Dulcet Tones, Music for my Shadowrun setting Options

[TKDNinjaInBlack]

perhaps i should be more specific:
rammstein, nine inch nails, wumpscut, snog, funkervogt, kmfdm, aphex twin, acumen nation, vnv nation, bauhaus, frontline assembly, front 242, kevorkian death cycle... plus various metal and 80's rock (billy idol always reminded me of a shadowrun kinda guy. in fact, i think he even did an album named that or something)

Billy Idol's Cyberpunk

Industrial rock and Cyberpunk go hand in hand.

For all of those not so action-y sequences, I resort to Electronic Downtempo Breakbeat music. Some of the darker stuff is really atmospheric and wicked for walking BGM or legwork stuff.

I've never felt metal fit in the cyberpunk genre for some reason.

[TKDNinjaInBlack]

Most times it is going to be techno (Crystal Method, Chemical Brothers, 808 State, Dust Brothers etc.)

That's mostly breakbeat, similar to what I mentioned.

Other notable artists that fit:

Fluke, Rob Dougan, Hybrid, Hyper, Cirrus, Photek, Future Sound of London, Prodigy, Juno Reactor, Junkie XL, and a lot of other electronic artists that were really popular from 93-99. Those were good years for this style of music.

I recommend if you need to find a good assortment of music in a specific genre, check out Pandora.com. Type in an artist and you'll get 10-15 others cycling through that have similar moods and tones. It's better to find specific sounds for a campaign rather than searching by genre.

[MKX]

My players have actually endured a shoot out to "take a chance on me" and "dancing queen". One of them finally started using called shots to attack speakers in the firefight.

Yeah, that's what I'm talking about (IMG:style_emoticons/default/biggrin.gif)

[SincereAgape]

Great list team. We should get someone to make a master list.

[Chrysalis]

Well no list is complete.

Something like this?
http://www.listafterlist.com/Listof/tabid/...50/Default.aspx

-Chrysalis

[SincereAgape]

Very nice Lady Chrysalis. Heavy Metal meets blood, leather, and bondage.

[Hipgnosis]

Hi everyone. First post from a new SR4 GM. I go for ambient electronic as well. Artists like The Future Sound of London, Aphex Twin (Ambient Works), and Coil fit nicely for most scenes other than fighting or clubbing.

[Zombayz]

Nine Inch Nails, and Rammstein for almost everything, Finntroll for bars(the perfect mix of heavy and fun), and Amon Amarth, Arch Enemy and Children of Bodom for fighting. It works well enough.

[sds]

I've only used little music through my time as a GM, but in the early-mid nineties one of the players had a 90min tape with Haddaway - What is love - wall to wall on both sides - does that count?

Actually another player had quite a lot of small tidbits/soundtracks etc. on his PC he toyed with for a while. This meant "They're coming to take you away - haha!" when Lone star was on the way, and the mash theme after a fight. Ah.. the memories..

[Dr Funfrock]

Was searching for a thread like this. I also have started and want to incorporate music into the storytelling of a GM. The tough thing is finding music set for the universe of 2072.

This mind be silly. But I have started to use musical soundtracks from classic future based anime series. One of my favorites has been the Cowboy Bebop soundtrack. The instrumental background music that was created by Japanese composers to enhance their stories is a great source of audio enhancers for Shadowrun.

Silly? Hell no. The soundtracks to Cowboy Bebop and Ghost In The Shell remain the de-facto sound of Shadowrun for me. I love the way Kanno takes old sounds and mixes them together in new ways. Between those two series, and Tsuneo Imahori's similarly daring work from Trigun, you have this blend of jazz, blues, hip-hop, funk, hard rock orchestral, and ambient electronica that somehow manages to feel incredibly cohesive despite being so diverse in it's influences and styles.

Also worth checking out is the soundtrack to Gankutsuou, which was a collaboration between Kasamatsu Kouji and Jean-Jacques Burnel (from the Stranglers). The closing theme, You Won't See Me Coming, became the theme song to one game that I ran.

[tsuyoshikentsu]

Ooh, I didn't know Kanno did GitS too. I must get that soundtrack now.

[Dr Funfrock]

Another good Japanese* artist to check out for Shadowrun (and this isn't so much me being weaboo as it is the Japanese being pretty obsessed with all things eighties, including cyberpunk) is Juno Reactor. He did a bunch of stuff for the Matrix soundtracks, as well as this killer track for the opening of Texhnolyze (very good cyberpunk series by the creator of Serial Experiments Lain. Less trippy technomancer awakening, more blood soaked gunfights).

The track is Guardian Angel, and can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6nwRSv7uWjQ


*Edit: OK, so I'm an idiot. Not sure where I got the idea that Juno Reactor was Japanese, or a one man band. Further research proves me to be completely off the mark on that one. Anyhow, they still rock.

[TKDNinjaInBlack]

So it looks like the major genres of music used are the following three:

Industrial
Electronic
Metal


<sarcasm>
What, no mainstream butt-rock? Nobody wants to listen to Nickelback as they play SR?
</sarcasm>

[Chrysalis]

Nickelback is okay, but Bare Naked Ladies is better (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

Not to mention roleplayer viking metal (IMG:style_emoticons/default/wink.gif)

[It trolls!]

After the Chuck season finale, I think Mr. Roboto by Styx should be made mandatory shoot-out music for any game of SR. (IMG:style_emoticons/default/grinbig.gif)

[Dr Funfrock]

So it looks like the major genres of music used are the following three:

Industrial
Electronic
Metal


<sarcasm>
What, no mainstream butt-rock? Nobody wants to listen to Nickelback as they play SR?
</sarcasm>

I have a sneaking suspicion that the music tastes of most dumpshockers have as much to do with that as anything, which I suspect is what you're getting at.
Of course Industrial and Electronic do tend to work well in soundtracks as background music. Metal is music based largely on aggression, so it's good for fight scenes. Still, I wouldn't be surprised if most of us didn't have to go much farther than our own record shelves to find these sources.

Recently I've made use of The Rolling Stones, Van Halen, Be Your Own Pet, Giant Drag, Calexico, The Foo Fighters, and The Dropkick Murphy's in Shadowrun, to name just a few examples.
Nickelback makes brilliant chase scene music. Seriously, load up Burn It To The Ground next time your runners are on the run from the law. It will be epic.

[Chrysalis]

I like playing the Reservoir Dogs soundtrack.

It gives a good vibe.

Joy Division?

-Chrysalis

[Dr Funfrock]

I can totally see some Joy Division stuff working really well. Try She's Lost Control on your soundtrack some time.

Another sound I draw on heavily is grunge; Seattle is the default setting after all.
Load up a bunch of Smashing Pumpkins, Pixies, Sonic Youth, Silverchair, and Nirvana. It's music heavily inflected by dissatisfaction with corporate culture and the modern wasteland, and a lot of it plays heavily on the themes of Cyberpunk as a genre. There are some more recent Seattle bands that also fit the tone nicely; Straylight Run is an obvious front-runner (I mean seriously, anyone who didn't spot the Gibson reference in their name needs to get out of this forum right now). Have a listen to Hands In The Sky: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a5uect48Vcc
(Starts off slow, then at 2:19 monsters destroy everything)

[TKDNinjaInBlack]

speaking of Joy Division, Information Society and most of the other big late 80's New Wave artists have that glam feel that is very early Shadowrun and Cyberpunk. Of course the electroclash (Ladytron, Blonde Redhead, Fischerspooner and Adult) and post rock (Isis, Red Sparrows, etc.) sub genres do an okay job as well.

To be perfectly honest, a lot of the goofy east coast hip hop out of the 80's works too.

This website is a great resource for Electronic Music and putting a name to those sub-genres might not be mainstream. It offers a lot of examples and samples of the music so one can spend hours on this interface and explore what they might find useful for their game. http://techno.org/electronic-music-guide/