A Conversation Through Sound: An Interview with Shatter’s Composer, Module

“Music is quite a conversation, it’s an interesting thing that we humans collectively do. We create this conversation through sound.”

On October 30th, 2022, we spoke with Jeramiah Ross, who produces music as “Module” about his life, career, the soundtrack to Shatter, and his Best of Module album. Shatter Remastered Deluxe releases on November 2nd, 2022 for Nintendo Switch, PlayStation 4/5, Xbox Series, Xbox One, and PC.

You’ve been playing music your whole life, correct?

I was probably about four years old when I started. I had a piano in my granddad’s shed, so I climbed up to the piano forty years ago, and never got off. I was very driven by music; I like maths, and I was quite bright when I was younger, so music just seemed the logical progression to keep my brain busy.

Four is very young to start playing the piano. Was anyone in your family musically trained?

No, I was a bit of an anomaly. I just got on the piano and understood the maths of it. Like how the different notes sounded when they were going faster and slower, which is how music works. From there, my mum and grandma said “You should get that kid lessons!”.

I was lucky that I had a really great music teacher, who inspired me to make sure I did my own thing, musically. She really pushed me at quite a young age, to follow the music that I could hear in my head. She was an older lady and quite strict, but she taught me to how to be creative.

Your grandfather, who had the piano in his shed, his job was working with computer hardware?

Mostly amplifiers, and radios, and old electronic equipment. He’s pretty much responsible for why I drifted into electronic music. He passed on when I was quite young, but he left me with a lot of passion for playing with wires and cables. I’m still like him in a lot of ways: I’m always fixing something or wiring something together. It’s just part of my nature; I love finding old broken equipment, repairing it, and making it do things that it shouldn’t.

When I think of people making electronic music, they often use software, but it sounds like you have a lot of hands-on knowledge of analog technology.

I do. With Shatter, a lot of that soundtrack was approached with very old-school, studio-based techniques. In Palmerston North, where I grew up, I had a small recording studio, and I spent most of my teenage years learning how to use old studio technology like mixing discs, compressors, and limiters. So I had that hands-on analog approach to music at a young age.

With the advances in music software at the moment, you can emulate everything. But at the same time, if you don’t have experience with what you are emulating, you won’t have a reference. There can be a stark difference between what is generated on a physical circuit versus pixels on a screen. But in the end, I always go back to “If it sounds good, use it.”

I’ve read that in your teenage years, you started using early tracking software like OctaMED.

I loved that program. I had an Amiga 500, and OctaMED gave me 6-7 seconds per track of mono sampling, and you’d store it all on floppy discs. I would make samples on the 4-track, and feed OctaMED with all my own sounds to make sequences. Then I’d play live over those sequences, and feed it back into itself. If I needed a distorted bass sound, I’d run the Amiga 500 into an old bass pedal.

That’s something I did quite a lot of for Shatter as well; a lot of the sounds in that soundtrack are running through something or back into through something else. It gives you more tonal color to change the dynamic of the sounds so that they are interesting to the ears. 

When I think of someone in their teenage years, that can be a quite formative timeframe in terms of music that you listen to. Were there bands or genres that you were listening to at the time?

Well, I’ve never really limited myself to any specific genre. Music naturally comes and goes in our lives. Everyone likes a certain thing for a time, and then it fades, and then something else comes along.

Music is quite a conversation, it’s an interesting thing that we humans collectively do. We create this conversation through sound. Bands that inspired me the most were Fleetwood Mac, Pink Floyd, and Vangelis. I really loved Guns N Roses and Smashing Pumpkins, so I had quite a broad taste in music growing up. I like classical composers as well. I do classical composition now and then.

I guess David Gilmour, from Pink Floyd, was really who inspired me to explore the guitar. What he was doing emotionally with his playing really affected me. He wasn’t overcomplicating it; it was like a really nice conversation with a friend when you’d listen to it. That approach became quite strong in my mind, about how to make music that talks to people.

“It was a really amazing time in my life, going from having a dream of performing, to actually living it.”

At the time that the developers of Shatter, Sidhe (now PikPok), started working on the game, they knew you as a live performer. So back then were you mostly doing DJ sets, or your own songs?

Well that’s kind of how Module started; I got this idea in my head of wanting to make live electronic music. Ableton Live software had just come out, so the technology was a bit further along to be able to control things. I had three to four keyboards with Ableton Live, everything was sending MIDI data to the visuals and the lights. I got signed to a record label and went travelling up and down the country, played a lot of festivals, and met everybody in the music industry in New Zealand.

It was a really amazing time in my life, going from having a dream of performing, to actually living it. And that’s when I met the guys from PikPok, and they really connected to what I was doing. Much like video games, when you are in a live environment, you play to your crowd.

That goes along with what you were saying about music being a conversation. You’re creating music, but also feeding off of the audience and their energy. I’m curious about what it’s like when you are creating an album, and you don’t have that audience in front of you. What is that process like, when it’s just you?

That’s where imagination comes in quite useful. Experience is important as well. I’ve been writing a lot in the last couple of years; there’s been so much new music that’s come out of me. So I’ve been slowly releasing it on social media. It’s almost like making music in real time in front of people on social media, just to gauge how people are reacting to it.

It’s hard to put the process into words, because it’s more of a feeling. But if it sounds good, and it feels right, that’s generally the music that I’ll follow. There’s been a massive shift with people’s attention spans, because there’s so much music and it’s available all the time. The way to not worry about change is to just make the kind of music that resonates personally with you, and then share it. Logic dictates that someone out there will feel the same as you about the music.

“Rather than worry about the decline of a previous industry, just make your own. Make your own industry. ”

As the music industry has changed to a streaming model, there is less emphasis placed on albums, and more emphasis placed on singles. How do you feel about that change and how has it impacted your music creation?

A lot of people will discover artists through streaming services as a single song on a playlist. That’s your entry point into that artist’s body of work. My idea is that it’s like walking into a room, and over in corner there’s one interesting thing, but right next to it is a door. And on that door it says, “Open me for more”. When you open my door, you’ll see thirty odd years of work that I’ve done.

I think it’s really important to get that message across to other creatives. We have to redefine the conversation we have with our audience. The quality of your music will speak louder than anything else over time. All you need is that one song in front of the door, and then somebody can open it.

So just stay true to yourself. Whether it’s somebody picking up an album, or listening to a single on a streaming service, your audience will find you.

Exactly. Because quality speaks for itself when it comes to music. We connect to things that resonate with us emotionally and mentally. So that’s when the conversation comes back into music again. I spend my time and my energy making something that I feel is worthy and sharing it.

Rather than worry about the decline of a previous industry, just make your own. Make your own industry.

“Essentially we were paying homage to the Arkanoid arcade experience, and I just thought that this was the perfect opportunity to rock out.”

When Shatter came out in 2009 it was notable for a few reasons. It was very early in the downloadable console indie space. Also, Shatter harkened back to early 1980’s gameplay before the retro-aesthetic was more popular in games. At the time, did you have a sense that that you were working on a game that was on the forefront of industry in many ways?

I felt like it was a huge opportunity. In the old days, you would go to an arcade, and stand there and play a video game. I realized that these PlayStations were like an arcade in everyone’s room. If I could make really good music, I could get it out over the whole world. So I got inspired by the idea of creating something really awesome for everyone’s personal arcade. That’s how I approached it. Essentially we were paying homage to the Arkanoid arcade experience, and I just thought that this was the perfect opportunity to rock out.

You’ve said that the early work that you did on Shatter ended up not being used. Do you still have access to it? Do you think fans will ever see the early version of that soundtrack?

It could possibly happen, depending on demand. Because it was done with a game company, I’m a bit limited in what I can do personally. I can tell you that it was very centered around the machines as opposed to the main character. It was very much industrial, and quite Nine Inch Nails sounding. It was very dynamic in terms of the software almost self-generating music. But we realized when the game development progressed, that the visuals were saying something different than what the music was projecting. So we just scrapped it, and felt we needed to start again.

If that early work focused more on the machines, and it was a bit more industrial, would you say that it tonally sounded a more like the tracks “Granular Extractor” or “Neon Mines”?

Definitely, I kept that industrial energy. The more you go into the soundtrack, you’ll notice some of the tracks get quite hard and aggressive near the end. Shatter’s music works best inside the game because you get the feeling of a journey, and it makes sense having that visual context. We had lots of meetings about how to create that journey with the music. A lot of it was done with running synthesizers through guitar amps, one of my favorite tricks.

The soundtrack has a very strong vocal presence with the robot synthesizers, without there being any actual vocals. The synthesizers represents the main character, and as you get further along, guitars start becoming more present, and that represents the machines. So we have emotional robots and heavy metal machines. I tried to create this transition of waking up into a world you’ve never seen before, and realizing you have to fight these major machines that are controlling everything. You find your way eventually, you find your place in the world.

You spoke about taking the music from Shatter, and putting it into an album. One of the interesting things about the soundtrack is that you made a vinyl release. It’s easy to forget that vinyl sales were at their lowest in the late 2000’s. So where did that idea of a vinyl release come from?

I think it was more do with the fact that, if we made it available for the people who love it, they’ll find it. I’m really lucky with the developers PikPok, we all have that same energy, where we invest in the future. We felt like we made something really good, and we decided to cover our bases, and get the vinyl done for the people who might want it. We did a limited edition run, and it came out so good, with see-through electrical blue vinyl. It became a collector’s item and people really connected to it. We actually ended up getting it mastered at Abbey Road, where the Beatles did their jam. So that was pretty epic. We sent the music over there, and they made sure that it came across properly in vinyl. It was a nice personal milestone.

We were also the first video game to release on Bandcamp. We had Bandcamp email us to tell us we were starting a trend of people releasing video game soundtracks on their service. Additionally we had a music video for “Amethyst Caverns”. We created a side story of two little robots getting powered up by someone busking. So we were really trying to push the boundary of a music – video game crossover.

It was a real multimedia effort.

I think that’s where it really stuck out, you hadn’t really seen that before. Here’s us from small town New Zealand, rocking out on a global platform, it was really quite neat. I’ll always remember back to that time with warm memories, and such a good feeling that we accomplished something like that. It doesn’t really leave you, and those emotions help you push forward with what you are doing now.

“I was trying to bring the feelings I had in the past into the present. To make it feel like I’m in the future that I imagined when I was a kid. ”

Over the decades, game music has generally shifted towards more ambient and cinematic music, to match more story-driven games. With the Shatter soundtrack, it felt like you were taking the melody driven music of early 80s video games and bringing it into the modern HD era. Was that your intention?

Well, that’s just the music I had grown up on. I’m lucky I had exposure to the machines that created those 80’s sounds. So when I was using virtual studio technology, I knew what they should sound like, or more importantly, feel like. A lot of the music that I grew up with in the 80’s had a certain feeling. People in the early 80’s had a really positive view of the future. There had been an explosion of technology, everyone was wearing bright clothes, it was completely crazy, everyone was breaking social norms. The walls came down on humanity, so to speak. The music reflected that sense of freedom, which came from people discovering how to use machines musically. I pretty much just wanted to make sure I got that feeling across. The games that we all played growing up, and how we felt, it was an amazing time. I was trying to bring the feelings I had in the past into the present. To make it feel like I’m in the future that I imagined when I was a kid.

For Shatter Remastered, you remastered the soundtrack and added surround sound. What was that process like? How different are the new tracks compared to the ones from 2009?

Everything stayed the same, arrangement wise, but what you find when you are in the surround field, is that the music is all around you. You go from having a 2D experience to a 3D experience, musically. There are things exploding behind your ears, and sweeps and sounds coming from all directions. It’s quite amazing, I got really quite emotional when we finished it. My friend Troy Kelly, who I did the original work with for Shatter, helped me push it across the finish line. In 2009 he did a lot of the mixing and finalizing. I’d been working on it for a year and half back then, and I really needed someone to help me get it across the line. He did a great job, and in the ten years since we did that, he is now running a full on production studio in Wellington. That’s where I went to see him to do this remaster. He did a really great job of putting the music all around you. I think it will really translate really well to the general audience or the people who have those 5.1 setups. To me it’s really like going to a 3D movie. All that extra detail and depth that you can get out of the surround sound.

It’s been ten years since that soundtrack, and you had to revisit it for the Remaster. How do you feel about the soundtrack now that you have ten years more experience? Anything you wish was different?

Sometimes in creative life, you just have those rare moments where everything clicks, and you end up creating something were you are driven by the energy of it. To me, Shatter represented a huge style change from what I was making previously as Module, my musical character. Module isn’t really a band, it’s more like a virtual David Bowie situation. Module’s a character. He’s a musical scientist from the future making buzzy music for the humans in the present. I came up with a lot of back story and art. I think that’s also why a video game company connected to me; I had that video game aesthetic in me.

It was really easy for me to transition into the world of Shatter, because I understood what we were trying to create. Basically, a story with a strong style. The music that I created for Shatter, once I got the core elements down, it ended up just writing itself because it was really fun to make. I remember one track called “Freon World” which is about halfway through the soundtrack. I sent an email to PikPok joking that “I might be going for the world’s best lead guitar solo in a video game award here.” as a joke. But they wrote back, “We love it! Use it!”. And that really defined the guitar sound for the rest of the soundtrack. Things like that were happening all the way through the creation of it. We were really just enjoying what we were making. It became a labor of love over time. We made something we are really proud of. I don’t think I could ever change it for that reason.

Along those lines, when you were creating the Best of Module album that recently released, you took a critical view of your discography over the years. What was that experience and process like?

Funnily enough, I floated the idea with my record label, Loop Recordings. They’re quite involved with the New Zealand music scene. They have quite a few well-known New Zealand acts on them, and I’ve been with them since 2003. But with this Best of Module album, I just said to my label manager, Mikee Tucker, who runs Loop Recording, “Make an album that you think is the Best of Module.” I handed over complete control to him, in terms of track listing, and how it all flowed together. I’m really happy I decided to do that. I think I would have been too critical, and there’d be too much I’d want to say. The album would end up with 90 tracks. Mikee created a two hour, 29 track experience as an actual listening album. So you get a sense of that journey I’ve been on the last 20 years with Module. Mikee was the only one who could really do that for me. He has that connection to my music, and a real understanding of music. I’m really lucky that I have a label manager like that.

The songs are not laid out in a strictly chronologic order on the album. For example, some of your piano work, like your Movement album or a Dance without Moving is evenly spaced throughout the album.

There’s so many unique styles that I’ve ended up creating. I’ve managed to make Module a non-genre thing. Those more quiet and reflective pieces act as transitions to the other styles, like bridges. That’s where Mikee did a really good job; it pulls you into a mood for a period of time, and then it transitions you into another mood. The album artwork reflects that, it looks like I’m in a time machine. The album is like a musical time machine. Music does that, it takes you back to places from the past, or it can make you imagine places from the future. The response to the Best of Module album on Spotify and other platforms was really great. It was a really nice way to close the chapter of what I’ve been doing, and make a new one, which is what I’ve been doing lately.

Quite honestly, when I got to the end of all this work, and I got to realize that the industry had changed, I did seriously question whether I wanted to be doing this anymore. It’s a lifelong commitment, music, and I’ve been doing it my whole life. I’m 44 now, so I thought maybe it would be nice to go try something else. But I’ve found a nice balance with photography, which I love, and it allows me to do both. Photography is so grounding for me, it puts me right in the moment, and helps me process my music.

“I’m very inspired and connected to nature. A lot of us from New Zealand are, because nature is putting on an epic show everyday with some of the sunsets and sunrises.”

It’s clear from your social media how much you enjoy and are good at photography, specifically nature photography. How does the photography inform your music creation and vice versa?

I discovered that the camera is like a guitar, light is like sound, mood, and shadows, and they all trigger emotional reactions. It’s like music for the eyes! It was really easy for me to take all the things I use to create music and transpose them over to the camera. I get really inspired by New Zealand. It’s an isolated jewel in the middle of nowhere, and it’s an amazing place. The clouds do amazing things, the light is really cool. We are a multicultural country, so everybody’s really unique, and we all have really cool connections with each other. I’m really lucky to live in such a cool place, I can’t imagine going anywhere else. I’m very inspired and connected to nature. A lot of us from New Zealand are, because nature is putting on an epic show everyday with some of the sunsets and sunrises.

When I’m not feeling musical, I don’t have to feel like I’m not accomplishing anything, because I’ll then switch to photography. It helps with my creative energy management. It’s a different process, with music you are creating a moment, with photography you are capturing one. With a photo, you see something beautiful, take a photo, and then you’re done. And if you share it, and if people connect to it, it’s very similar to the process that happens with music, but a lot quicker.

You spoke earlier about how your Module character is this futuristic electronic character, which is an interesting contrast with the nature aspect of your photography.

Well, we live in this world where everything is interconnected. You have people wanting to create pretend universes; you have people wanting to make machines that think for themselves. We live in a very interesting time, where everyone is very open and expressive with their imaginations. This virtual character that I created 15 years ago, totally works in the context of this world now.

In a lot of ways Module is a way for me to experiment. I tell my audience that I’m a musical scientist. It’s kind of like Ziggy Stardust from David Bowie. I think I just enjoy that process, to be able to put futuristic music into context. When you watch something like Tron Legacy, that movie worked really well because Daft Punk made the soundtrack, and the music suited the visuals. There’s a cohesiveness there. That’s why a lot of video games have specific styles of music, that suit their context. I am very interested in the mechanics of creativity, and I think Module is the perfect vehicle for me to express that.

And yet at the same time, you get great pleasure out of nature, where there’s no technology.

It’s the same with me on the guitar and the piano. There’s no computer involved. I just pick up the acoustic guitar, or sit behind the piano, and start playing. Creatively I see myself as Jeramiah the musician and Module the producer. That’s how I’ve given context to the different things that I do. It works really well, because I’ll create something musically and emotionally, and then I’ll put my Module head on, and remix myself. That’s what I was talking about with Ziggy Stardust, it’s having a mental approach when you are creating. That’s very much what happened with Shatter. I put myself in that Module mental state, to translate the energy that I was feeling into really epic music for every arcade in the world. Essentially that’s what Shatter became, it was a virtual arcade in your lounge.