How Harry Holmwood Created the Iconic Music for Demo 1 and Official PlayStation Magazine UK
When a family trip to the town centre in July 1997 resulted in me owning a Sony PlayStation, three games came in a bundle with the console: Formula 1, Ridge Racer, and Pandemonium. But there was another disc that came with the console, and I had no idea what this was.
Upon starting the disc up, my eight-year-old self was shown a barrage of 3D transitions, flashing lights, and the tease of so many games to come. Instantly, it changed how I thought games were supposed to look. At first, I wasn't sure how to get past the ever-transforming title screen, with the words 'Demo 1' pulsating like Homer Simpson's heart before his bypass. But soon after, I was playing games such as Battle Arena Toshinden 2, Lifeforce Tenka, and Tekken 2. I was in awe. And, arguably, still am, all these years later.
Eventually, I'd collect a few Official PlayStation Magazines, which came with their own demo discs, and they were just as good, highlighting games I'd never have considered owning before, such as Rosco McQueen and Wild 9. But throughout all of this, the music, as you browsed through the playable demos and videos, always stood out to me. To this day, the tracks haven't aged, and still sound like you could put them into a club today, and no one would notice these tracks being 30 years old.
A few weeks back, I came across a post on Bluesky, where Harry Holmwood, the composer of the Demo 1 theme and others, now Co-Founder and CEO of Magicave, a games studio, thanked someone after sending him a link to his iconic tracks.
I reached out to see if he was up for having a quick chat about how they came to be, which he gladly said yes to.
You were part of the original PlayStation UK team — what did that entail?
Holmwood: It was a very small team back then — we all did a bit of everything. I was originally hired to look after third-party developers in Europe. So that meant helping them to develop games for PlayStation, working with the libraries we supplied (which were written in Japan), fixing bugs, etc. There were only two of us doing that (I think they have dozens of people now) - me and another guy called Allan Murphy, whom I'd worked with at a previous games company.
I also worked with the internal development team that was making a basketball game (Total NBA 96 in Europe, NBA Shoot Out in North America) to do the sound and music and sound programming for that, and worked a bit with the sales and marketing people when they needed technical help. We'd put PlayStations into some nightclubs and use them to generate graphics for live events and music artists. I was the only person interested in sound and music, really, so I just ended up doing it as a sideline by default. I persuaded Phil Harrison (then Executive Vice President of Development at Sony Entertainment Europe) to let me buy some incredibly exciting music equipment and used that stuff to do the various demos, etc.
What do you remember of being asked to do the music for the first OPM UK demo disc?
I don't think this story has ever been told, and it's a bit hazy, but this is my recollection. You have to remember, we were all very young - most people at PlayStation were in their early twenties, with a couple of grown-ups trying to keep some kind of order. Anyway, there was some kind of PlayStation party - I forget what for, maybe it was a developer conference or something - which went on until the early hours and, as was the way in those days, involved far too much drinking. The next morning, I went into the office, as did Allan, and there was hardly anyone else there. We were sitting in reception, nursing terrible hangovers, when some visitors arrived from Future Publishing. They weren't here to see us, but whoever it was they were expecting to see clearly wasn't there, so Allan and I took the meeting.
It turned out the meeting was them coming to finalize details of what would be going on their demo disc. 'What demo disc?' was our first question. Turns out, someone (no idea who, some high-up person presumably) had agreed that the Official PlayStation Magazine would have a demo disc on it. Nobody had told us, and, it turned out, nobody had told anyone else who might be able to make a demo disc either. I think we bluffed our way through it OK and assured them we'd get it sorted in time for launch. As luck would have it, Allan had just finished putting together the Demo 1 disc that came with the PlayStation, and I'd done a few bits of music for it, like the T-Rex demo, so we did know how to make a demo disc. Allan did all the programming work, a guy called Pete Johnson did the graphics, and I just added a little tune to it at the end.
How long did it take you to create the first track?
It was just under an hour, and I remember this because I was quite pleased with myself for how quickly I'd done it during a lunch break.
Were you involved in helping to create the graphics for Demo 1 and the OPM UK mag disks?
Not the graphics, that I think was all Pete Johnson. Some of the magazine menu backgrounds he made were really quite nasty, like scaly skin pulsing and breathing. I made a couple of equally nasty tunes to go with those. I think it was Demo 1 Vol 3 that had the nastiest graphics, and I wanted to make it sound like a bad trip. It amazed me that we got away with it. Putting something like this on the front of a big magazine felt a bit naughty, but nobody complained! Although I don't think that one got used again after I left. It really is quite unnerving. There's what I assume is a scuba diver breathing sound effect in there that just makes it horrible. Sorry if any kids were left scarred by that one!
I did do the music for Demo 1 - not the very first intro music on the very first disc, which came from the people who did the video sequence. It was a really good track, but there's an edit in it that is slightly off, and it drove me mad, so I replaced it on subsequent discs with this one. I was always worried that mine was too minimal compared to the one that went before, which was a lot more sophisticated. I also did the music for both the T-Rex (which uses the sound chip audio rather than streaming off the CD) and the Manta Ray demos. These were made in Japan; I just felt they needed a bit of sound, so I added it in.
Many, myself included, remember this track specifically on the OPM UK Demo Discs - do you remember how you approached making the track, and whether there were any requests to change it before it was done?
That's actually one of my favorite tunes I've written. It only took an hour or so, but I like the way it resolves into the happy-sounding loop at the end. The way those discs worked is we couldn't stream the audio from CD, and I didn't have time to do it as sound chip audio, so it's basically a loop made with whatever synths and samplers I had to play with. I forget what they were, other than a thing called a Deep Bass Nine (DB9), which was an analog synth with nice filters you could put external audio through. So that track is a bunch of samples being sent through the DB9 filters with me twisting knobs around to make it sound all weird and very 90s.
There was not really anybody in charge to make requests to change stuff, which is probably why we got away with such strangeness. Pete made some graphics, and everyone went, 'Those are weird and nasty!' and so I went, 'Hold my beer...' and made it even nastier.
Do you remember hearing your music on a demo disc for the first time?
I don't remember the magazine demo discs, but I do remember going into John Lewis on Oxford Street near our office and hearing my Demo One music blaring out. It took a few seconds to go from 'I recognize that...' to 'OMG they're playing my track!' It was a lovely feeling.
There are plenty of tracks, even though you were at Sony for just around 18 months! Is there a track that sticks out to you more than the others?
That one mentioned above is definitely the one.
That link says that was me, but it wasn't me. That was the one by the production company. I think they were called Tomato Studios. I seem to recall some people saying that they had something to do with the band Underworld, or one of its members, or something, but I was never sure if that was true. If it was, I'm quite embarrassed about having had the hubris to replace their track with one of mine, because Underworld was absolutely amazing (Cowgirl is one of my very favorite tracks) and I am in no way worthy.
Just to note, all the later Demo 1 and magazine disks would have been done by Jason Page, who we got in at Sony to replace me. Jason was a bit of a legend from the Amiga music scene and still produces great music to this day. He stayed at Sony for years and then moved on to Unity.
Looking back, how does it feel that these demo discs seem to be coming back into consciousness, especially with great videos like this one?
It's actually amazing! I've been in the games industry for 33 years now and have obviously done loads of things in that time. These demo discs, if I added up all the time the tunes took, are a few days, maybe a week at most. But I suspect these are the only things that anyone's going to remember. It's cool. I still get people contacting me about them every now and then, and it always absolutely makes my day. After university, I wanted to be a musician, but quickly realized I didn't have the talent to do it for a living. But I did for a very short time with Sony in the nineties and, by virtue of being in the right place at the right time, ended up with some of my stuff being on millions of discs. An amazing stroke of luck.
Many thanks to Harry for taking the time to chat with me.
Before I spoke to Holmwood, I decided to go through the demos that I still own from that time and played them via my PlayStation 3. Playing an early version of the Area 51 level from Tomb Raider III, or a timed demo of Resident Evil 2, as well as the many indie-developed Net Yaroze games featured on several discs, it brought me right back to 1998.
Demos seem to be making a comeback, after a long period of having them renamed as 'Beta Tests' or 'Early Access' for some games. They can give you a slice of what's to come, or for others, like Tomb Raider III, what could have been. But throughout all of this, it's that 'Powerline' fade-in and fade-out, or the Demo 1 menus, all with Holmwood's music, that ultimately draws you back into an era where Oasis were about to launch their second album, Lara Croft was on The Face magazine, and schools were wondering who Keyzer Soze really was.
Thanks for reading.
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