The idea of doing a score full of brass and strings inspired by the 1960s was really appealing to me. That is something I had always wished I could do, but had never tried. Before starting to write the music, Jonas, Simon and I created a playlist on Spotify. We added all the music we could find that might fit, or inspire the music creation. These were mostly ’60s spy music tracks, bossa nova, orchestral tracks and early electronic music.

For different reasons I couldn’t start right away, so when I finally sat down I was full of inspiration and ideas. The concept was, broadly, ”1960s inspired spy music with analogue synthesizers and Latino beats, played in a cellar bar in the middle east filled with opium smoke”.

Because the game was so different, and I had only seen a few screens and concept movies, I didn’t really know what it would be like to play it. I had read the script and Simon had explained a few scenarios and how it would work, but it was still hard to imagine the “gameplay”. Finding myself in this situation, I decided to imagine writing a soundtrack for a movie instead. That made me really inspired. I knew the scenarios, and that some of the music would be playing through radios in some places, so I began making up my own little movie version of the game.

Even before the first chapter was even done I think I had written about 20 songs. Because Simogo received music early on, the story and scenes could be inspired by the music while they were being made. I think that helped tie together the overall experience.

I remember being told early on that Simogo wanted to do unexpected situations in the game. Like finding three stuffed bears on a bridge outside, rather than in the castle. I tried to have a similar approach to the music as well, and I think it had an impact on more or less all of the songs.

One of the interesting things about working with Simogo is that Simon will sometimes mess with my songs to show me what he is after. When I first sent a song for DEVICE 6 to him, he pitched it down, turned it backwards and sent it back to me. I had a hard time with this approach on our first projects, but now I really appreciate it. It makes me have a more relaxed approach to writing music and feel less like everything is carved in stone.

Burboun Bill – Unused DEVICE 6 song

El Salvatore – Unused DEVICE 6 song