Arcane Act I season two has arrived on Netflix, marking the beginning of the end for the hit series. Although based on the world and characters of League of Legends video game, Arcane has the power to win over those unfamiliar with the world thanks to its character-driven story, unforgettable world, and cutting-edge mixed-media animation style (the latter thanks to production company Fortiche). The series follows two sisters, Vi and Jinx, who find themselves on opposite sides of class and ideological struggles.
Screen Rant Arcana Reviews for Act I of Season 2 praised the series as an impressive follow-up to the first season’s successes. The new season even improves on its predecessor in some aspects, especially when it comes to music. Alex Seaver, also known as recording artist Mako, was a co-songwriter and songwriter for Arcane season 1, and his role expanded to that of Executive Music Producer in season two. Seaver was tasked with incorporating even more custom songs into the show and further integrating them into the story.
Screen speech spoke with Alex Seaver about his work in developing the Arcane season 2 soundtrack. Seaver detailed how the songs were written for the picture (a rare choice, as typically only musical scores are composed this way), discussed how the artists were chosen to appear on the soundtrack, and more. Seaver also talked about how he created a new Mako song for a special Season 2 musical moment.
Alex Seaver Talks Going Bigger and Bolder as Executive Music Producer for Arcane Season 2
Arcane Season 2 utilized music in new, deeper ways
Screen Rant: You have a bigger role this season, as Executive Music Producer. How has this changed your day-to-day life after everything you did in Season 1?
Alex Seaver: In the first season, I was only involved in the songs that I was specifically working on. We only had 11 total and I probably did half of them. In the second season, the difference was [that] I was probably still writing, I don’t know, half the songs or something, but even [for] those I had nothing to do with, I was with the artists from day one – informing them, guiding them through the process, [and] giving them feedback. I usually put their songs in the picture as well, so I’m editing them and generally being a cheerleader for these people so they can put out a piece of music beyond the line that they’re proud of and that also works for Arcane, which is a very specific machine.
How did you want to go beyond the first season for this?
Alex Seaver: The first thing is just volume. Fortiche and Christian (Linke), our showrunner, asked for double the amount of music. They wanted two music beats per episode instead of one in the first season.
So, in [terms of] because of the depth of how the songs integrate into the image, we wanted to go even further. In the first season, we kind of invented this thing, which is to soundtrack our music to the picture, rather than licensing the music and just editing it. We’re actually writing the lyrics to what’s happening on the screen as it happens on the screen. I don’t know of many other examples of shows and movies that do this, other than animated musicals and stuff. It was very difficult and took a lot of effort to figure out how to get it right and do it in the right order.
So when we got to season two, we were like, “Okay, cool. Now we have a sense of how to do this. Let’s start playing with conventions and really incorporating songs.” One of my favorites that we just released is called “Sucker” from the second episode. It’s right at the beginning of the episode and it’s a fantastic medley thing. It starts out like a music video, but starts to get interrupted by things on the screen – fake Jinx shoots himself in the head with a small cloud of smoke, then the music stops at that moment, and then [comes] We were just joking about how we could make this thing disappear further into the scene.
In terms of story, was there anything that gave you the opportunity to do something different with the songs or the score?
Alex Seaver: Big time, yes. We did some totally new things. I don’t want to spoil any of them, but there’s a moment in episode seven where we do something totally new with a song that we’ve never done before. Another example is in episode three – there’s a song called “To Ashes and Blood” that I did with Woodkid. This one was so crazy because Christian wanted us to write from the perspective of an ancient people in the world of League of Legends. These people are called Shuriman, and he wanted us to invent a new language that doesn’t exist – Shuriman – to sing along to. He wanted very exotic, disturbing and old music. I worked with the Riot lore team [and] this really talented guy who invented a language for me. So I put on some music and then we had a children’s choir singing. [There were things] so where you think, “Man, I’ve never done these five things before.” We certainly didn’t aim that high in the first season.
Seaver explains how Arcane’s songs were written for the screen
It’s a combination of very different skill sets
Composing music for images seems like the best of both worlds. Can you talk more about how this process works and not only how this is more difficult, but how it benefits you? Like you said, I haven’t heard of anyone else doing this.
Alex Seaver: They’re two different disciplines, so few people who write songs know how to deal with images and few film composers know how to write a typical song in the pop format. And it’s for a reason: when you’re giving a suggestion for a movie soundtrack and they send you a new animation cut where they cut out 20 frames, now you have to use your classic background to say, “Okay, if I do a 6/8 bar and speed up the tempo by two bars, now I can achieve the new image. But when you write a pop song that has a very particular, perfectly symmetrical, catchy eight-bar chorus, and then they cut out 20 frames, it ruins your day. This ruins everything.
We learned that because we did that a lot in the first season, and what I did right in the second season was not to develop anything too quickly. I would typically start with a very rough concept and let it sit for a long time while the animation catches up. When things started to feel like they were getting stuck, and we really felt like we had a sense of what the whole episode was like, then I was like, “Okay, cool. Now let me really start filling out the production.” Typically, then, we contact an artist, ask them to record the song and make it high definition, so to speak. That was the only way I could figure it out, because otherwise it would be very complicated. Mistakes can be very costly if you’ve done all this work to do the math and then something ruins your day.
What do you usually write for? I imagine you’re not finishing the animation, but the animation can influence what you’re doing. What is this handoff between you and the animators?
Alex Seaver: That’s a great question, and it also leads into my new rubric: “Don’t develop too quickly.” The first thing we get is an animated layout. It is usually the length of the episode and contains a lot of final dialogue from the voice actors. There’s a lot of pencil drawing going on. There aren’t many 3D models or fluid movements, but it’s like an elevated storyboard. It has temp music and good-sounding dialogue, and it really gets the ball rolling. You really start to feel what you should be feeling.
So, there are a number of details that have not yet been filled in and that I learned are very important to know before starting to flesh out the production. Things like: “Is it day or night?” or “Who the hell are these five characters? They just look like dolls of different colors.” I usually start a demo that is very rudimentary – be it piano/vocals or [with] a little production if it’s to be a success – and I’ll leave that aside and move on to the next one. So every three months or so we might get an update on that episode, and then I’ll come back and say, “Okay. Now this is making more sense,” and then we’ll go from there.
When it comes to writing lyrics, this is obviously not the world we live in. Did you have rules for what you could say and what you couldn’t say?
Alex Seaver: It was fun. I’m usually very slow with lyrics, but writing for Arcane is the easiest because you literally look at the screen and think, “Okay, what are they going through? What is happening? Let me write about this. We didn’t have custom rules, but I think we started to get into a good rhythm [where] We want these songs to be specific, but we don’t want them to be so specific that listening to them on Spotify is confusing, because it’s a high fantasy world. But the characters and the character writing are really rich in Arcane – it’s incredibly relatable and adult – and so it was really easy to write these songs from each character’s perspective.
Seaver Talks bringing new artist projects and reconnecting with your own
Seaver releases his first song as Mako since 2020 in Arcane Season 2
How do you find your artists and composers? You had Sting in the first season and amazing writers like Ester Dean in the second. How did you get such a stylistically diverse range of people for this?
Alex Seaver: We have an amazing team at Riot that calls itself Riot Games Music. Originally it was just a few of us doing some jamming, and now it feels like a professional team of A&Rs, lawyers, creatives and producers. It’s a very sick team.
Every time I got a brief from Fortiche and Christian, I’d take it to our weekly meetings with Riot Games Music, and we’d start putting names on the board. They are often people who introduce us to artists we have never heard of before, or [it’s] me introducing the team to artists that I have always loved and wanted to work with. Let’s boil this down to a finer point and then start reaching out and gauging whether people are interested.
The first season was a funny experience of reaching out to very successful artists and trying to beg them that we weren’t making a stupid cartoon, [and that] we were actually doing something cool – because it didn’t exist, and a lot of people aren’t familiar with the world of League of Legends. Sting is not playing League of Legends. He’s Sting. But the cool thing about season two was that everyone had heard of Arcane by that time, and a lot of artists reached out to us on their own, saying, “I don’t know who makes the music, but I just want to let you know that I want to be involved. “
You have an artistic project, Mako, and I saw that you have a Mako song this season. How does your world as an artist influence the direction of the music for you? Arcane staying true to what people like about Mako?
Alex Seaver: It’s very difficult. To be honest, the way I dealt with it was by leaving Mako aside. I released an album I was really proud of in 2020 called Fable, and I haven’t done anything Mako since then except this song from Season 2 of Arcane. What’s certain is that Arcane is my favorite thing I’ve ever worked on, so it was worth it. I’m really excited to get back to writing original music and getting back into it, and I feel a lot of guilt for keeping people waiting so long for no reason, apparently.
The scene where I play Mako’s song is so emotional. Before I even heard a song, I watched the scene on a plane, and I was crying on the plane, like a psychopath. I texted Christian when I arrived and thought, “Can I do this as a Mako song? It would mean a lot to me.” And he was very kind and said, “Absolutely.” So from the genesis, this was set for me to at least have something going on as Mako. It’s a very Mako song too. It’s my voice.
Really, to answer your question, the question is [that] Mako is self-expression and Arcane elevates a story someone else wrote. If there was a point where the two could converge, I’d kind of jump in, but otherwise, I’m not really thinking about Mako. I’m just thinking about the characters in the series.
Seaver featured Hailee Steinfeld singing as Vi in Season 2 of Arcane
Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like that’s going to happen.
Screen Rant: I saw some posts on Reddit where people said they wanted to hear Hailee Steinfeld sing as Vi. What would you say about that?
Alex Seaver: I was, “Oh, of course, yes,” on that. I presented this idea a lot too. I really can’t remember why it didn’t happen. I’m like them. I was like, “Oh man, that would have been sick.” I love her. I love her voice, I love her songs. She’s a very famous person, so I didn’t have access to ask her in person. So, it may have been a scheduling issue, but it was definitely something that interested me as well. But even without her on the soundtrack, her presence in the series as Vi is unbelievable. It’s kind of crazy that she’s Gwen Stacey and Vi in two very ambitious animated projects and they’re totally different things. She’s crazy. She is talented.
“I’m ready to go:” Seaver is ready for the next project
Seaver praises the collaborative experience he had on the series
This show ends with season 2. You said you’re excited to return to Mako, but do you have hopes for the future of whatever happens with all of this and your involvement with it?
Alex Seaver: Yeah, big time. The people who do this are so special. The animation studio Fortiche… doesn’t even need to say much, because every image they upload speaks for itself, but they are beautiful artists and wonderful people. So our showrunner, Christian, and the writers, Amanda (Overton) and Alex Yee, are full of talent and integrity in the sense that they just want things to be as good as possible. There’s no energy to sell out in this kind of collaboration, and that goes for the sound team and everyone in general. As long as these people tell more stories, everyone will be in good hands and I will drop whatever I’m doing the moment they need me. I’m ready for whatever adventure they have next.
About Arcane
Set in the League of Legends universe, Arcane focuses on sisters Violet and Powder (later Jinx), who end up on opposite sides of a growing conflict between the wealthy utopia of Piltover and its dark underground city, whose citizens wish to break away from their oppressors. . Hailee Steinfeld, Ella Purnell and Kevin Alejandro star in this animated adventure.
Arcane The second season, Act I, is now available on Netflix.