Stéphane Picq (born 16 August 1965) is a French composer of

video game music Video game music (or VGM) is the soundtrack that accompanies video games. Early video game music was once limited to sounds of early sound chips, such as programmable sound generators (PSG) or FM synthesis chips. These limitations have led t ...

, primarily for ERE Informatique/Exxos and

Cryo Interactive Cryo Interactive Entertainment was a French video game development and publishing company founded in 1990, but existing unofficially since 1989 as a developer group under the name Cryo. History Cryo was formed by members of ERE Informatique ...

History

Picq first began composing in 1987. He retired from the industry in 1998 and moved to

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

. In February 2006, he announced that he was building a new studio in Madagascar and may release a compilation of old songs. On 13 November 2015 ZOOM Platform and the Jordan Freeman Group revealed that Stéphane Picq, original musical composer for MegaRace 1, had joined the MegaRace Reboot Team and would be composing the soundtrack with other team members, including Jordan Freeman and Max Petrosky, along with some special guests. The news had actually broken on the previous day, 12 November 2015, via the MegaRace Reboot's official Facebook page. On 22 August 2016 ZOOM Platform and the Jordan Freeman Group released Stéphane Picq's complete MegaRace 1 soundtrack re-mastered in stereo for the first time ever on various digital download services including Amazon MP3, CDBaby, Google Play, and iTunes. In an interview in July 2020, he looks back on his career and in particular on the reasons that led him to leave the video game industry. The composer explains that the lack of artistic freedom made him tired.

Musical style

Picq claims to own dozens of instruments from all over the world and the ability to play all of them. His musical style incorporates "organic sonority", as he features many "organic sounds" such as breaths, water, sighs. The most representative examples are found in " Dune: Spice Opera", but this technique is also used on other Cryo soundtracks (for example, "Thaa's Secret" in ''

Lost Eden ''Lost Eden'' is an adventure game developed by Cryo and published by Virgin Interactive in March 1995 for MS-DOS, Macintosh, 3DO, and CD-i. It is set in a world where humans and dinosaurs coexist. Plot Adam, prince of Mo, has grown up in an ...

'').

Selected works

*'' Extase'' *'' KULT: The Temple of Flying Saucers'' *''

KGB The KGB (russian: links=no, lit=Committee for State Security, Комитет государственной безопасности (КГБ), a=ru-KGB.ogg, p=kəmʲɪˈtʲet ɡəsʊˈdarstvʲɪn(ː)əj bʲɪzɐˈpasnəsʲtʲɪ, Komitet gosud ...

'' *" Dune: Spice Opera" (the soundtrack to the game '' Dune'') *'' MegaRace'' *''

Commander Blood ''Commander Blood'' is a science fiction adventure game that was developed by Cryo, a French company that also created '' Captain Blood'' (released in 1988). Designed to run on MS-DOS, ''Commander Blood'' was released in 1994. ''The Big Bug Ban ...

'' *''

Dragon Lore ''Dragon Lore: The Legend Begins'' is a point-and-click adventure game released in 1994 by Cryo Interactive for MS-DOS, and later ported to the 3DO video game console. The game was a commercial success, with sales of 300,000 units by 1997. An em ...

'' *''

'' *'' Atlantis: The Lost Tales'' *''

Riverworld Riverworld is a fictional planet and the setting for a series of science fiction books written by Philip José Farmer (1918–2009). Riverworld is an artificial "Super-Earth" environment where all humans (and pre-humans) are reconstructed. The ...

References

External links

Artist profile
at

OverClocked ReMix OverClocked ReMix, also known as OC ReMix and OCR, is a non-commercial organization dedicated to preserving and paying tribute to video game music through arranging and re-interpreting the songs, both with new technology and software and by vari ...

* {{DEFAULTSORT:Picq, Stephane 1965 births French composers French electronic musicians French emigrants to Madagascar French male composers French techno musicians Living people Video game composers