Crystals And Geysers

Instrumental

Lost Temple

Instrumental

The Creep

Instrumental

Second Nexus

Instrumental

Psionic Matrix

Instrumental

Infantry Upgrade

Instrumental

Mutalisk Aggression

Instrumental

Goliath Online

Instrumental

For Aiur

Instrumental

Zerg Lair

Instrumental

Firebat Splash Damage

Instrumental

Carrier Has Arrived

Instrumental

Gamete Meiosis

Instrumental

Explorer Reporting

Instrumental

Starport

Instrumental

Infested Command Center

Instrumental

Archon Merge

Instrumental

Nydus

Instrumental

Yamato Gun

Instrumental

Adun Toridas

Instrumental

What Battle Calls
Inspired by StarCraft (c. 2022)

Production

These originals are based on zerg, terran, and protoss themes from the videogame Starcraft.

While composing these works, Kern gave consideration to music theory and instrument choices. Zerg tracks tend to be darker, make more use of pitch bends and chromatics, and mysterious noises. This fits the Zerg theme which is an alien race with forms resembling insect reptile monsters.

For Protoss themes, Kern made use of unusual intervals like augmented fourths and electronic noises. The Protoss are an advanced alien species that tend to resemble Klingon and Predator traits. They have achieved teleportation and can harness ambient brainwaves as a power source.

Examples of Protoss tracks are Psionic Matrix, and Archon Merge

For Protoss themes, Kern made use of unusual intervals like augmented fourths and electronic noises. The Protoss are an advanced alien species that tend to resemble Klingon and Predator traits. They have achieved teleportation and can harness ambient brainwaves as a power source.

Examples of Zerg tracks are Mutalisk Aggression, and Gamete Meiosis

The third and final faction is the Terran, who represent humans and their technology. Terran tracks are often more militaristic sounding and are more likely to feature brass melodies.

Examples of Terran tracks are Firebat Splash Damage, and Goliath Online.

The choice to make tracks on this album micro length is a statement by Kern about the fleeting attention span of today's audiences, and the strong-arm tactics taken by dominant streaming platforms which take advantage of new and indie artists.

As of April 2024, Spotify began a policy that effectively steals ALL royalties from new artists for each track that does not exceed 1000 plays within the last 12 months. This means an artist could maintain 900 plays a year perpetually on 100+ tracks and Spotify would be obligated to pay that artist a total of zero dollars for each of those tracks.

The justification was, paradoxically, to defend against botted plays. But quite obviously these are not the artists using bots. If anything, the policy incentivizes bot plays and it is noteworthy that Spotify already had algorithmic detection and automatic uncounting of botted plays in place for some time.

Credits

• Produced by Rich Kern
• Album cover art by Rich Kern