(Score / Orchestral, Electronic, Ethnic) Blade Symphony by Tom Stoffel (2014) (MP3, 320 kbps)

01. Swords of the North (02:42)
02. Wushu Tactics (04:33)
03. Sakura Danger (04:47)
04. Friends and Enemies (04:16)
05. Asphalt Dojo (02:48)
06. Sir, I Challenge You to a Duel. (03:55)
07. Black Rose (03:27)
08. A Bright Future (03:40)
09. Angel of Death (02:30)
10. Paper Crane (03:02)
11. Chandelier Showdown (02:44)
12. Controlled Breathing (04:31)
13. Full Moon (03:07)
14. Highland (04:24)
15. Bushido Mode (02:59)
16. Ninjutsu Stealth (03:09)
17. Annex (02:40)
18. Ceremonies (03:21)
19. Vagrants (02:56)
20. Thirty Story Temple (04:11)
21. Bull Fight (03:57)
22. Ashes (04:21)
23. Vanguard (04:59)
24. Relics (04:03)
25. Compression (03:57)
26. Decompression (05:04)
27. Neon War Paint (03:53)
28. Chandelier Showdown (Shattered Version) (03:39)
29. 100,000.00 Souls (03:26)
30. Sheathe Society (03:56)
31. School of War (02:16)
32. Tiger Stance (01:36)
33. East Winds (03:00)
34. Tapestry (02:19)
35. Mastery (02:26)
36. Seven Years (02:46)
37. Duel Box (02:10)

Bandcamp:
The Official Soundtrack to Blade Symphony
credits
released May 1, 2014
Composer: Tom Stoffel
Producer: Tom Stoffel
Developer: Puny Human Games
Steam:
Blade Symphony's story was never explicitly told through the game. Who are these sword-wielding badasses and why are they killing each other through Asian temples, European courtyards, or city-streets? A huge part of the album's purpose was to implicitly tell this story.
History for this universe called Berimbau stretch back thousands of years, to a handful of warring clans that ultimately came to peace terms and unified under a single flag: The Black Rose. Employing skills swordsmen from the North, the "Blind Edge" assassins, so called because they purposefully mutilate their own eyes to hone their extra-sensory powers, the Black Rose came to become the de facto power of their continent.
After a time, their own assassins turned on them. Calling themselves the Hokuten, they drove The Black Rose to become a super-power during the industrial age and unified the world under a new flag: The Greater Wing.
Millions of deaths followed this transformation, including the displaced who fight for the world being turned upside its head, a group known as the Vagrants. It is through this tapestry that the swordsmen of Blade Sympony exist and duel, and the sum of the themes of this soundtrack.
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When I first pitched the album to Tom several years ago, I had doubts whether anyone was able to pull off the kind of mixed themes I had in mind. After a few discovery tracks where Tom was experimenting with the tone of the combat and ambient tracks, I realized he's totally nailed the quadrant mix of East + West + Past + Future.
I was responsible for putting the tracks in order to form a coherent album. Picking the first track was challenging for many reasons. I chose "Swords of the North" because it had basically all of the albums primary motifs in one song: the guitar, the improvised piano, the percussion, and the crazy south-east instrumentation that Tom used many times on the soundtrack. It was a great introductory piece to the OST, and everything sort of laid itself out from there.
At some point I decided not to split the spectator and combat tracks into their own segments. It made more sense to present the soundtrack in a way that told a story, so leaving the more calm, introspective pieces in the OST between combat pieces seemed like the right call.
This is especially important between pieces that have insane amounts of energy, such as Chandelier Showdown (Track 11), which by the way is such a brilliant piece of music. This is followed by Controlled Breathing (Track 12) that gives some open air before we go into the truly off-the-chains battle combo that is Full Moon (Track 13), Highland (Track 14), Bushido Mode (Track 15, named after a custom game mode played on some servers), and build up finally to Ninjutsu Stealth (Track 16).
The combat tracks themselves have really important motifs, such as the obvious build-ups in Bull Fight (Track 21) and something which I'm really impressed Tom was able to keep: the improvised jazz jams that happen in many tracks such as Ninjutsu Stealth (Track 16) meant to invoke the mind of a sword-fighter moving at a thousand miles per hour, all of that skill and years of practice just coming out effortlessly.
Tom also fired a lot of ideas at me on stuff he wanted to try and attempted to get a reaction out of me. One such track was Angel of Death (Track 9) which started off as Enya and then slowly but creepily evolved into this haunting and dramatic piece.
It bears mentioning that the spectator tracks themselves took an abundant amount of effort to nail down. Originally we wanted to have 3 tracks per map, one for each faction, and blend the two seamlessly whenever two fighters are in an arena, for example if a Vagrant (Ryoku) and a Phalanx (Hokuten) dueled, their two arena-specific tracks would be played simultaneously and seamlessly. Unfortunately we didn't end up doing that as it meant Tom would have an exponential amount of work per character and per map arena, and these numbers change as development happened. This idea was cut in favor of doing purely thematic pieces that hold up on their own and would be played, primarily during Spectating and Free Roam modes of the game. You can still hear one of these in the cut B-Sides track Tiger Stance (Track 6) to get an idea of what that would have sounded like.
Speaking of which, some of the B-Side tracks were discovery tracks for when Tom was still working with me on figuring out the musical tone. Chandelier Showdown (Shattered Version) (Track 2) was an early version of this same track which I begged Tom to keep in both forms.
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In this folder you'll find all mp3s at 320kbps for every song in the game, re-mastered with endings to each song. In addition you'll also find (B-Sides), tracks that were cut from the final game and then re-mastered by composer Tom Stoffel as complete tracks as additional content for this package.
You have this album because you got the copy of the game that comes with the OST. Thank you SO MUCH for supporting us, we hope you enjoy what we've put together!
~Flux 2014
Composer: Tom Stoffel
Album Assembly: Michael Chang (Flux)
Album Art: JGMissle
Team: Puny Human
Copyright © Puny Human LLC 2014