Hypnotica by Christopher Mahon is the story of two mages who create grand musical concerts in surreal shared dreams…and pay the price for living between two worlds. To help immerse the reader in the duo’s performances, the story is accompanied by a short soundtrack: Do It in the Sky, Thieves in the Night, and Do It in the Sky Reprise.
These tracks were created by Marek Domagala, the talented Polish composer who also crafted the lo-fi hip-hop-inspired soundtrack for the Lab’s video game, Black Heaven: A Necromantic Dating Sim.
For Hypnotica, Marek worked with Christopher Mahon, the Creative Lead for the Lab, on a new vision. Inspired by the genres of stadium house, rave, and trance, the music of Hypnotica was meant to evoke the ethereal ecstasy and visceral terror of dreams.
One particularly prominent inspiration was the live concert recordings of Daft Punk’s Alive 2007 tour, which featured the duo at the heart of an elaborate matrix of lights, digital imagery, and smoke:
Marek sat down with Christopher for an interview to talk about his thoughts on composing the music for Hypnotica, his philosophy toward music, and his inspirations as a creator.
1. What drove you to start making and composing music?
I always wanted to be a drummer in a rock band, but it was difficult to arrange that, living in an apartment in a big city. So the next best thing was the guitar: first classical, and then electric. Eventually I ended up playing in a bunch of metal and punk bands in high school. Right as I was beginning to get tired of creative compromises with bandmates, a high school friend introduced me to film and game music. At first, I thought it was such a “boring person” thing, but eventually I fell in love with soundtracks. I remember the first CDs I bought were 1492: Conquest of Paradise (Vangelis) and The Matrix (Don Davis).
2. What are some of the key musicians, composers, or creatives that inspire you?
Akira Yamaoka has a special place in my heart. His Silent Hill music is extremely nostalgic, and sad in a very subtle, touching way. Outside of film and game music, I am a huge fan of Iron Maiden, especially Adrian Smith. The only other guitarist I know with guitar solos so meticulous, with every note bang-on, is David Gilmour. Electronic music-wise, Solar Fields, Boards of Canada and Carbon Based Lifeforms are my biggest inspirations. Recently, I have been listening to a lot of Amos Roddy—I love what he did for the Citizen Sleeper games.
3. Do you have a personal philosophy regarding music–whether performing it or creating it?
Honestly, I just try to have as much fun as possible, within the boundaries of what is expected of me. It’s important to create new stuff, not just to create copies of copies. Especially in the times of AI. I guess I will also put synths wherever I can—I just love tweaking them and coming up with new and cool tones and soundscapes! And I usually start with the texture and the instrumentation, not the melody or harmony.
4. How do you go about composing a track? Is there a method or philosophy you follow?
I always start with the texture: instrumentation, overall mood, color. It’s the most important thing for me. As soon as I get the timbre right, the music starts to write itself, it seems like. Rhythm and tempo are extremely important for me, too–even more so than melody or harmony. To me, music is about motion more than anything else. It’s supposed to influence us on a deep physical level, and the rhythm and BPM are the way to do that. I heard somewhere that actors learn to walk a certain way when they prepare for a role. There seems to be an analogy between an identity hidden beneath a person’s natural motions and how we differentiate music based on rhythmic nuances.
5. When it came to composing the first track for Hypnotica, what was going through your head?
I knew right away that this track needed to be hypnotic, dreamy, and something club-like, ideally resembling a live performance, so the thing I started with was the 4-on-the-floor kick drum. Then came bass synthesizers, the melodies, and the otherworldly, dreamy vocals. I was particularly inspired by Daft Punk’s live performance of “Around the World” (which was one of the references for the track).
6. What parts of the first track are you particularly proud of, or find interesting?
I’m most proud of the vocals—it took me such a long time to find this tone, and I think it came out great. A really cool and unique blend of dreamy singing coupled with something seemingly out of a live performance. There are multiple layers to it: there is a morph of a synthesizer line and my actual vocals, there is whispering, and a ton of different vocoders and effects stacked on top of one another. I think this might be the most unique thing I have ever come up with, tone-wise.
7. The second track is split into two halves, which are very different. What was your vision/goals for each of those two halves?
I wanted the first half to be drastically different from the first track (and from the second half of this track), because this is, of course, a different duo performing. But it still had to be club-esque music. In the end, I decided to take inspiration from some Russian and Eastern European radio hits from the 70s and 80s in general, where they used lots of very simplistic harmonic minor scales, making it sound almost folk-like. That’s what you’re going to hear in the first part of this second track. And the second part is something different—I like to think of it as dubstep-esque, but I’m probably way off on the nomenclature.
8. Are there subtle parts of the tracks or interesting examples of craftsmanship that people may miss, or might reward multiple listens?
There are so many nuances we miss when we consume media we don’t particularly get into creating ourselves. It’s hard to pinpoint a specific thing, but I think people don’t give the drum/bass combo enough credit. It’s the backbone of not only modern music, but also extremely important in soundtracks. We tend to focus on the emotional, melodic pieces, but music that is scary or combat-bound is also extremely important. When it comes to the Hypnotica tracks, though, the vocals are great to focus on – there’s multiple layers to them. See if you can make out the lyrics (they’re there!).
You can visit Marek’s website here, and purchase his soundtrack for Black Heaven on Steam here!
Want to read Hypnotica with the soundtrack?
Read Hypnotica for free on the Occult Triangle Lab website! The soundtrack is embedded in key moments of the text.
Here’s the summary:
Enter the mind-bending world of dreamwrights—mages who craft surreal musical performances in grand, shared dreams. Dreamwrights split their lives between the waking city of Senkaku, populated by the living, and the dreaming city known as the Yoshiza, inhabited by ghosts whose hunger for entertainment is only matched by their taste for cruelty.
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