there. Even though you have the best project managers and the best people to keep it all together, it's hard.

K:That gets us talking about your process.

R:Taking Ultros as an example, I've been working with Niklas Åkerblad, El Huervo for many years (the acclaimed artist behind Ultros and Hotline Miami) so we have already established a bit of a director and an actor-like partnership, as a metaphor. Niklas is the director, and I'm like the actor he brings again to a new project. So I sort of know what he likes and there can be a bit of an advantage for me in terms of just understanding or trying to see the bigger picture - even though it's not there yet. 

It’s then thinking about "what do we actually want to convey?". For Ultros, I had a feeling that it would take quite a few years, so I couldn't lock myself into too much of a direct genre because I don't know what things people would enjoy in X number of years. I thought about what I could refer to that was more broad and that had been going forever. That was the cello. I’d been working with a cello player (Björn Risberg) at the time, and I used to say that a cello was like a nice suit. It doesn’t have time attached to it. The cello is an instrument that won’t get old. 

K:When you're working on a soundtrack, how does that brief come in? How does that discussion start?

R:It’s of course different for all games, but I'll make playlists and people chip in with what they feel is right. The process is very dependent on how early you get involved of course. If they’ve done a lot of the pre-production, usually they're locked in to what they want already so it’s harder to come in from another angle. Using the film industry as a metaphor - you’ll have round table discussions with all the big dogs and they’ll say don't use temp music because it will stick and make it hard to do something else.

But then on other projects, like Ultros, it has been more of an exploration with me being involved early and setting the tone. The process had started with thinking where would we want to go? We have some early footage of Ultros with just music and no real gameplay, and I think the vibe in there is still the vibe that we have today.

K:It's interesting, with Peter Talisman, who I interviewed for this series previously, were asked to make a website for this album. They heard the album and thought this would be a really good soundtrack to a game. The game itself is now a way of interacting with the album in a really unique kind of way. They brought the album first, and then they made the game. Does that ever happen for you, where someone has heard this song and made a game around it?

R:I had a discussion the other day about Quentin Tarantino. It feels like he does that a lot - where he curates the music to whatever it is they've already done. Sometimes I feel like having the music first could maybe be a better approach. 

For me, seeing something, getting in touch with anything that's creative - there’s an interaction part that's important. Then there's a feeling, and then usually you leave with something, right? It's a bit like drinking wine and what happens in your mouth afterwards. Sometimes the good games leave you with something afterwards. But other times games just cut off where they end. Whereas what you said about Peter Talisman, it sounds more like a holistic idea of something outside surrounding the game as well. I would say that almost everyone that has experienced something will say that the best stuff they've experienced is something they keep on thinking about or take with them in life.

K:Can you think of a good example of one of those things that have stuck with you?

R:I think Firewatch. I don't know if you played it and I don’t want to spoil it but the intro and the stuff at the beginning is just so powerful.

K:I almost felt it was kind of sad it ended the way it did, or in that it was a mystery about that guy on the mountain. 

R:Isn’t that also - I don't know what the English word would be - but a bit of anxiety about not telling the whole story or explaining everything? Because if they hadn’t explained that, it would still be the mystery of what happened. But instead, you're trying to go all the way, and then you fall into this insecurity thing, will the people get it or not?

K:It's the thing that Dark Souls does the opposite of, which is tell you nothing and then you fill in the gaps.

R:Exactly. What is going on? The mystery, man. What’s the fun of knowing everything?

K: It sounds like you're influenced a lot from outside of games. Do you go into rooms with game developers and feel like they don't have that same baseline? Or have you had conversations where you can meet them in the middle?

R:Being a creative person I think there's always a fun discussion going on about how to be creative with whatever it is you're doing. Making books or music - it's not really any different.  But then of course, I must say, people are judgmental and games don't really have a good reputation. Maybe that's where it's still lagging a bit. I have one friend here in Gothenburg, he's trying to get the Swedish government to declare games as an art form and for the government to give money to art projects within games.

I think maybe there’s still a bit of "Games? Okay, but have you worked on anything I know of?".

K:You wouldn't ask a painter if they've done a painting they'd seen.

R:"Have I seen anything in the museum?" Yeah, it's kind of funny.

K:You mentioned the arts. I recently talked to an artist making a game releasing on Steam. The game was made by artists, not necessarily game developers and they were really worried about Steam as a platform. A game coming from an art background getting bad reviews as opposed to a game coming from a game background that becomes art. 

R:But do you think that that could be one of the problems, where platforms like Steam are gatekeeping the idea of what gaming is supposed to be?

K:That’s a really good point. Is it because of the way in which you download the game - it's there beside other games and Valve is kind of like the garden that you can pick the fruit from? Does that mean that you then have certain connotations in your head about what it's going to be before you even play it? 

R:Again, stupid metaphors but if I go to the cinema here in Gothenburg and they only have Hollywood movies and I'm not so into that, then I would get scared. I'd be like "no, this is not the cinema for me". I don't know if that's true, I'm just brainstorming here.

I always get so fascinated seeing someone who hasn't gamed their whole life taking a controller, trying to walk around and also look somewhere. It's almost impossible for some people. There's so much we've learned that we take for granted.

K:The controller blocks people from playing the game. The twin stick, the idea that one of them moves the character and another the camera, that together they can move a person in 3D space, is something that is definitely a learned behaviour. It's like this divide that stops people from engaging with games on that level, because they don't have the learned way of interacting with them that those who have played games their whole lives do.

R:I think that you could say the same the other way around. If you've been to many museums, I think you feel more comfortable walking around in a museum. Or if you've read a lot of books, you will no doubt be able to read more. So I think the other way, if someone would go to a museum, not being used to it, then it's almost a controller as well. How do I walk around in the museum? How do I interact with the art here? 

K:Yeah, I'd love to spend more time looking at interactive art, and how we could also make small interactive experiences that people don't need a controller or a console to have fun with. 

We didn't get to finish talking about your process. 

R:Process - go to a museum, steal something, go to the studio, make it. And then, yep, there it is.

[laughs]

R:But essentially I try to get down to the nitty-gritty feelings of the game, and then slowly create a palette. Like an artist would choose colors - like ok we're going to use the pump organ and the cello to build the foundation and then slowly build from there.

With Ultros I really took the time and tried to take the opportunity to do research which involved travelling to Peru. I went to the Peruvian Rainforest for six weeks and also did a hike up to the Andes - but also I just met people and booked a studio there. 

Originally, Niklas had been inspired a lot by shamanism and Peru. On the audio-end, Peru has such a rich history. I've always had the dream of visiting the Amazons and recording actual, real animals and stuff. Culturally what they have there is just mind-blowing. They have this thing called whistling jars. Have you ever seen one of these birds where you fill it with water, and then you empty the water and then it sounds funny? In Peru they've been doing this for many years and they've done bigger versions where they've made animals - different birds, wolves, monkeys. The history of these things is just so rich and they have such a passion and love for nature. A spiritual connection to it that's just very different from us over here.

K:So you did field recordings, and then recording in the studio as well?

R:Yeah, I met some local musicians there and they were super proud and enthusiastic. Awesome people through and through. With Ultros, I noticed that recording sounds outside of a studio environment and bringing that into the game gave it depth. Maybe coders should go out with their laptop and sit and code there.

I actually have an extra album with songs I didn't get onto the soundtrack. Something Niklas and I have done a lot is to just go off season and rent an Airbnb somewhere. We bring our computers, go there, work as much as we want and just run around in nature. We went and stayed in a cabin on Gotland - a super cool island where Ingmar Bergman worked, the film director of The Seventh Seal. Tarkovsky also filmed there. And we just followed his tracks.

We were sitting on Gotland and you would hear the waves hitting the shore which were picked up in the microphone at the same time as I would be recording the melodica. Actually with The Gunk as well, there's a lot of things layered underneath that are from the real world and then on top you have the cello. I have this belief that people are more receptive to these things than we actually think because audio is so powerful. So even though you may not be acknowledging it a hundred percent, it's there somewhere.

Some of that additional work can be heard on Gärdner's Pilgrimage, a continuation of Ultros' audio journey available to stream now. The collection explores Ratvader's mesmerising ability to capture the game's ethereal psychadelia once more.

K:Ultros having a kind of Shamanistic theme, is that a touchpoint for the overall creative vision for the project? 

R:Yes, and I would say nature as well. There has been a strong connection to nature. I travelled to India and to Thailand some years ago. I stumbled across Buddhism and the idea of Ahimsa and Himsa. Ahimsa is apparently a non-violent way of life. So a lot of Buddhist monks live that way - you eat vegan or vegetarian food and you're not supposed to harm any living being. Ultros circles around the idea of non-violence.

K:It's something that brings in that extra dimension or perspective. I presumed that there was much more found footage or ambient audio in games than maybe there actually is. I always just thought that that was a part of the process, but it seems like it's quite a lot of fake stuff that's recorded in the studio?

R:Yeah, I would say so. I get it with bigger titles because it's so hard to actually go and do that stuff. With Ultros I was in control of both music and audio so it was a bit easier. Some of it became a bit too experimental, but we’ll see.

K: I have such a different experience listening to a soundtrack of a game on Bandcamp or something, versus actually playing a game and then hearing it ambiently inside the game. I feel that there's more of a movement now around people listening to video game music.

I think something sparked, at least in the design and creative industries, an idea where people will go to game soundtracks in the same way they would have to orchestral or classical music for concentration. Do you feel like video game music is stepping out into a broader audience more now than it has before?

R:I get goosebumps a little, because I think the question is interesting. I would say that there is still a little bit of, "Oh, you make blips and blops for games" maybe from an older generation. I think it's spreading more but it's still hard to know if it's reaching an outside audience. I think the problem is still this idea of it being game music. If we can take away the idea of game music and it just be music, then I think people outside of gaming would be even more prone to listening to it.

K:It makes me think of Soichi Terada. He tours the world, I've seen him DJ a couple of times. He’s not really spoken about as a video game composer or a person who makes music for games. But he made soundtracks for Ape Escape.

R: I think that you can also just remember that positive vibe of music and games and showing people music. Take Cuphead for example - it’s a big band and some gamers have never been exposed to that style of music. When a game actually does something like that you're like, wow, this cool thing works. So then it's the other way around where a game introduces a style of music to someone who hasn’t been exposed to it before.

K: To end, could you speak about influences on your work?

R: I will sound like a hipster but I must say when I was doing The Gunk I was getting into a bit of meditation. I was just trying to handle life, I guess. Someone actually wrote that they thought the music was a meditative experience and that happened unconsciously. I also saw Cinema Paradiso for the first time which is a super movie, and I read Ennio Morricone’s biography. Also Jóhann Jóhannsson, an Icelandic composer who did Arrival among many things. There are so many good movies, they’ve tried so many things and explored so many topics. That’s all for us to grab and get inspired by.

Ultros is available now on Nintendo Switch, Xbox Series X|S, PlayStation 5, PlayStation 4 and PC (via Steam and the Epic Games Store). Visit ultrosgame.com to find out more.