Music to Game To: The Psychic Maelstrom Mixes

I listen to a lot of music (over 41 days worth in 2018 according to last.fm) and I find that few things help me keep the mood of a game foregrounded in my mind like a good soundtrack. Plus, I’ve discovered that when I’m playing music to a speaker via Bluetooth, I’m less likely to be on my phone, lest my players hear any stray sounds, letting me better model engagement during a game. To that end, I want to share some of my favorite music to game to; the albums that inspire and inflame my imagination and that I’ve found work well as background music for games as well. I’ll do a mini-review and cover the basics of what mood it helps me set.

The Psychic Maelstrom Mixes

So a few weeks ago, listening to the new <PIG> album, Candy, and thinking about running Apocalypse World again, and this happened...

1st, I was just going to pick a song ("The Power of Love") as a theme song for my new #ApocalypseWorld campaign-Then I got to thinkin' several of the tracks worked well in conjunction with the different playbooks https://t.co/2HDcSv67Kl #MusicToGameTo #AntagonistRelations 2/14

— Antagonist Relations (@antag_relations) June 28, 2019

then this happened...

Postscript... #psychicmaelstrom preserve me, I'm already contemplating how to repeat this but with Einstürzende Neubauten songs... #AntagonistRelations #MusicToGameTo

— Antagonist Relations (@antag_relations) June 28, 2019

Then I finally just made a playlist of 12 songs (for each playbook, plus the MC) for each playbook, plus the MC...

So, I present the Psychic Maelstrom Mixes... There were some arbitrary rules I invented for myself to craft each mix, but those won't be interesting to anyone else, so I'll skip listing them. Unlike most Music to Game To that I recommend, these are heavier on lyrics and cover songs. While normally, I wouldn't want players to get bogged down in recognizing songs, here I want the covers they catch to feel like echoes of the past rising up through the psychic maelstrom of Apocalypse World.

• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Angel
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Battlebabe
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Brainer
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Chopper
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Driver
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Gunlugger
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Hardholder
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Hocus
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Maestro D'
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Savvyhead
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Skinner
• Psychic Maelstrom Mix - The Master of Ceremonies

For my upcoming Apocalypse World Game, I plan on adding the mix for each playbook in play to a master list and playing it on shuffle during the game, which is easy for me since I have all the mp3s, but hopefully others can get good use from these mixes as inspiration for playing or running Apocalypse World too, or at least getting a peak into the psychic maelstrom inside my mind that drives me to put together 13+ hours of music for RPG games.

Music to Game To: Einstürzende Neubauten - Zeichnungen Des Patienten O.T.

I listen to a lot of music (over 40 days worth in 2017 according to last.fm) and I find that few things help me keep the mood of a game foregrounded in my mind like a good soundtrack. Plus, I’ve discovered that when I’m playing music to a speaker via Bluetooth, I’m less likely to be on my phone, lest my players hear any stray sounds, letting me better model engagement during a game. To that end, I want to share some of my favorite music to game to; the albums that inspire and inflame my imagination and that I’ve found work well as background music for games as well. I’ll do a mini-review and cover the basics of what mood it helps me set.


EINSTÜRZENDE NEUBAUTEN – ZEICHNUNGEN DES PATIENTEN O.T.

A classic album which encapsulates the early period of Einstürzende Neubauten, complete with salvaged metal percussion and re-purposed power tool instrumentation, but it transcends the industrial clichés to reach eerie and haunting peaks. Unlike many of the other albums recommended by this series, there is little chance that your players will be able to ignore this music as it accompanies your game… Still, I wanted to highlight this album as remains every bit as uncanny (or unheimlich, if you prefer) and affecting 34 years later. Not an album you’d play in the background but definitely mood setting and perfect… as you can tell from this Quietus summary:

Zeichnungen sounds as new, as bold, and as disturbing as any record in recent memory, by turns fiery and chilling, it's a relentlessly exploratory masterpiece of Cold War European decay… tracks on Zeichnungen include field recordings of disturbed children, the sound of fire, cannibalized snippets of Armenian folk melody, and humming electricity…the [title] track is built around a hand-crafted loop of shattering glass and Marc Chung's trademark machine-gun basswork, over which Bargeld howls out a dystopian vision of "a new sun, which burns more than it illuminates" and Barraud's dog listening for His Master's Voice not next to a record player but next to a tombstone.

• Vocals?...Yes, in German
• Music Genre(s)…Industrial, experimental
• Perfect for…Unsettling horror games. A Dread game set in the blasted remains of a post-apocalyptic city or a particularly savage and horrific Apocalypse World or Godless session.
• If you only grab one track, make it… “Neun Arme”, which pulses with singer Blixa Bargeld’s heartbeat, as caught by a fetal heart monitor and describes a yearning to return to simpler times of microbial existence.