Matt Uelmen
Matt Uelmen is a dark ambient musician based in Los Angeles, California. He is best known for his work on various computer games for Blizzard Entertainment from 1996 to 2007. Matt was born in July 31, 1973 in the South Bay area of greater Los Angeles. Almost all of his formal training in music came through piano lessons from Lenée Bilski from the ages of 6 to 13, which were discontinued when his family moved to San Jose, California during his high school years. Matt is largely self-taught as a multi-instrumentalist and orchestrator, with a familiarity with instruments in the Read Full BioMatt Uelmen is a dark ambient musician based in Los Angeles, California. He is best known for his work on various computer games for Blizzard Entertainment from 1996 to 2007.
Matt was born in July 31, 1973 in the South Bay area of greater Los Angeles. Almost all of his formal training in music came through piano lessons from Lenée Bilski from the ages of 6 to 13, which were discontinued when his family moved to San Jose, California during his high school years. Matt is largely self-taught as a multi-instrumentalist and orchestrator, with a familiarity with instruments in the keyboard, guitar, flute and percussion families. Most of his performance experience is on the keyboard, though the piece most associated with him, "Tristram" or "Towne" from the Diablo series of computer games, features his playing on 12-string guitar and flute.
This series of games was the core creation of his employer, Condor Inc (later renamed Blizzard North), where he worked for 11 years. This series is estimated to have collectively sold over twenty million copies and, more remarkably, was still on the shelves at major retailers over a decade after the release of the original "Diablo" and seven years after the release of the final installation in the series, "Diablo II: Lord of Destruction". This expansion also featured Matt's first foray into full orchestral writing, with a performance by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. Material from a second recording with this group was used in Matt's later work for Blizzard Entertainment on the "World of Warcraft" series, which incorporated over three hours of his music as of the release of "World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade".
In 2009, Matt moved on to Runic games and produced the soundtracks for Torchlight and Torchlight 2. These games were created by ex-employees of the Blizzard North division. The next soundtrack Matt produced at Runic Games was "Hob". Hob was not a commercial success despite positive reviews and Runic games was shutdown shortly after by parent company Perfect world in late 2017. A new game company called Echtra games was created and immediately started to work on the successor to Torchlight 2, called "Torchlight Frontiers". Matt was brought on to write the soundtrack Torchlight Frontiers, which is scheduled to be released in 2019.
Matt was born in July 31, 1973 in the South Bay area of greater Los Angeles. Almost all of his formal training in music came through piano lessons from Lenée Bilski from the ages of 6 to 13, which were discontinued when his family moved to San Jose, California during his high school years. Matt is largely self-taught as a multi-instrumentalist and orchestrator, with a familiarity with instruments in the keyboard, guitar, flute and percussion families. Most of his performance experience is on the keyboard, though the piece most associated with him, "Tristram" or "Towne" from the Diablo series of computer games, features his playing on 12-string guitar and flute.
This series of games was the core creation of his employer, Condor Inc (later renamed Blizzard North), where he worked for 11 years. This series is estimated to have collectively sold over twenty million copies and, more remarkably, was still on the shelves at major retailers over a decade after the release of the original "Diablo" and seven years after the release of the final installation in the series, "Diablo II: Lord of Destruction". This expansion also featured Matt's first foray into full orchestral writing, with a performance by the Slovak Radio Symphony Orchestra. Material from a second recording with this group was used in Matt's later work for Blizzard Entertainment on the "World of Warcraft" series, which incorporated over three hours of his music as of the release of "World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade".
In 2009, Matt moved on to Runic games and produced the soundtracks for Torchlight and Torchlight 2. These games were created by ex-employees of the Blizzard North division. The next soundtrack Matt produced at Runic Games was "Hob". Hob was not a commercial success despite positive reviews and Runic games was shutdown shortly after by parent company Perfect world in late 2017. A new game company called Echtra games was created and immediately started to work on the successor to Torchlight 2, called "Torchlight Frontiers". Matt was brought on to write the soundtrack Torchlight Frontiers, which is scheduled to be released in 2019.
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Rogue
Matt Uelmen Lyrics
"Rogue" - Liner Notes - August 9, 2000
Standing in your own shadow can be a truly strange experience. Although I feel like we more than lived up to the pressure to improve upon the original Diablo, some elements were particularly sticky. The opening town theme was a good example of this.
Try as I might, it was impossible to get too far from the trusty 12-string. Though the first half of this track, which dates back to September 1998, works well, I did not feel like this tune came together until January 2000. It was then when I found the last toy (of many) which I bought in the making of this soundtrack - the hammered dulcimer. The ancient sound of this ancestor of the piano finally gave me the truly medieval effect that I had been seeking for years. The instrument itself has a pretty-but-tough texture which worked well with the image of the Rogues and their strange mixture of sadness and bloodthirstiness.
If this piece has any problems, they are probably due to my excess of fascination with texture, at the occassional expense of melody and rhythm. It was too much fun to contrast the acoustic 12-string with its electric counterpart in the first half and then to mix it up with the mandolin and the dulcimer in the newer half. As far as that slide part goes, I could not resist taking the Joe Walsh shtick to its logical extreme after all of the "Hotel California" comments I heard from Diablo players. I am a weak man...
- Matt Uelmen
Contributed by Jordyn D. Suggest a correction in the comments below.
To comment on specific lyrics, highlight them
Hemm Humm
I swear video game companies dont care about quality soundtrack like they used to... THIS masterpiece will live inside my heart until I die.
Hemm Humm
@Juan yes music is a big key in many things!!
Hemm Humm
@winKoneR - Music its a masterpiece to me cuz its filled with emotions and its got the perfect atmosphere for a game like diablo 1-2
winKoneR - Music
Nah. By no means I'm saying this is not masterpiece, but there are many amazing soundtracks being released every year. And Matt never lost his style either. If you think this is somehow better than everything else produced these days, that's just nostalgia high.
Juan
Well. Sometimes you can have Hans F***ing Zimmerman compose the OST of your game and still not match or give it the feeling you wanted to. This song is not only a masterpiece of its own, matches the D/D2 games and gives them a new dimension and... well, this song r*ped our ears and our brain years ago. I mean, take Tristram/Rogue and a couple of songs more out of the OST, and it does not even feel like the same game.
Zerghalo2
This is the real reason I always return to Act I
Bill White
Ahh miss this.... Matt you are LEGEND!
Invictus
Beatiful piece of music that brings many good memories about Diablo II.Matt Uelmen did an excellent job.
OGshmo
this came up on Spotify just now and triggered so many memories of D2. <3
LorenzKamo
So many amazing memories.