It may have been a little ahead of its time, but the soundtrack from Westwood’s acclaimed real-time strategy computer game Command & Conquer could almost earn the subtitle “music that could have been, but wasn’t, in The Matrix.” Frank Klepacki’s richly textured pieces rely heavily on techno, primarily because it’s easy to loop seamlessly (which is a requirement when scoring a video game). But while he could’ve just set the war machine on autopilot for these tracks, Klepacki made a real effort to vary the sound of each individual piece. Standouts include “Radio”, “Drone”, “Rain In The Night” and “Target”, all notable for a nice, uneasy but not overbearingly bombastic atmosphere, just the sort of doom-laden tension you need for a war game.
Klepacki leans very heavily on speech samples throughout the soundtrack, which is something I probably could have lived without; in a few tracks, such as “Just Do It Up” and “Act On Instinct”, the constant bits of movie dialogue, news clips and whatnot become a distraction against the music.
Westwood sold copies of the Command & Conquer soundtrack through their web site for several years, and copies have also been known to be included with bundled versions of the game with its expansion packs (and, most recently, included in a music bundle at Best Buy stores with Red Alert 2). However, the C&C score is now out of print. It’s worth the effort to find, however, if you have a taste for this particular genre of music.
- Act On Instinct (2:52)
- No Mercy (3:21)
- Industrial (2:53)
- Iron Fist (3:30)
- We Will Stop Them (3:09)
- Radio (3:01)
- On The Prowl (3:02)
- Re-Con (4:22)
- Drone (4:32)
- In The Line Of Fire (2:04)
- Prepare For Battle (3:29)
- Depth Charge (4:15)
- Rain In The Night (2:34)
- Creeping Upon (3:37)
- Target (2:52)
- Just Do It Up (2:22)
- C&C Thang (3:12)
- To Be Feared (2:45)
- Drill (4:27)
- Full Stop (3:01)
- In Trouble (3:32)
- Airstrike (3:17)
Released by: Westwood Studios / Electronic Arts
Release date: 1995
Total running time: 72:09
