By
·
July 07, 2025
When Danny Kelleher started Laced Records in 2015, he had already seen the inner workings of two seemingly disparate industries: gaming and music. He’d worked PR in both the music and video game worlds, managed musicians, and worked in college radio. While the gaming world seemed exciting and primed for growth, it was different in the music industry, where he’d watched “many artists, who had become close friends, chewed up and spat out if their single hadn’t been a hit.”
Kelleher started Laced Records out of a vague desire to “help bridge the gap between my two passions, music and games.” He discovered, after a rocky start, that there were many niches to fill, leading his London-based company to become much more than a record label; today, they also work in realms of music composition, licensing, and publishing. Video game fans, however, know Laced primarily as a high-profile game music record label who have released soundtracks for both lauded indie games (Braid, Cult of the Lamb) and blockbuster titles (Gears of War, Assassin’s Creed). Kelleher says the work is essentially the same. “The main difference is usually creative control and approvals,” he explains. “Of course, when working with AAA properties, we have to adhere to strict guidelines when it comes to stuff like artwork. We’ve found more creative freedom with some indies.”
Before the big studios came on board, Laced established a reputation by partnering with beloved developers like Hello Games and titans like Bethesda. But “the first door I knocked on,” Kelleher remembers, was Devolver Digital, a client from his gaming PR days and a publisher known for adventurous and inventive indie games. Together, they launched a Kickstarter campaign for a flashy collector’s edition vinyl release of the Hotline Miami soundtrack. It far exceeded expectations, raising over £150,000 (equivalent to $200,000) from backers. Laced has continued working with Devolver (along with Hello Games and Bethesda), which Kelleher takes as proof that Laced must be doing something right. “We’ll never be as cool as Devolver, of course,” he jokes. “But hopefully we get some cool points by association—and we owe them all a lot for helping us get where we are today.”
Laced has built a profoundly varied game music catalog containing everything from quiet gems like Louis Godart’s piano-driven score for Blanc and Paul Ruskay’s synth-driven sci-fi mood pieces for Homeworld 3, to Mike Georgiades’ playful orchestral music from The Plucky Squire. The label’s expansive digital discography is accompanied by often-lavish vinyl pressings. It’s not unusual for a major release to come in four or more versions with alternate art and color variants. They’ve also released tapes, CDs, merch, and precisely one minidisc.
After over 250 releases, it would be understandable if the Laced team had gotten over the excitement of their day job. Kelleher admits that while his day-to-day is full of logistics and spreadsheets (“Although I do love a good spreadsheet!”), hearing from fans and working closely with composers remains a thrill. Working on special projects like a heavy metal tribute to Cult of the Lamb is particularly fun. And sampling the first vinyl test pressing of a new project? “Holding something physical like vinyl after what could have been five years of pitching, contracts, and production is always really special,” he says. “It makes it all feel real and reminds us why we do what we do.”
Here are some of the biggest—and coolest—releases in the Laced Records catalog.
Petri Alanko, Poe
Alan Wake 2 (Original Soundtrack)
The long-awaited follow-up to a seminal storytelling horror game, Alan Wake 2 demanded music capable of satisfying old and new fans alike. Composer Petri Alanko returned to score the second installment with help from 90s alt-pop artist Poe, but found his sonic ideas expanding alongside the game’s elaborate, multi-dimensional concept. Alanko was aided by a recording session with two fringe musical instruments known mostly to horror film aficionados: Mega Marvin and the Apprehension Engine. “I think that first 40-minute session was in every single cue and piece I did for Alan Wake 2,” Alanko recalls, noting that these sounds served as triggers for further development. “Sometimes dissonance and noise are great sources for creativity.”
Cody Matthew Johnson, Yoko Honda, Trek to Yomi Gagaku Orchestra
Trek to Yomi (Original Soundtrack)
Trek to Yomi creator Leonard Menchiari’s passion for Edo-era Japanese history and mid-century Japanese cinema became the “creative compass” for the impressionistic, Devolver-published samurai game’s soundtrack, says composer Cody Matthew Johnson. “The musical brief was less about rigid rules and more about emotional resonance,” he explains. “What does it feel like to stand between honor and death in a monochrome world?” Johnson and his team used advanced audio equipment to capture sacred Gagaku (a type of Japanese classical music) performances in Tokyo. Recontextualized and reshaped into Trek to Yomi’s game music, these traditional sounds live “at the intersection of ethnomusicological detail and cinematic abstraction,” says Johnson—and they make for a game soundtrack with a decidedly spiritual quality. “The real delight came from realizing that we weren’t just creating music for a video game,” Johnson says. “We were actively participating in preserving a sacred musical tradition.”
Daniele Zandara and Will Davies
Vampire Survivors: Vol. 1 (Original Soundtrack)
Few games have spawned so many imitators, and in so little time, as Vampire Survivors: a claustrophobic “bullet hell” survival game where the player attempts to ward off hordes of encroaching enemies. Danielle Zandara’s pulsing score is the perfect mix of gothic atmosphere and hectic retro gaming beats, plus just a touch of camp. From the culty majesty of “Before Concession” to the disco-infused beats of “Unholy Invocation,” these are songs that help keep players right in the sweet spot of mildly stressed out, monster murdering bliss.
65daysofstatic
No Man’s Sky: Music For An Infinite Universe (Original Soundtrack)
It has been 12 years since the first trailer for the virtually endless space exploration game No Man’s Sky exploded gamers’ minds. But the procedurally generated universe (still expanding and evolving to this day) wasn’t the only fascinating thing about the game when it debuted in 2016. The developers made the unusual choice of drafting veteran post-rock band 65DaysofStatic to provide the game’s soundtrack. While No Man’s Sky was initially met with mixed reviews in the face of players’ gargantuan expectations, the music—equal parts meditative and thrilling—was beloved from the start. The soundtrack works beautifully as a stand-alone album, but blasting off into space as the band’s avant-garde heaviness hits at full force? That’s better.
Various Artists
Borderlands 3 (Original Soundtrack)
The immensely popular Borderlands games are full of outlandish cartoon violence, and prominently feature a quippy robot guide named Claptrap. The series’ music, though, is less comic than cinematic, due in large part to contributions from Jesper Kyd—a game music A-lister also known for his work in the Assassin’s Creed and Hitman franchises. Throughout the series, Kyd’s contributions alternate between pulsing techno intensity, foreboding western twang, and exotic ambience.
Pizza Hotline
RuneScape: Old School Runebreaks (Remixes)
Old School RuneScape, an ever-morphing, still-popular game with one foot in 2007 and one in the present day, is the crown jewel of a game franchise with particularly passionate fans. Laced brought the inventive UK electronic music producer Harvey Jones, better known as Pizza Hotline, into that potential hornet’s nest for a remix album completely reimagining some of the game’s early music. Luckily, the marriage worked out beautifully. While the original Runescape music can feel “wooden,” he says, it’s also “got so much soul and holds a huge amount of nostalgia […] Finding a way to modernize the songs whilst maintaining their old-school feeling was a tough thing to achieve.” Jones, whose own albums and singles are awash in the visual and aural nods to video game history, wound up performing his reimagined songs at the game’s dedicated convention, RuneFest—“Easily the biggest gig I’ve done,” he says. “And meeting fans of the game and the album was surreal.”
Berlinist
Neva (Original Soundtrack)
An emotional wallop of an indie game about a woman and a wolf in a dying world, Neva eschews dialogue and relies heavily on its music for emotional impact. That music is provided by Berlinist, the same Barcelona-based band and production collective behind the award-winning Gris. Berlinist incorporates plenty of organic touches—live piano and strings, occasional choral arrangements—to give Neva its wild heart. “Our goal was not only to represent nature through sound,” the band’s Luigi Gervasi and Marco Albano explain via email, “But also to evoke the emotional essence of the different seasons.” Neva was Berlinist’s first time writing adaptive music, where songs had to be conceived as collections of interwoven parts that would react to a player’s decisions. That makes the music feel like a living thing in the game world, but the group’s warm naturalism still shines when listening to Neva as a soundtrack.
Xeecee
Pepper Grinder (Original Soundtrack)
This stylish indie game starts with a great central mechanic (the protagonist, Pepper, wields a giant drill—or maybe the drill wields Pepper?), but it charms with colorful pixel art and Washington-based composer Xeecee’s playful, rambunctious score. “The brief was really open-ended,” they say of developer Riv’s musical instructions. “I got to shape things however I saw fit. I’d show up with a few sketched-out ideas and then run to the endzone with the ones Riv was excited about.” The resulting tracks are exceedingly far-flung, from trip-hop to industrial techno to jazzy funk—even what seems like MIDI-sourced post-rock guitar. “I’ve used this sound many times because I love that kind of thing,” Xeecee says. But while trying to find the perfect rippin’ guitar sound for Pepper Grinder, Xeecee found it actually sounded smoother with a virtual cello. “It sort of changed how I approach making sounds with MIDI. There are so many ways to achieve the sound you’re looking for.”
