Justice Scored All of GTA 6, and the Album Lands on December 11

Rockstar confirmed on October 29 that Justice, the French duo of Gaspard Augé and Xavier de Rosnay, composed the whole of the GTA 6 original score, and that it is coming out as an album on December 11. The Newswire post is short and we can give you all of it that matters: 30 tracks on every format, a number of digital bonus tracks included across all of them, release on all major streaming services the same day as the double CD and the vinyl, and a pre-save and pre-order live now. The vinyl is a triple, in standard black and a limited Triple Crystal Clear edition in a gatefold with a UV gloss finish; the CD is a double in a digisleeve. The Rockstar Store listing describes the whole thing as “a 3 hour-long suite of material from the game”, which is a lot of score for a crime game.

The label credit is Because Music, Ed Banger and Rockstar Games, and Billboard notes it counts as Justice’s fifth studio album. GTA 5’s score was a four-way effort between Tangerine Dream, Woody Jackson, The Alchemist and Oh No. This is the first time a single act has carried a GTA score alone, and the first time one has counted as that act’s own studio record, which tells you how Rockstar is positioning the duo: not a licensed name on a radio station, but the composers of the campaign.

Rockstar’s one line of description is that the score is “adaptive”, with “expansive compositions all dynamically tuned to the different ways players engage with the world of Vice City and Leonida throughout Jason and Lucia’s story”. That is the same family of system Rockstar used in RDR2, where cues were built from stems that swell and drop depending on what you are doing, and the natural reading is that Justice wrote material designed to be pulled apart that way rather than a set of fixed tracks. Rockstar has not described the mechanics, so that is our reading of the phrasing rather than a confirmed design.

De Rosnay gave Billboard the composer’s side of it. “The scope of the game is so large geographically and thematically that it was clear from the beginning the music would also have to be very broad in terms of emotions, genres and textures. We were given the freedom to explore as many things as we needed to, musically speaking.” Three hours of material and a broad palette fits a game whose world runs from Vice City nightclubs to the Grassrivers swamp, and it also fits a duo whose last two records already swung between disco, chorale and distortion.

The single that came with the announcement is “Pusher”, a seven-minute track with Gesaffelstein and the first time the two acts have recorded together, which is a small event for French electronic music in itself. Billboard hears “Stress” and “Generator” in the way it builds, with Gesaffelstein’s throttling percussion underneath, and describes dark, forceful synths paced like an action sequence. Having listened to it a few times: it is a chase cue, long enough to score the whole of the motorbike getaway Edge described last week and then some, and it is far heavier than anything in the trailers so far.

It is the second piece of score to come out. “Flower in a Hurricane”, with Tame Impala, SZA and King Gizzard & The Lizard Wizard, was released on October 15 alongside the launch trailer, and it is the song you hear in that trailer. It debuted at number 62 on the Hot 100 dated October 31, which Billboard points out is King Gizzard’s first appearance on that chart. Both songs are on the score album, both are playable in full on the official site’s Music section, and together they cover the two poles the score is going to have to span: the softer, sun-drenched end and the one that wants you to drive faster.

Two different records are now dated and it is easy to mix them up. GTA 6: The Album is the 34-track original album made with Atlantic Records, out on launch day, November 19. GTA 6: Original Score by Justice is the thing announced here, 30 tracks plus bonuses, out December 11, three weeks after the game. The radio stations are a third thing again, and the ones Rockstar has previewed are in our radio hub station by station. The soundtrack guide keeps all three straight, with the release calendar in one place.