Appendix II: Spotlight on music composer Gerry De Mol

We first approached Gerry De Mol out of the blue after hearing a song from his "Kleine Blote Liedjes" album ("Little Naked Songs") on the radio. At the time, we were looking for a composer to work with on 8, having decided that Pergolesi and Beethoven were a bit too heavy-handed for the game. As it turned out, Gerry was the perfect match for 8.

Not only did he make simple moving songs with minimal orchestration and unexpected instruments, he also had this entire other life of being a "world musician" with Oblomow. Gerry is an expert player of all sorts of exotic string instruments and many of his compositions refer to Middle Eastern traditions (which 8 referred to as well, in its visual style).

We were unable to find sufficient fundng to produce 8 at the time, but when we needed a song for the options screen of The Endless Forest, we asked Gerry. Then later when we developed Abiogenesis and need more music for live performances in the Forest, we asked him again to make a whole bunch of songs. We have returned the favour by creating a 2D game for his "Min en Meer" album.

The choice for Gerry as composer for the song in The Graveyard was clear from the beginning. Very few musicians have the courage to make art about the mundane and even fewer have the talent to be witty while doing it, and incredibly moving at the same time. Gerry is a rare artist and the perfect match for the ambiguous atmosphere we wanted to project with The Graveyard. Let's see how he feels about this...

The song you created for The Graveyard (entitled "Komen te gaan" or "Come to go"), is about cleaning graves. Where did the inspiration come from?

"Komen te gaan" is a quite regional euphemism for dying, means as much as "arriving to the departure", has a nice paradox in itself. The inspiration comes from where I grew up. I lived very near the local graveyard (so we had a lot of neighbors, all quiet people) and as a kid we used to play in the graveyard.

At one time, when the "old graveyard" was nearly full, they created a new graveyard with asphalt lanes that meandered round nicely trimmed lawns, but no grave was dug yet. The place was big and it came out to be an ideal terrain for practicing rollerskates. My best friend's grandfather was the gravekeeper at that time, now 40 years ago. Graveyards are ideal for playing hide and seek as well.

Also, my mother's father died very young, so more than once a week my mother visted the graveyard. Once a year all family graves where cleaned for All Saints (1st of November) -- the blue stone was thoroughly cleaned with a bottle of acid. But my strongest memories are from the days just before All Saints, owning a pub alongside the graveyard, my parents and grandmother sold Chrysanthemums in the days leading up to November 1st, which spread a sweet smell for weeks through the house.

In most cultures, cleaning graves is a way of taking care of memories and people who are not there anymore. Most people talk to the deceased when doing that, it's got the power of a ritual which is very personal and soothing.

Could comment a little bit on some of the lyrics? Perhaps illuminating some things that might have been lost in the translation?

You first made another mix of the song but we thought it was too heavy; now that you can see the finished project, do you agree? Or do you still prefer the first version? and if so, why?

I do not particularly like the first version more than the other. I like to blend in projects, so this version works very well with the game. I'm very happy with the result and like to present it to people as an empathy machine with old people, so I'm proud of being part of it. For my MySpace I considered putting on the earlier version, but I decided against it, so apparently I like this version as much. The first version would have been okay if the person was a man, it's got more coarse singing, it's slower and lower. The singer [in that version] is more a persona, as now it's more of a storyteller. Therefore this is better for the game, I suppose.

Is the music of "Komen te gaan" inspired by any kind of traditional music? What other ideas did you have that didn't make it?

It has no specific ethnic roots. It's a bit of a slow death march for optimists made light and with a deliberately struggling rhythm that always seems to come too late. It's more inspired by the movements of an old lady who thinks she will move her foot, but the foot reacts just a bit too late. So does the rhythm and the little banjo solo.

Things and directions do not react as you would want to any more when getting older, so the solo gets lost in itself -- as does the lady, I reckon. I would have liked to keep the harmonium from the first version, but it swept away all the relative lightness. What I would have liked to have done -- but time lacking, I did not -- was create a slow polyphonic seemingly religious yodled version of a very popular pubsong coming from within the chapel. The text goes: when we're dead, the grass grows on our tummy. Maybe later.

You work with musicians from all over the world and your musical inspirations come from many different cultures. Yet you always write songs in Dutch. Doesn't this limit the exposure of your work?

Maybe, maybe not. But I do not think there is any choice. If you want to obtain a certain level of significance and subtlety in lyrics, you cannot but do it in your own language. I learned that you either have to be yourself or choose a persona and a style and a statistically measured least common denominator in taste to become famous. Creating exposure instead of expression. As I'm too old, too ugly, and too male for the latter, I'm stuck on the former way of expressing myself: trying to be or become myself.

What projects are you working on at the moment? Any new albums coming up? Any games?

I'm working on a solo album, hoping to release it soon, but I have no deadlines. I might suddenly make it in a week, or it can stay on the shelf for years to come. I'm in a writing period now, which makes it more difficult, with over 40 new songs to choose from. And then there is this doubt whether printing CDs is still a good idea. Looking for new ways of creating things and having a bit of an income as well.

I'm touring with a show I created called The Portable Paradise, in which three singers sing about their lives (from a book I wrote with migration stories of singers from all over the world). Touring in November, it's a new way of working with film and live music and storytelling. The music is from myself, Ethiopia, Armenia, and some other inspirations.

I'm performing on my own in small theaters and house concerts (great fun to do) and performing in two theater pieces at the same time. One based on the poetry of Flemish poet Pat Donnez for which I wrote some music and perform on stage. The other a new project by theater maker Michael De Cock with Senegalese actor Younous Diallo about the boat migration from Senegal to Tenerife, a horrific story in which I use the sea, some water, a guitar, a rope and a motor as instruments.

Where can people buy your music?

They can hear it on MySpace and I'm planning to put some of the music on iTunes. Older CDs can be obtained on my site www.gerrydemol.be.