If you’re a lover of video game soundtracks then you already know who Jesper Kyd is. The Danish composer has been working professionally since the 90s, but his experiences go back even further than that, with the Commodore 64 and Amiga demo scenes.

At the time, that concept referred to very young enthusiasts that created graphical demos (usually with little or no gameplay) and/or musical demos that pushed the abilities of the formats further than most actual games.

As we discussed with him at length, this amateur scene went on to have a profound influence on video game development across Europe, with many of the studios that emerged from that era still continuing today. So, we asked Kyd to describe those early days and to talk about the difference between video game and movie music, and why it is he loves his job so much…

GC: I was listening to some of your tracks before this and I realised that you really can hear the influence of those early Amiga days in some of your music. I don’t know whether that’s purposeful or not but your music doesn’t sound like something anyone in Japan, or even the US, would make.

JK: I’m not putting anything from the Amiga demo scene in my music on purpose, especially the sounds. But I do like the way Amiga music was made using trackers, specifically, Soundtracker, which was invented on the Amiga, and is like a whole new way to make music. It came up with a music style that we call tracking.

It’s a bit inspired by what happened on the Commodore 64 as well. Obviously that’s chiptune music, but it’s composing in a way where everything scrolls down. And so you designate how long the specific pattern should be, it could be 64 steps, and then it just runs those 64 steps down on your screen and just sits there and repeats that.

And then you sit there and you noodle with it and you put sounds into it, and you put music notes into it, but you’re basically using the computer keyboard to put the notes in. You’re not actually using a synthesizer to perform it. So that kind of approach is something I still like to do for specific music styles I work on, especially when I do electronic music.

So that could be something you might have picked up on, that does create a different approach and I think I can tell when people are using that approach. It was used in a lot of dance music in the early nineties as well, especially jungle and breakbeat and this kind of stuff.

And I can also hear certain bands using it. So I try to use everything that I’ve been through, maybe not so much Sega Genesis [Mega Drive] and Commodore 64 anymore. Those sounds are [laughs] not exactly… you’re gonna be stuck in the eighties and the nineties when you start using those sounds. But I do love the philosophy behind it all.

It’s like how some people are still using an Atari ST, which is one of those computers that was so popular in the nineties as well. But I do use the operating system Cubase, which is what a lot of us composers use.

GC: I don’t know if you know her, but I’ve interviewed the composer Eímear Noone a couple of times, and I talked with her about how unique and distinct early video game music was. There were so many technical limitations, but that meant that the sounds they were working with were exclusive to gaming and that’s obviously not the case anymore. As soon as CDs came in suddenly video games just sounded like movies and except for purposefully retro titles it feels like something has been lost there.

JK: I completely hear what you’re saying. Of course, I’m on the other side of that, in a way, because the projects I work on are not retro projects or even projects where something that sounds like it came out of the nineties would be a good fit. I mean, it is interesting that I just said that because a game that’s coming out soon, that I worked on, called Samson, it does take place in the nineties. So I went and, you know, doubled down on that with all my equipment. And nineties was a very trip hop inspired world, as well. And so I ended up using a lot of that equipment from that era.

But in answer to your question, I think you alluded to it yourself when you said that the technology was limited. And so, for example, on Commodore 64 they only had the three different music channels that they could work with. And so they had to start being creative with, ‘How do we create a track that sounds rich and entertaining when we only have three channels?’ And so you’d start squeezing in the baseline and the percussion in the same track, and maybe the baseline has some bright sounds built into it, even though it’s supposed to be bass!

But you put some bright sounds on top of that and suddenly it’s like, ‘Oh, there’s a high- hat on top of the bass and it’s the same instrument.’ And then you have the second channel and what are you gonna do with that? Well, you put the melody there, and then the third channel you can put some arrangement in there, to create emotion. But that’s all you’ve got. And so you had to be really creative. And so people came up with all kinds of solutions as a how to get more out of these systems.

One of the things they did is, like, obviously when you have three channels, you can’t play a three note chord, right? Because that would take three channels. You can only play one sound at a time, in each of these channels.

So if you were gonna do a C major, a C, E, and G that would take all the channels you’ve got – now you’ve got no room for percussion or baselines or anything. So what they did is they would play C E G, which is a C major chord, and they would just repeat those three notes really fast [does impression of Commodore 64] and it became so fast that suddenly it sounded like it was just the chord of those three nodes, but they were played super fast in one channel. Just repeat those three notes, one after the other.

And so that became like a trick that created these very Commodore 64 type sounds that Rob Hubbard and Martin Galway and all these composers used, and they could get a chord out of one channel. And so immediately we’re now creating music that is completely unique to the Commodore 64, because of this problem that we had, that we need a chord to create emotion.

‘Cause if you have a theme and there’s no chords around it, you don’t get any emotion. It doesn’t hit you. And so these kind of limitations are incredibly important for the beginning of video game music and it’s the same thing with the Amiga. Suddenly you have four channels, but there was no synthesizer chip inside, like the Commodore 64 had – which was the first console or computer to actually have a real analogue synthesizer chip inside. No, on the Amiga, there was none of that. It just had four sample channels, and that was it. And so that became the birth of all this sample-based music.

GC: Some of the games back then, you would play them solely to listen to the music. Something like Monty On The Run… the music is incredible to this day, but the game itself is barely even playable, from a modern perspective.

JK: Yes, yes! I mean, I still think that if Rob Hubbard had access to a symphony orchestra back in the, in the day on the Commodore 64, for whatever reason that would work. I still think he would’ve recorded it with live violin or something.

GC: I’ve heard orchestrated versions of it, and it really does sound like Prokofiev or something, it’s amazing.

JK: Yeah. I mean, even Shadowrun and some of that stuff sounds almost like orchestral music squeezed into the Commodore 64. You know, it’s pretty interesting. But then you have stuff from Martin Galway which is like, wow! That stuff is almost like created for the Commodore 64, where it’s like Jean-Michel Jarre but done with an 8-bit machine. It’s amazing.

GC: What I didn’t realise at the time was that a lot of these sounds were meant to be mimicking real instruments. I was actually kind of disappointed to find that out. To me they were imaginary instruments and sounds created just for that game. And it kind of takes something away when some 8-bit squeal just becomes a guitar sound or it’s a piano or a violin.

JK: I agree, I remember on a magazine, Zzap!64, they included a tape of Rob Hubbard’s Sanxion music where he had done the Sanxion music on his synthesizers. And I was so excited and then I heard it and I was like, ‘Yeah, I like the Commodore 64 version better.’

GC: [laughs]

JK: There’s just something about that sound he was able to achieve that was absolutely mind-boggling. And as soon as he switched to normal instruments, and we could recognize these instruments, and perhaps these patch choices or these synthesizer sounds, suddenly it became very kind of regular again. And I think that there’s something about that too, that each of these machines – Sega Genesis, Super Nintendo – they all had their own sound, you know?

GC: The consoles themselves were the instrument.

JK: Yeah.

GC: But I’m not particularly retro obsessed, I just like the fact that the music is distinct to video games and wouldn’t exist under any other circumstances.

JK: Yes!

GC: Are these the sort of things you think of when you’re creating your music? I listen to something like Warp Traveller from Darktide and, more than most video game music, it feels like something that would evolve out of Commodore 64 music. There’s no evolutionary connection between Monty Mole and Call Of Duty, or whatever, but I feel there is with your stuff.

JK: I am in love with video game music, absolutely. And I still love Commodore 64 music as much as when I was 13. That never stopped for me. Just because I’m older doesn’t mean I don’t like it anymore. And I still listen to that music and I love when they do remixes of it and all that kind of stuff. So I think it is part of my DNA and it is part of where I came from. And it is something that I like to… I don’t wanna say I put it in my music, but where I see it is like game music was very melodic in the early stages and even the middle stages. And then something happened and the melody tended to become more average or trying to sound more like a movie or something along those lines.

And I’m still holding on to creating something that I feel mixes a lot of elements together and trying to create a melody that you haven’t heard before. I think that’s incredibly important. And the video game is such a perfect place to do that kind of thing, because you don’t have, necessarily, a scene in a movie where, if you have something that’s super duper original it might take the viewer out of the moment. But with video games, you do so much world building that I think when you go unique it only enhances the game.

So it’s a really good platform for me to think crazy and to think big and to do something that’s melodic. You mentioned that track from Darktide; I try to put melody everywhere I can. And so I think that track is still repetitive in nature because it goes into the electronic side of things, but it has melody and I just love melody so much. I try to put it everywhere I can.

GC: Well, I’m very glad to hear you say that! It was explained to me that the reason it’s less common now is because it’s not fashionable in cinema. Nowadays everyone’s trying to copy Hans Zimmer rather than John Williams, and that’s what game directors want too.

JK: I think Hans Zimmer does some really original music and he did a lot of things first. So, I definitely like Han Zimmer’s music. But my favourite composers are Vangelis and Jerry Goldsmith. I mean, First Blood is one of my favourite soundtracks of all time. And now when you hear it, you might say, ‘Oh, that’s not that original.’ But when that came out, it was like incredibly original. But then everybody has been like, copying it, you know?

But Jerry Goldsmith is probably my favourite film composer. He’s so original, I feel. But yeah, I, don’t know why everything has to sound like a film, like you alluded to. I don’t think everything does, but I think quite a few things do. You know, I, do agree with that, in the video space.

GC: I’m not even a particularly big fan of, say, Halo and Metal Gear but the minute I hear their theme tunes I get wistful for those games. You’d think publishers would like to encourage that sort of recognition as much as possible, but you won’t get that without melody.

JK: Yeah. I mean, maybe that’s why Ezio’s family [from Assassin’s Creed 2] is so popular is because it has so much melody in it. I don’t know, that’s what I try to do. Borderlands 3 is another example of mine where I wrote the theme for the game, which plays on the menu, and it’s one of those things where I made it so minimal and stripped away everything else that could distract and impress you, and just made it super basic sounding. But then it has some of my favourite melodies that I’ve written.

And I think that’s really like my tendency, again, to kind of go back in time and just focus on the melody. And I’m not going to confuse you with all this fancy amazing sound design and production quality. I’m gonna give you some very basic stuff here. And I think that definitely is something that, now that I think about it, goes back to all the way to the Commodore 64. The way they were able to just embrace melody and almost strip everything else away, ’cause they had to, and you’re just left with a melody, and you just listen to that thing over and over when you play the game; then it’s never gonna leave your brain, you know?

GC: I’m assuming the Danish video game scene was relatively similarly to the UK in the 90s and in my experience the NES and SNES were not commonplace formats. But a lot of the most widely played retro music today is almost exclusive Japanese, the majority of which is very jazz influenced. But I would not say that was the case at all for European music of the time.

JK: Yeah, it’s true. And even the orchestral music has a very… especially the music from the ’90s and 2000s/2010s has a very distinct Japanese flavour. And it’s not something I was inspired by. In the demo scene it was all about innovation and trying to create something that we hadn’t heard before. Because we were now working on either Commodore 64 and then later Amiga, and that was already a brand new sound that nobody had heard before.

And with the Amiga, and suddenly having four sample channels, I was always trying to push, what can we do with samples now? And, and so it was a place where all this inventive music happened, and it was a place for me to just keep inventing new stuff to see what is my music style?

So I used the demo scene to form the basis of what my sound should be. And there was nobody telling me what it should be. There was no director saying, ‘You know, when we have this happen, it should sound like that.’ It was completely free of any influence, outside of what I wanted to put in my music. And so I think that’s why my music style ended up a bit more… unusual, or perhaps a bit different from a lot of the stuff going on where perhaps people have been inspired by film soundtracks.

Or maybe they’ve gone to school and they’ve been taught a certain thing in classical composition – this is how you’re supposed to do things when you work in an orchestra. When I worked with an orchestra for the first time, for Hitman 2, I had no idea what I was doing. I literally never worked with an orchestra before or had written any orchestral music before. So I just wrote what I liked.

I think that’s really important, because if I was asked to study jazz, which I’m not particularly fond of, I would really… maybe I would end up being fond of it, who knows? But I only went for stuff that I was super into; super inspired by. And so that’s what I taught myself. ‘I like this over here, so I’m gonna teach myself that.’ And that’s how I’ve been throughout my whole career. When I wrote Assassins’ Creed 2 I knew nothing about The Renaissance, really. I wasn’t taught about that in school. It was all about Vikings and stuff.

GC: [laughs] When you’re a kid you just want to copy whoever you admire, and to break out of that involves purposely doing something that’s different, which is vital for art in general.

JK: Oh, I absolutely wanted to be like Mike Oldfield or Vangelis or Jean-Michel Jarre or Rob Hubbard or Martin Galway! I was like, ‘That’s my dream right there!’ But the thing about Martin Galway and Rob Hubbard and a lot of these composers on the Commodore 64, is they knew how to program machine code as well. And I was never a programmer, and I was never in interested in programming. I was purely on the music front. So I knew I would never be able to do something sounded like that. ‘Cause I needed a music program to do music, you know?

GC: I’m always interested in how random the prominent game-making countries of the world seem to be. I think half the developers I ever speak to are Swedish, but there’s far fewer in Finland and Denmark and almost none from Norway. Do you think that goes all the way back to the demo scenes these countries did or didn’t have?

JK: I think there’s something very specific about that. When I had the Commodore 64, and then later transitioned to Amiga, the UK was the entire gaming industry.

GC: [wistful sigh] Those were the days.

JK: For the Commodore 64 and Amiga it was just the UK, it was incredible, especially England. Gremlin Graphics, Ocean, Imagine, Firebird, Rainbird… I mean, I can go on and on. All these amazing software companies in England, it was just incredible. And there was also, of course, some in America, you know, like MicroProse, but for me it was mostly British. But then again, in answer to your question, the demo scene was really strong in Scandinavia.

I think Denmark had one of the strongest demo scenes of any country, especially based on the fact that we were five million people. So we were a small country, but we had such a strong scene there. Finland had a pretty good scene, Sweden had a good scene, Germany had a pretty good scene. But those were peak demo scene countries and then later, as I moved into video games, the, the former Eastern Europe got really good with the demo scene. And now Sweden is creating so many amazing games.

I think Denmark is looking at Sweden and thinking, ‘You know, we’re gonna try to catch up.’ I I have a feeling Denmark might be next, as far as a good video game country goes. Of course, we have Io interactive and a bunch of others, but we don’t really have anything like Sweden has.

The Swedish game industry is so much bigger than in Denmark. And they only have another three million people, I think. I think they’re eight/nine million and we’re six million.

GC: It’s interesting how big Poland has become in recent years.

JK: I’m not surprised because Poland had such a strong… there’s been some strong connections with the demo scene, later than when I was in the demo scene. In Eastern Europe there was so much of the demo scene happening in the 2000/2010s that I’m really not surprised. I think that was the foundation of all these really strong games coming out from Poland and other countries over there.

GC: So to change the subject slightly, how did you transition into the modern era of gaming, with games like Hitman and Assassin’s Creed? Because that seems like it would naturally have a classical soundtrack, but that’s not quite the direction you went in.

JK: Io Interactive were founded by my friends and when I decided to stay in the US they went back home. Because I wanted to make music for more than just one company. And I think it’s just not just Io that has the demo scene roots. It’s also Crytek and Remedy in Finland. And I mean, there’s so many… Housemarque I believe.

GC: Oh definitely them, they’re one of my favourites. I’m so looking forwards to Saros.

JK: Yeah. They’re great. Absolutely. In answer to your question, after Hitman: Blood Money, which was the fourth Hitman I worked on, and I was working with the symphony orchestra and a choir again, I think my music style was going in new directions. And I don’t think my symphonic work necessarily… it sounds far from my demo scene days at that point. But I was always trying to go new places. That is like my DNA, to always try and do something new. And so I don’t get stuck anywhere, I’m always doing something different that I haven’t worked on. That’s what I look for.

And so when Assassin Creed came about, they were looking for a composer who was versatile and could do both electronic and orchestral, because of the DNA of Assassin’s Creed with the whole traveling back in time through your DNA and all that kind of stuff. So there was a very strong sci-fi element. It’s something that the later Assassin’s Creed games moved further and further away from. But in the beginning, the first four Assassin’s Creed games I worked on, that sci-fi element was very much to the fore. And we were talking about that a lot.

And so, you know, all that orchestral and symphonic music I did, it, it all goes through what I call the Animus filter, which kind of messes all the music up a little bit, because we are playing a simulation. And that was something the team was really into. And so I felt it was a good fit. They also needed someone who could work with them on the implementation because they were still trying to figure out what Assassin’s Creed was at the time.

It started out as a Prince Of Persia game and then it turned into Assassin’s Creed. And that’s when I came on, on board. But there were so many gameplay elements that I had never seen before, like eavesdropping and following people and all these kind of things. So we had to figure out a lot.

There was three different cities you could play in. They all needed a different music style, anything from Acre to Damascus and Jerusalem, and so Muslim-based music and more Christian influenced music styles. It was just so much we had to do that for me it was the perfect project, ’cause I could do a lot of different things and I could really get my teeth into all this.

GC: I can see that. So you were obviously, at least for those games, quite closely involved with the creation of the game. Is that normal for the games you work on?

JK: It does vary a lot. And it often depends on how, um, much we are trying to stretch the limit of everything. For Assassin’s Creed we were really stretching the limits, I felt. And so was the game itself. When you’re running around on rooftops, the game is flickering and it’s almost like there’s some kind of bit compression or something going on. And they did all that on purpose, because when you’re running on rooftops, being chased, they wanted it to look like the actual Animus was being stretched to its limits.

And so when I’m running on the rooftops, there’s electronic music with beats and everything, they wanted to go modern. And then with an orchestra sound on top that’s the Access the Animus track that’s up there. And that was really interesting, because suddenly we are going in a very electronic direction but it fit the whole idea that the team had about the game.

And so for something like that, I felt like we really closely worked together on what all this should sound like and what should be the philosophy behind this Animus filter and all these kind of things. And other times you get involved with a game and it might be like… Freedom Fighters was very far along when I got involved with it. Ao I knew right away what I wanted to do but I still think… that was working with my friends again, who were from Io Interactive. So the creative opportunities were endless, because they gave me so much freedom.

So it all really depends on what stage of the project you come in or what’s your relationship to these people. Did you just meet them or have you worked with them before? I feel when I got around to working on Assassin’s Creed 2 the team was like, ‘Okay, we feel like we nailed the first one. And it sold 10 million copies, which was a huge number for Ubisoft. And so they let me go do my thing.

GC: That’s interesting, because it’s the second one that really saw that franchise blow up and it sounds like you were a big part of that.

JK: We wanted to create a city that you could live in and breathe in. And when I work on open world games, I’m especially interested trying to create some kind of magic there in the atmosphere. And if the music can help with that, then that’s what we need to do. But it needs to be something that that draws you back in, even if you’ve completed the game.

And it just is incredible to me that people still talk about Assassin’s Creed 2 and the Ezio trilogy after 15 years. And I think it just means that we created something that you can only get inside that game. And there’s like a comfort level when you go in there, even though you’ve played through the game a few times, it’s still a good place to go. I think music can have a huge thing to do with that.

GC: That’s interesting because I would’ve thought open world games would be quite restrictive, because they’re always so long and you can’t keep looping the same music again and again because people could be pottering around for hours not doing anything in particular. Do you use a specific approach for all the ones you work on or are they less limiting than I’m imagining?

JK: The games I choose to work on are always different. Darktide is a bit of an anomaly because I’m staying in that same world for a bit. But I’m getting a kick out of that. But often when I take on new projects, I don’t wanna work on the same thing. I just worked on. I wanna try something new. So I would say my scores, whether they’re open world or not, are, usually different from each other. And I don’t feel like I get stuck in some kind of a sameness with these open world games because if you choose your project wisely, you are not gonna end up in that situation.

And the philosophy behind something like State Of Decay 3, which is all about giving hope to the world and rebuilding the world while you are playing in a zombie apocalypse, it’s almost like an opposite in there somewhere. And I think that just adds so much depth to the experience. Instead of just creating a three hour score, that sounds really scary, where we’re just kind of like giving you everything you expect. So I like to try to get in there and do something that goes a bit deeper because it’s not what you expect.

Darksiders 2 is another example. I’m always reminding the player that we are in the afterlife on and the wonder of that, but yet you play the character of Death. And I think that could quickly become really mundane and boring, and dark to listen to, but still the game is kind of an uplifting experience, and the music certainly does some heavy lifting there. So I’m always trying to figure out what can be the perspective of this world. And I love world building, it’s my favourite part of working on music.

GC: That’s fascinating. Well, this has all been fascinating. Was the Wonder Woman game that got cancelled… that was going to be open world as well, wasn’t it?

JK: Yes, that was an open world game. I think.

GC: Can you talk about that at all, were you closely involved in that one?

JK: I know a lot about the game, but I mean… I can’t talk about it. We were going in a new direction, which I was excited about because a lot of superhero games and films tend to go in a certain direction, and we went in a different direction. It was going much more of an Assassin’s Creed direction than it was going into a Marvel universe direction or, or DC Comics.

GC: Can you say whether it was historical or was it set in the modern day?

JK: I don’t know, man; I don’t know what I can say. [laughs]

GC: I don’t want to get you in trouble, but what kind of music was it, at least?

JK: It was a hybrid of styles, that I can say. I was doing my hybrid style again, where I was mixing orchestral with electronics. But it’s so different from Assassins Creed that it would definitely have sounded very different. But, you know, probably more in that direction than something like a film score.

We weren’t trying to do what sounded… I like the idea of making something cinematic, but I’m with you when you say you don’t wanna just sit and watch it, because then you can just go see a movie. I like when you get to play cinematic moments. That’s okay, that’s cool with me, but I don’t want to just sit back and then the most impressive moment happened and you’re like, ‘I wish I could have played that!’

GC: OK, so that obvious didn’t work out but what else are you working on at the moment? You mentioned Samson?

JK: Yeah, Samson, A Tyndalston Story is coming out [this] month. It’s game that takes place in the nineties, so I’ve been creating a trip hop inspired, cinematic type score. I’m also working on No Law, which is a cyberpunk noir type of game. And that’s an open world game as well. Then I’m working on State Of Decay 3, which is in the third open world game I’m working on now. There’s a lot of world customisation, so there’s a lot of emotion in that score. Probably one of the most emotional scores I’ve written. And it’s all melodic by the way, State Of Decay 3 is very melodic.

GC: [laughs] Thank you! I’m interested that you actively seek out open world games to work on. You obviously find the difficulty of scoring such huge games an interesting challenge.

JK: I do, yeah. And that’s why there’s so much music for these games. Usually you are writing three hours or more for these games. And it’s definitely also about how the music is implemented, that it’s implemented carefully not to just loop or play forever. You are right that if you spend a long time wandering around, you have to be careful about how you present the music and it can be overdone.

And you mentioned a main theme could get repetitive, but there’s so many themes. State Of Decay 3 probably has like 50 themes in it. But of course you have a main theme and then you have some character themes and stuff like this. But since that game is so big you can’t score to the story when the story is so long. Assassin’s Creed Valhalla took me over a hundred hours to complete, there’s no way I’m gonna write a hundred hour score.

So you can’t have the score follow everything. So you kind of have to sum up a little bit and perhaps you’re giving everything in the world a theme, and that could be 50 themes. Or maybe you are approaching it differently, but you can’t do it like a film ’cause you can’t follow the entire journey of a game.

GC: So in terms of the future of video game music… I fear that question is probably dominated by AI. Are you worried about being replaced by ChatGPT?

JK: I am not really worried about it because I’m trying to give you something original. And that is something that AI is not able to create. It’s able to take stuff and create a variation of it. I’m more interested in creating something original, and that’s why I work on the projects that I work on. So for me it’s not a huge worry. I mean, it’s not like I’m 0% worried, but I think I’m just going to stick to trying to write something original and something new and keep doing what I’ve been doing. And I also think hat something people perhaps don’t mention enough is the human relationship you have with the team, or the director or producer or creative director or game designer. That is an incredibly important thing.

And if you ask a creative director, does he want to work with an AI on his next big game? I mean, if I was a creative director I wouldn’t wanna work with an AI. I wanna work with a composer where I can give my feedback and if there needs to be some changes we can have a philosophical conversation for 10 minutes about stuff. And then you come back from that inspired and you write something.

GC: Is there anything else coming in the future that could influence video game music for better or worse? We always talk about how much graphics will improve with a new generation of consoles, but never the music.

JK: I mean, what I enjoy to do is to write music. So that’s what I’m gonna do. Even if something came along that would make it much easier, I don’t want that thing to take away my favourite part of my job. I like to write music and that’s what I’m gonna keep doing. I like adding technology into my music but I like the opposite as well, recording with soloist and orchestras.

I like finding odd devices that create a really weird sound, and then you can run it through some of the other filters and suddenly you come up with something that you feel like you’ve never heard before. This is where I get passionate about things. I just keep researching music instruments and music technology and and effects and all these kind of things to find new ways to make something.

GC: You almost said that you want it to be difficult then. But that’s art from adversity, which I’m a big believer in. I love watching behind the scenes for movies and you see the terrible trouble they had making some of these classic films. But then you realise they probably wouldn’t have turned out as well as they did if everything was easy for them.

JK: Yeah, I agree with that.

GC: If the shark had worked all the time it would’ve been in the movie every five minutes, and that would’ve ruined everything.

JK: Yes!

GC: It’s like you need problems for creativity to flower.

JK: The hardest way to do things is often the best way to do things. Not every time, but often. And that’s definitely something that I have learned to embrace. When I decided on Assassin’s Creed Valhalla to play all the instruments myself and every track and every… the whole soundtrack was based around acoustic performances but I ended up performing the whole thing. That’s not because I thought that’s gonna be easy. [laughs] But I thought that’s gonna be the best way. So yeah, I’m with you on that. Absolutely.

GC: Okay. Well, it’s been a great pleasure to speak to you. Thank you very much for your time.

JK: It’s been great. Thank you.