Storm Warrior
M. Cooksey, 1966-
Storm Warrior is a hack/slash game from the tail end of Mark's Commodore 64 career and one of his favourite pieces in his own oeuvre. This arrangement is a medley of two of the subtunes, one of those subtunes being something even Mark himself called "Bachian": i.e. a conscious effort to do something like Bach. The other part of the medley is a more dramatic piano-bashing, key-changing, descending swirl.
The idea of doing a Storm Warrior arrangement came from Mark Cooksey himself who had created an arrangement
The original concept of this arrangement was that it was a musical depiction of Russian nobles and their armies on the way to meet Napoleon on the battlefield. Starting off with a piano (representing fate) while the nobles were drinking and partying, it develops into a small group of officers (string sections) being joined by squadron leaders and commissioned officers (brass), and then being joined by the foot soldiers (represented here by the wind section). You could feel the morale building as they marched. A switch to the second subtune and a climax as battle is joined and the cannons start to fire makes it clear that the main survivor is fate (albeit with a few groaning survivors). The finished arrangement breaks with this concept in a number of ways to add variety and dynamism to the performance, but the general shape is the same.
When this arrangement was being recorded in Prague in 2022, the orchestra (sight-reading) keyed in very quickly to the initial polite Bach vibe and never really got up and running with the more Prokofiev vibe I had in mind for the initial concept.
Composed by: Mark Cooksey
Arranged by: Mark Cooksey, Alisdair J. Pickering and Chris Abbott
Orchestrated by: Alisdair J. Pickering and Robin Tait
© High Technology Publishing Ltd.
The idea of doing a Storm Warrior arrangement came from Mark Cooksey himself who had created an arrangement
The original concept of this arrangement was that it was a musical depiction of Russian nobles and their armies on the way to meet Napoleon on the battlefield. Starting off with a piano (representing fate) while the nobles were drinking and partying, it develops into a small group of officers (string sections) being joined by squadron leaders and commissioned officers (brass), and then being joined by the foot soldiers (represented here by the wind section). You could feel the morale building as they marched. A switch to the second subtune and a climax as battle is joined and the cannons start to fire makes it clear that the main survivor is fate (albeit with a few groaning survivors). The finished arrangement breaks with this concept in a number of ways to add variety and dynamism to the performance, but the general shape is the same.
When this arrangement was being recorded in Prague in 2022, the orchestra (sight-reading) keyed in very quickly to the initial polite Bach vibe and never really got up and running with the more Prokofiev vibe I had in mind for the initial concept.
Composed by: Mark Cooksey
Arranged by: Mark Cooksey, Alisdair J. Pickering and Chris Abbott
Orchestrated by: Alisdair J. Pickering and Robin Tait
© High Technology Publishing Ltd.
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"This is one of my favourite sets of compositions with low pass filter use, which depending on what version of the C64 you had sounded correct or otherwise the filtered channel sounded very woolly. Tune 1 has a kind of John Carpenter feel, tune 2 is a Bach influenced piece, tune 3 is a very echoey menacing tune. Tune 4 is an action type tune, tune 5 is a durge, tune 6 is game over, tune 7 is a dancey highscore tune and tune 8 is another ingame tune." - Mark Cooksey
Other C64Audio (and friend) project remixes
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Mark's original symphonic version lays down the DNA
A much earlier Harpsichord-led cover by Mark (early 00s)
FastLoaders bring it all together. Suite!
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The original Napoleonic vision (rendered by Chris Abbott)
The second of the two Mark Cooksey early Storm Warrior covers
Switched on Cooksey from Project Sidologie
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Other musical notables
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Very nice dramatic guitar rendition of the tune
Storm Warrior continues to inspire real performances
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A thoughtful remake with some additional lead improv
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