The Making of… ‘Massive Cinematic Universes’
Gothic Storm’s latest release is the most ambitious yet, with breathtakingly original and powerful compositions from Phil Lober matched with the cinematic magnificence of the 75 piece Synchron Stage orchestra recorded live from Vienna. The album masterfully depicts majestic cinematic universes filled with wonder, triumph and adversity.
We spoke with Phil about how the album evolved from his original ideas to the expansive and powerful end product.
With a massive live string and choir section featuring on this album, does this change your compositional process in anyway? Do these live parts need any extra consideration, opposed to when working solely with software instruments?
My normal route before this album was to maximize the “wow” factor, in spite of any idiosyncrasies in playability. That completely flipped on its head with Massive Cinematic Universes. Realism brought out the wow factor. A plethora of things to consider; should we start this phrase on down-bow or up-bow? Exactly how many milliseconds of time do the woodwinds, brass and choir need to breathe, respectively? These sort of considerations I STILL make to this day, because of this very process.
The compositions on this album are brimming with originality as well as poignant emotion. What inspires you when writing these large scale trailer albums?
The original personal and untold inspiration for this album is that I wanted to tell, with orchestral music, the story of a Tolteca man in the 1300s, who builds his own rocket ship. As you unravel all the possible events and sightings this man could face, you’re given even more inspiration for a new track. But the chords and exact melodies? They are more felt than thought about, which ends my ease of explaining the inspiration.
What was it like to sit in (albeit digitally!) on the recording session and how did it feel listening/watching your tracks being performed by this large ensemble?
There are few things in this world as magical as an orchestral session. Things instantly become real. At times, you hear the faults in the patterns you chose, while hearing the strength of the players overcome them. Every person in that session dedicated their lives to be good at a particular thing, no different than me and composing. It felt like an intensely human experience, as obvious as that sounds! People were reacting, questioning, suggesting, enjoying and struggling. To have that soul-share of passion alone is one thing, and to have that from the best orchestra in Europe and their extremely talented engineers, is something qualiatic. Bernd Mazagg, the engineer at Synchron, would make absolutely genius suggestions that would only work in a live orchestral setting and not in-DAW; complete reversal from my thinking process at the time. That is what I really need to stress here: this album was made by every single person who made a comment on it. From Jake Dijak and Christoph Allerstorfer, the co-orchestrators, to helpful assistance from Christopher Cano with minor rhythm adjustments. Between all of these important moments were hundreds of pitfalls, hurdles, notation software errors and just plain exhaustion. But when the project is valuable and valued, they aren’t even real hurdles anymore, but rather steps to an earned experience.
Did you take any inspiration from other composers in this genre? Anyone from the trailer world or even from longer form soundtrack composers?
Actually, not consciously! But I am sure I took influence.
How does your composition process begin, do you imagine specific cinematic scenes first or does it begin with a musical theme/melody/chord progression?
This one is hard to explain. I’ve actually tried many times to word it accurately and the closest I can come up with is that music for me is like talking. So if I start saying something, I may think of imagery, which may lead me to say more things. If you like a certain chord just because, that’s still perfect justification for later imagery from that chord to continue your train of thought.
Finally, is there a track that you’re particularly proud of? Or perhaps a track that was elevated by live strings and choir beyond your expectations?
Silent. It is my all time favorite track on the album, it was originally composed to be a live performance rock piece before being completely re-influenced by the album process. The strings and choir blew this one out of the water. The intense feeling of having such an intimate and personal composition be brought to life and given wings.
