Craft
Tom Salta The composer/producer talks to JOHN MOORE about his distinctive work on the soundtrack of developer Arkane/ Bethedsa’s acclaimed Playstation 5 FPS, Deathloop
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ith game, trailer and TV credits to his name, Tom Salta has moved from performing on stage and in the studio with a wide variety of artists to building a solid career and impressive body of work in multimedia composition and production. 26 / January/February 2022
His work on Deathloop for developer Arkane turned heads as one of the standout pieces of game music in 2021, and perfectly complimented the cool retro aesthetic of the game’s characters and locations; evoking the spy thrillers and TV cop shows of the ‘60s and ‘70s.
At what point in the project did you come on board? I came in when it was fairly developed. Arkane showed me a lot of the overviews of the maps and gave me a 50-page document, explaining the characters — the various Visionaries [Deathloop’s antagonists] — the art direction; some very primitive, playable levels; screen captures, things like that. It was fairly well on... that being said, I was done in June 2020, basically a year before the game came out. Did Arkane give you reference points for the soundtrack? Were they saying ‘Bond, Man from U.N.C.L.E., Mission Impossible’? Or was that the flavour that you hit on? There was a three-fold combination of references. Firstly, it was ‘the ‘60s’. Specifically, late ‘60s — 1968
