Kamp, Summers & Sweeney/Ludomusicology, 9. Palimpsest, Pragmatism and the Aesthetics of Genre Transformation: Composing the Hybrid Score to Electronic Arts’ 'Need for Speed Shift 2: Unleashed'

Shift 2 Unleashed (Slightly Mad/EA, 2011) is a video racing game and its unique hybrid score renegotiates and re-imagines ‘chart-topping’ anthemic rock songs from ten bands in the US, Canada and the UK. The score fuses contemporary cinematic orchestral language, distorted electronica and pioneering post-production and sound design techniques. The score’s primary objective and function is, unusually for the racing game genre, a narrative one – seeking as it does to both describe the ‘real’ racing driver’s emotional and psychological journey and by representing and enhancing the concomitant experiences of the game player. The score operates by consciously referencing the musical, orchestrational and productional vocabulary and values from key Hollywood film and trailer genres, and these vocabularies inform and guide the transformation of the songs into fully-fledged cinematic musical productions. The game player then identifies emotionally with the music via the well understood processes of associative receptio