Lena Raine

Lena Raine (/ˈleɪ.nə/ LAY-nə or /ˈlɛ.nə/ LEN-ə; born February 29, 1984), also known as Lena Chappelle or Kuraine, is an American composer, producer, and video game developer. Raine is best known for her work on the soundtracks of Minecraft, Celeste, and Guild Wars 2. She has composed music for various other video games, including Deltarune and Chicory: A Colorful Tale.

Early life

Raine was born on February 29, 1984 in Seattle, Washington. Her father is a musician and her mother is a dancer. She had an early exposure to music due to participation in choir at a young age. Her father was also a violinist. Through a Sonic the Hedgehog fan community she was introduced to MIDI arrangement, first recreating versions of songs she knew and then making original music. She later attended Cornish College of the Arts for a degree in music composition.

Career

In her early career, Raine worked on titles such as Dead State and Hackmud, released in 2014 and 2016 respectively. Raine began working at large studios while located in Seattle, Washington, doing quality assurance and certification testing at companies such as Microsoft and Nintendo. She did this while releasing her own music before she was eventually hired at ArenaNet. She worked on Guild Wars 2 at ArenaNet for six years as a designer and soundtrack composer. At ArenaNet, she and Maclaine Diemer were in-house composers of the music for the game's 2015 expansion, Guild Wars 2: Heart of Thorns. She left ArenaNet in 2016, but has continued to occasionally compose songs for its various releases as a freelancer.

Raine also posted original work on Bandcamp as Kuraine. Impressed by her "fusion of ambient music, techno, and 8-bit sounds", video game developer Maddy Thorson hired Raine to compose the soundtrack for the game Celeste, released in 2018. Later that year, Raine released the text adventure ESC on itch.io. Raine was the developer and composer for ESC, with visuals created by Dataerase. In 2019, she released her debut album, Oneknowing. She would continue to do freelance and self-published work from 2019 onward, with her composition work for larger studios, such as her mastering work on Steven Universe: The Movie soundtrack, being released during the same time as her personal work on websites like Bandcamp.

Raine composed music for Minecraft, creating four new pieces of music which were included in the "Nether Update" in 2020. She first returned to Minecraft with six new tracks for the 2021 "Caves & Cliffs: Part II" update alongside fellow video game composer Kumi Tanioka. She subsequently composed another three new tracks for "The Wild Update" released in 2022, and then five new tracks for the 2024 "Tricky Trials" update.

Raine assisted with the soundtrack for the second chapter of Deltarune and first worked with Wishes Unlimited as the composer for the adventure RPG Chicory: A Colorful Tale, both released in 2021. On June 8, 2023, Wishes Unlimited announced their new game Beastieball, with Raine returning as the composer. On November 12, 2024, the game entered early access and the existing soundtrack was released on Raine's Bandcamp page, with all tracks released during early access planned to be later added to the album.

On May 28, 2024, Raine announced Anothereal, a game combining elements of shoot 'em up and role-playing video games, Raine is credited with being the primary designer of the project, with work having begun in 2021. The game is being developed by Radical Dreamland, Raine's single-person development studio.

Personal life

Lena Raine is a trans woman. In 2014, she published a book titled City of Tigers, and, since 2015, has begun composing more LGBT-oriented fiction in her spare time.

Awards

Discography

Albums and singles

Soundtracks

Games

External links