The 2023 Grammys have come and gone, and the first Grammy for Best Video Game Score has already been awarded (congratulations, Assassin's Creed Valhalla's Stephanie Economou!). But one of her fellow nominees in that category is video game music royalty in his own right -- Austin Wintory, whose score for the acclaimed indie game Journey netted him a Grammy nomination for a video game score years before it became its own category. This time, he was nominated for his score for Aliens: Fireteam Elite, a third-person shooter based on the iconic Alien franchise. 

Following a team of Colonial Marines shooting their way through alien-infested space stations and planets, Fireteam Elite calls for a much greater action focus than Journey or other games Wintory has scored. But in so doing, he manages to craft a bombastic, atmospheric score that both pays homage to the soundscapes of previous Alien composers like Jerry Goldsmith and James Horner, but also injects lots of low brass and flute solos courtesy of Sara Andon, creating a noir-like sound to fit the story's mysterious tone.

Together, Austin and I talk about the score itself, how to weave those influences into the demands of gameplay, and grander chats about the broader composer community and his role in highlighting those voices (thanks to Wintory's robust YouTube channel, which features score recommendations, BTS stuff, and interviews with other composers and voice actors). And if you want even more insight into his process for the Fireteam Elite score, you can find a track-by-track video breakdown of the score, complete with text commentary, here.

You can find Austin Wintory at his official website here.

Aliens: Fireteam Elite is currently available to play on PS5, PC, XONE, PS4, and XS. You can also listen to the score on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of 20th Century Studios.

For Texan-born composer Chanda Dancy, 2022 feels like a breakthrough year. She's worked in the film and television composing business for eighteen years, an alumnus of the USC Film Scoring Program and the Sundance Composers Lab, as well as projects like Netflix's The Defeated and Everything Before Us. But she's struck gold with several major projects this year... including one that has her on the shortlist for an Academy Award nomination for Best Original Score. If so, she'd be the first Black woman in the history of the Oscars to receive such long-overdue recognition.

That project, of course, is J.D. Dillard's moving, effective Korean War epic Devotion, starring Jonathan Majors and Glen Powell (in his second go-round in the cockpit this year after Top Gun: Maverick) as real-life fighter pilots -- and eventual best friends -- Jesse Brown and Tom Hudner. Charting the course of their friendship over sorties and scuffles within a very racially-stratified US Navy, Dillard's work is understated in its power, anchored by Majors and Powell's wounded, vulnerable performances. And thrumming underneath their interpersonal tensions and the roar of gunfire is Dancy's churning, propulsive score, one that pits steady synths and percussion with whirling high strings to contrast the powerful machines on display with the very human men who fly them.

That's not the only iconic project Dancy worked on this year: she also provided the incidental score for Kasi Lemmons' biopic of Whitney Houston, I Wanna Dance with Somebody. Together (just a few hours before her Oscar shortlist inclusion was announced, mind you), Dancy and I talked about the long road she took to get to this place in her career, the classical influences that have shaped her work, and what it meant to her and her orchestras to get the chance to highlight the biggest moments of The Voice's life and songs.

You can find Chanda Dancy at her official website here.

Devotion is currently streaming on Paramount+, and Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance With Somebody is currently playing in theaters. You can also listen to the score for Devotion on your preferred music streaming service courtesy of Lakeshore Records.