Disasterpeace

As Disasterpeace, the chiptune artist and composer Rich Vreeland infuses his albums and scores for games, films, and additional media with an atmosphere of retro-futuristic wonder mixed with horror. Early acclaimed projects revealed the internal contrasts of the Disasterpeace name: serene ambient passages alongside playful 8-bit elements shaped the soundtrack for the 2012 puzzle-platform game Fez, whereas the music for the 2015 indie horror hit It Follows drew analogue arpeggios reminiscent of John Carpenter together with textures recalling the work of John Cage and Krzysztof Penderecki. Even as Vreeland’s assignments broadened to include the 2016 stage production Mud Water plus appearances in pop culture staples such as Adventure Time and Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, he maintained ties to his gaming origins through 2019’s Crimson Tooth and 2022’s Paradise Marsh.

Raised in Staten Island, New York, Vreeland grew up immersed in music because his mother and sister both sang and his stepfather served as music director at their church. He started on guitar during childhood and later played drums in his stepfather’s band during rehearsals. Early admiration for Tool and Rage Against the Machine led him to experiment with recording guitar-driven material before he shifted focus toward electronic and video game music. In 2004, still a teenager, he adopted the Disasterpeace name and soon released albums such as History of the Vreeland and The Chronicles of Jammage the Jam Mage. Game scoring began in 2005 after online demos attracted an offer to compose for cell phone titles, among them 2008’s Rescue: The Beagles. During the same period he issued his own chiptune collections: 2006’s Atebite and the Warring Nations and 2008’s Level.

Following studies at Berklee College of Music, Vreeland completed an internship at the Singapore-MIT Game Lab, where further scoring and sound design experience came through work on the puzzle titles Waker and Woosh. He established wider recognition by scoring titles that ranged from major franchises such as Bomberman Live: Battlefest to independent releases including 2012’s Fez, whose innovative gameplay and Vreeland’s accompanying soundtrack both drew praise. Additional ventures from that time encompassed 2013’s January, a game in which players create melodies by catching snowflakes on the protagonist’s tongue, the Fez remix album FZ: Side F, and the score for 2015’s transport simulation game Mini Metro.

Vreeland entered film composition after director David Robert Mitchell, already a admirer of the Fez soundtrack, invited him to score the horror feature It Follows. Released widely in 2015, the volatile yet slow-burning music earned recognition for amplifying the film’s atmosphere of dread. Other Disasterpeace efforts that year comprised the short film Loop Ring Chop Drink and the loop-based score for the video game Gunhouse. Activity continued through 2016 with scores for the video game Hyper Light Drifter, the Adventure Time episode “Bad Jubies,” and Mud Water, a theater work blending turf dancers, ballet dancers, and spoken word artists. An EP drawn from the production and the compilation Singles both appeared that year.

In 2017 Vreeland joined several kindred artists under the name Lexi & the Cheap Disaster for Ram Son, the original soundtrack to River City Ransom: Underground, and partnered with pianist David Peacock on Disasters for Piano, a set of piano arrangements of signature Vreeland pieces. He rejoined Mitchell for the 2018 comedic neo-noir Under the Silver Lake, then supplied music for J.C. Chandor’s Triple Frontier and the game Crimson Tooth in 2019. Disasterpeace resurfaced in 2021 with scores for the sci-fi platformer Solar Ash and Marcel the Shell With Shoes On, the feature adaptation of the character originated by Jenny Slate and Dean Fleischer Camp through earlier short films and books. In 2022 Vreeland composed for the slasher film Bodies Bodies Bodies and the tranquil game Paradise Marsh; that same year also brought Hyper Light Fragments, a collection of further tracks from Hyper Light Drifter.