I’ve been back-and-forth a bit on the subject of the game’s music for a long time. I had recorded a few tracks a long time ago; mostly raucous bluegrass-inflected stuff as you might expect, but I don’t want to simply do the obvious thing. It’s going to have to have some banjo in there – that’s inevitable – but I also want to mix in a chiptune/old-school arcade game angle, and some retro sci-fi ambience as well. And find a way to put these elements together in a way that sounds genuine, rather than just a pastiche.

Banjo-tastic

Anyway, these are a couple of instruments I’ve had for years, which I have recently been trying to repair. The first one is a banjo mandolin which I’ve always hated – it’s fiddly to play, impossible to keep in tune, and has a tone that is reminiscent of a traffic accident. But having recently taken off half the strings, dropped the action significantly, and restrung it as a banjo ukulele instead, I think it may have some potential after all. The other is my Yamaha 20M analogue synthesiser, which I love, but it stopped working several years ago. Being 30 years old now, a lot of its internal electronics have simply worn out, and I am slowly replacing all the fritzed components with new ones. It’s a big job – it’s like a TARDIS in there – but I hope I can successfully get it working again one day.

Together, these instruments kind of sum up what I’m trying to do with the music for Cletus Clay. Minimal, but with character. A mixture of retro and retro’s granddad. Stubbornly analogue, lo-fi, anachronistic and unusual. And just to make things more interesting, I’m going to attempt to create this new kind of music while simultaneously developing a video game…