Russell Shaw

Russell Shaw is a BAFTA-nominated British composer and sound designer. He is known for his work in many video games, particularly those designed by Peter Molyneux.

Biography and career Shaw was exposed to music at the age of five, when he was given a guitar by his uncle. He trained himself in music playing in various bands through late 1970s to early 1980s. Although he had an interest in playing music, he wanted to be a record producer. After training at SAE London in the mid-1980s, he was hired by Gerry Anderson (of Thunderbirds fame) as his recording studio manager, recording sound for various television shows.

His first project with the new game studio was the soundtrack for Black & White. A fan of ambient techno, Black & White was followed by 2004's Fable. Danny Elfman was brought in to compose the theme music, and Shaw was asked to do more traditional orchestral ingame score that would more fit Elfman's dark fairytale-styled theme music. The Fable soundtrack was successful, with IGN saying "It really couldn't have been a better score" and GameSpot calling out the audio as "quite possibly the best part of the game". After his success with Fable, Shaw went on to compose the soundtracks for Fable II, Fable III and Fable: The Journey, all using the Slovak National Symphony Orchestra.

In 2012, Shaw decided to leave Lionhead and go freelance, forming his own music production company.

In 2014/2015, Shaw composed the soundtrack for the computer game Satellite Reign, which incorporated themes from the first 2 games in the Syndicate series.

In the summer of 2015, Shaw composed and recorded the orchestral score for the now cancelled Lionhead game Fable Legends, with the Philharmonia Orchestra.

In June 2016, Shaw composed the music for the Google VR title Earthshape by Bithell Games.

In October 2016, Shaw completed the orchestral score for the Sky TV movie adaptation of The Last Dragonslayer by Jasper Fforde.

In April 2019, Shaw joined Wargaming UK (rebranded as DPS Games in 2020) as Audio Director.

Shaw's comment about his work in the game audio area: "I would not want to go back to the early days of game audio design. This was a time when audio was very much the afterthought. Nowadays, I need to be in on the early conceptual stages of game design if the game is going to sound any good. The audio designer can bring as much to the early game design as anyone else can."