Music • Images
ROLEPLAYING GAME MUSIC
In 1999 I composed A Beast I Am as the official atmospheric soundtrack for Vampire: The Masquerade,
the influential tabletop role-playing game set in the fictional World of Darkness.
Rather than accompanying a linear story, the music was written to immerse players in a world of mystery, political intrigue and personal conflict.
The album consists of 13 instrumental pieces, each exploring a different aspect of that universe while maintaining its own musical identity. Although composed to support gameplay, the music was written with the ambition to remain engaging beyond its original context.
For the 2022 reissue, I returned to the original stereo masters.
Apart from a new master, I made only a handful of subtle additions and refinements to the arrangements, carefully preserving the atmosphere and character of the original 1999 release.
Below, we'll take a closer look at six tracks from the album, offering some insight into their musical ideas and the way they came into being.
A World of Darkness
Before composing a single note, I asked guitarist Ruud Franken to do something rather unusual:
not to play the guitar, but to explore it as a source of sound. Instead of melodies or chords, he struck the
body of the instrument, pulled at the strings, scraped, hit and invented deliberately unmusical riffs. These recordings became the raw material from which the album gradually emerged.
While working on this first track, I suddenly recognised the notes "E-E-A" in the guitar-lick and it immediately reminded me of the opening of Charles Aznavour's La Mama, a dramatic song I played endlessly as a child. That unexpected association made this piece feel like the natural and absolute beginning of the album; its musical "mother", from which everything else could grow.
rather than use it literally. After slowing it down dramatically, something unexpected happened. Because of her slight lisp and the extreme time-stretching, the line "and the rain washed the spider out" began to sound like "and the rain washed this pleasure out" (starts at 0:57). That accidental mishearing fitted the atmosphere of the album so perfectly that I decided to weave the recording into the composition.
This piece was inspired by David Byrne's album 'My life in the bush of ghosts'.
Fellini's Bar
During the recording sessions, an American friend was visiting the Netherlands with her young daughter.
I recorded her singing the nursery rhyme Itsy Bitsy Spider, planning to experiment with the recording
Intrigues & Transactions
In this piece, the rhythmic foundation is partly built from sampled breathing and sniffing sounds rather than conventional percussion. Here, some of the processed guitar material also makes its first appearance.
The "solo guitar" is in fact an intentionally over-the-top distorted electric guitar patch from the Roland JV-2080 synthesizer. In the final section, a majestic church organ gradually takes over, carrying the music towards its conclusion.
Visions of Golconda
Even while the choir strives towards something magical or transcendent, it seems unable to escape the weight of what has already happened. Instead of portraying transcendence, this piece lingers in its shadow.
Everything about it evokes the atmosphere of late-Romantic music: slow-moving, tragic, and permeated by a sense of hopelessness.
Stalker
Reverse guitar sounds form the basis of this piece, while the sound of a sliding gravestone becomes an almost breathing part of the music itself. Nothing here is overtly dramatic; instead, the track slowly creaks, shifts and smoulders beneath the surface.
Malkavian Insight
The starting point for this piece was a strange image: a musically trained zombie sitting at a deliberately, slightly out-of-tune piano. Fragments of memory remain, a few broken melodic lines, brief echoes of
concert pieces once performed, but little else. The music attempts to capture that unsettling mixture of familiarity, decay and fading recollection.
I remember this piece came together remarkably quickly through improvisation. Rather than correcting unexpected turns or apparent mistakes, I allowed them to become part of the music. Once I accepted the image of a "zombie pianist", there was no longer any distinction between right and wrong. Every hesitation, detour or imperfection simply became another fragment of a fading musical memory. He still remembers bits and pieces of the music, but can no longer fully control the hands that once played it.
The rare original 1999 CD was digitally remastered in 2022 and is now available on all major streaming platforms.
If you would like to support my work, you can also purchase the album on Bandcamp.