Exotic horror
Everyone talks about the GoldenEye pause music but that is only because few souls managed to finish the Aztec mission on 00 agent—guilty of doing it with save states on the Switch—and discover the true banger waiting to become a hit whenever a savvy rapper decides to sample it. This particular track was written by Rareware in-house composer Graeme Norgate who was the original composer for the game and also ended up finishing it when Grant Kirkhope came and went from and to other projects. He already had action oriented experience having worked on Blast Corps and Killer Instinct, and was adept at programming beats and synthesizer parts.
Who would have thought that, just like Link himself before him, Bond now has to also go to ancient temples, solve cryptic puzzles, get the dungeon item and kill the final boss with it. The el-Saghira Temple, more commonly known by its mission select name Egyptian, was the second of the two bonus missions after the main campaign was completed, ramping up the difficulty and introducing elements from Bond films other than GoldenEye. Unlike the futuristic Aztec paving the way for Perfect Dark, this level isn’t based on any specific James Bond film. Although its general appearance is no doubt modeled after the Egyptian scenes in the 1977 film The Spy Who Loved Me; instead it features a variety of elements taken from various classic Bond films merged into a plot designed to follow on from those movies.
Here, you must recover the legendary Golden Gun, the notorious gold-plated weapon owned by professional assassin Francisco Scarmanaga (Man with the Golden Gun), capable of instantly killing targets and must battle Baron Samedi (Live and Let Die), a dangerous vodou sorcerer who is seemingly incapable of dying, resulting in a clash between the deadliest villainy forces in the James Bond franchise. Samedi has stolen Scaramanga’s legendary weapon and Bond must retrieve it in the temple, though it is clear it is a trap set by the villain.
Baron Samedi is the only supernatural entity on the 007 Franchise, making this level an horror fest where even the lights are turned off. The villain is based on one of the Lwa from vodou lore; He is the Lwa of the Dead and is usually represented by a black man with white painting resembling a skull and dressed in a top hat as if to resemble a corpse prepared for burial in the Haitian style. Same inspiration for the villain of The Princes and the Frog. Somehow all this is still in line with the Bond franchise since the spirit Samedi has been connected to secret societies before.
So yeah, this level is an eclectic mix of exotic cultures thrown into a James Bond setting and this is reflected on the music which takes only the vamp of the Bond theme and no other elements, making it the most original theme from the game; the one less based on the main theme of the series. The hip-hop based production is because of the use of the drum machine and the syncopated 808 type bass sound that is almost another kick drum due to its sharp attack, they are accompanied by various percussion elements that would be used by ancient cultures; this is straight from some ritual Baron Samedi would perform.
Musical Analysis
The score makes use of the exotic profiles like the Phrygian dominant scale which is Egyptian enough, occurring in Arabic and modern Egyptian music, in which it is called the Hijaz-Nahawand or Hijaz maqam; it is created out of the harmonic tetrachord on the head and the Phrygian tertrachord for the tail. The ancient Egyptian music which would presumably been heard when this temple was on its prime is lost to history, so we just use modern Arab themes for pyramids even if they are anachronistic. The orchestral flute is also made to sound like a more exotic middle-Eastern flute due to the use of pitch bends to create those microtones we identify with the region. The magical quota is given by the mystic pad and here the famous GoldenEye Soviet submarine sonar metal clank makes its debut as a pitched instrument, being used by Graeme Norgate with a more melodic, hypnotic effect. We also hear the traditional spy orchestral triangle that sounds sneaky yet sophisticated. The piece trades back and forth between middle-Eastern phrases and the chromatic 007 vamp taken from the main theme of the series. Then there is the terror inducing outro which sounds straight from the deepest reaches of the cursed pyramid. Ancient unnatural voices also sound to contribute to the spooky, ancient atmosphere.
So with this the James Bond music goes full circle by reconnecting with its Middle-Eastern origins.
As a fun fact the Baron Samendi laugh is actually an edited version of a stock sound effect named Evil Laugh CRT023801 from Cartoon Trax Volume 1, slightly slowed down. Rareware would later reuse this same laugh sound effect for King K. Rool in Donkey Kong 64.
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