Tobias Lilja

I was playing the trumpet from age 11 or 12 or something. I played that for a few years and had lessons in that. And I also played in a school band. Nobody didn't kick it out of their band. But the thing is, I never... I was much more interested in electronic music. My brother Joakim bought a sampler, like a sample keyboard.

It's not a synthesizer, but it's a keyboard that can record sounds and you can play those sounds on a keyboard. So he bought one of those and he kind of taught me how to use it. So that was kind of my first kind of... That was how I was making music when I was a kid. I was kind of sampling other people's music and putting it together, you know, kind of like old school hip hop.

sampling records and putting it together in some kind of collage fashion. So I was much more interested in that way of working, more than writing songs on the piano. I didn't really know how to do that, honestly. I've always been more interested in the sounds and how things sound and the textures, rather than the melodies and chords and lyrics.

And that's why I also was really interested in sound design for film, because that was more... That was working with that type of interest more than becoming like a composer because I wasn't really into being a composer. I mean, I don't really know how to write for an orchestra or something like that.

Thank you.

Yeah, I think one advantage I had was that we started working on the prototype that eventually became Little Nightmares back in 2014, I think. So I had the luxury to be part of that project from the start.

Since I was working at Tarsier, I was following the prototype, and I also had the opportunity to do sounds and music for the first initial vertical slice, the first prototype that we used to pitch the game to publishers. So I think that was a... That really helps if you're part of the project from the start. You can together really form an idea about the game together. It's much more difficult.

Like you say, if I would come in the last six months and just try to shoehorn in some sounds in there, that would be really difficult. So I'm a big believer in that you should involve audio designers really early on to... And it's also because you, when you're working with it, you have to be kind of marinated in it for a while to understand it. It's a good term.

And I also like to kind of play the game all the time. Since when I was working at Tarsier, it was like an office job in many ways. I had my own room and I could... Play the game all the time. Every day. So I had a really good kind of overview. Where the game was going. So I think that also helps. To kind of understand the game. Because if you're doing music for a scene.

You kind of have to understand. What's happening next. What happened before. You kind of have to understand all the context. So the more you know and understand. I think the better job you're able to do. Audio wise.

More like the latter. It's more a trial and error, trying things. And it's, no, it's very, I mean, I can have an idea about, okay, is this, is it going to be fast paced? Is it going to be intense? Or is it going to be, I mean, I can have an idea about how I should feel when I hear it. But it's a lot of experimenting. That's what I also really love about it.

What I do is usually try to find some kind of limitation. So in the case of that track, Boots Through the Undergrowth, I think that's from the forest level in Little Nightmares 2. So that level has a distinct kind of forest look or woods. And it's like a cabin in the woods, a wooden house. Mm-hmm. So the first thing I did there was kind of to try to nail down some instruments that would work.

And that's very subjective. To me, that's like, okay, that should be some acoustic instrument, something that feels kind of rooted. Maybe a guitar, acoustic guitar, or a banjo even. And then I guess try to limit myself to that. What can I do with a guitar? I'm not a guitar player. So what can I do with it? And that's kind of a very experimental thing. I don't try to write a song on the guitar.

I try just to make sounds from it. That is musical, but it's not like what you would expect from a guitar. And that's also what's fun with the horror genre. It's kind of rewarding experiments like that. I think the eeriness comes a lot from sounds that you haven't really heard before or you don't really understand what it is. And it's kind of familiar, but you can't really place what it is.

Oh, really? Oh, wow. Okay. That's amazing. I thought that you kind of had to have played the games before to understand it.

Cool.

But I think one part of the job is to also be a little bit invisible. Like, it's supposed to kind of be... a bit subconscious in a way. I think that's when it's working the best. I think that is a phenomenal point because you're right.

Sorry to interrupt. Especially ambient sounds. It doesn't have to be music even. It can be the background sounds. I think David Lynch is doing that really well in some of his movies. Have you seen Eraserhead? R.I.P. Oh, yeah. Every goth kid in the U.S. watched Eraserhead.

I was actually playing the trumpet myself when I was a kid for a few years.

But the thing with that film is that you have these, uh, these industrial drones in the background, like all the time, even though when they're kind of indoors, They have these indoor scenes, and you still hear those factory drones in the background. It just makes you so claustrophobic and uncomfortable. And it's just background ambiences.

And that's really on almost like a subconscious level, I think. It's...

It's so hard. It's so hard. I mean, kids shouldn't play the trumpet. You need so much airflow to make it sound like one note even. It's really difficult.

I think it comes down to a lot of like personal interest, I think. And it's also like, I think most people who enjoy writing for orchestra has probably played in an orchestra. Maybe they have a background. Maybe they play the cello or violin in an orchestra. They have that kind of background. I don't have that background. Like I said before, I liked techno music when I was a kid.

I was listening to the Prodigy. Yeah. And if you're writing for an orchestra, you kind of have to know the range of all the different instruments and kind of how they work together. Also, you have to kind of listen to a ton of orchestral work to kind of start thinking about

You're right. It's not about performing. That's the thing. I'm a lousy performer. I'm terrible at playing the piano because I never practice. But I'm... It's more interesting to me to kind of play instruments in weird ways. Well, it works great, sir. Explore the sound, like the sonic potential in the instruments in other ways.

Because, I mean, there's already a million of people playing the guitar really well. I can't compete with that. But I think it's a lot about background and interest and some... Yeah, and as I said before, I was part of Little Nightmares from the start, from the first prototype.

So I had the chance to also kind of find some music that was really fitting to what I could do, to my style, or something that I felt I could do.

Is that not a... I mean, there are actually some trumpets in there, like the doctor character. He has a lot of kind of brass instruments layered in there, the music for that character. So there are some trumpets in there. Okay, interesting. Yeah. Yeah.

No, I mean, I'm also pretty old school. I like artists like Aphex Twin. Oh, yeah. Which is maybe more like an experimental vein.

Yeah, actually, my oldest brother was listening to Front 242 a lot when I was a kid. Yes! Yeah, definitely. And Duff and that kind of body music. I love that stuff. Probably more into that stuff than EDM.

Yeah. Interesting.

Yeah. Yeah.

Of course. I look up to people who stay creative their entire life. People who keep being an artist when they are 70. Like David Lynch, for example. That's really inspiring to me. People like Scott Walker. He was a boy band singer in the 60s.

and then he got sick of that and so we had this kind of avant-garde experimental music career like in the yeah before he passed away that was really inspiring to me like he could do he had this So he's basically like a crooner singer that started to make this really experimental music when he was like 60 years old. That's amazing to me. That's awesome.

And he wrote these incredible lyrics and collaborated with some really...

great musicians he did an album with sun oh the the like a doom metal band also in his 60s or something that was in 2014. that's amazing to me yeah that's something I really said so you're talking about it's uh Sun Zero and then like parentheses like a million that one yeah exactly I bet you and I have similar taste in yeah yeah that's a great button yeah but uh yeah but it's stuff like that I yeah

No, I'm not working on Re-Animal. I'm a freelancer now. I resigned from Tarsier just when they started to work on that. Oh, okay, cool.

I did some sound and music for an animated feature film I had the opportunity so I wanted to jump on that just to try it out and now I'm working on another game project that's not

really announced yet some yeah i can't talk about that but is it is it horror yeah yeah i can say it's horror yeah okay but but um uh but i'm sure rihanna will is gonna sound amazing i'm sure of it it's uh the thing is christian wasselbring was my colleague at our show working he also did a lot of the sound design for little nightmares So he's working on Re-Animal.

So, I mean, I didn't do all the sounds myself for Little Nightmares. It was me, Christian Baselbring and Christian Björklund. So we were a team of three people who did the sound design. But I did all the music. So it's in good hands at least. Absolutely, yeah. Yeah? Okay, good.

Is that something that you... Yeah, I'm involved in some work for Little Nightmares 3. Not in the same way. I was super involved in Little Nightmares 2. Like I said, I was working with it every day. But I'm doing some work for it, but not in the same way, really.

I mean, the good thing with big publishers... I mean, Bandai Namco was the publisher from the start of Little Nightmares. So they've been the publisher all along. But it's another studio doing Little Nightmares 3. But I think... I mean, the good thing with big publishers is that they have kind of money to spend on... to make it good. Like, they can maybe...

delay the project to make sure that it's improving and they can also spend more money with marketing so the game has a better reach. I think Bananamco did a good job at making sure Little Nightmares had a good reach to the audiences.

Exactly. I mean, I've been playing video games all my life. It was a huge thing when I was a kid. I got a PlayStation when I was 11 or something, and I played that all the time. But these days I spend a lot of time working with games, working with the sound and sound effects and music. So it's not the first thing maybe I want to do when I get home from work. But I still enjoy games.

That's true. Yeah. But it's tricky. Little Nightmares was very much a... It's a Tarsier game. It's very shaped by the artists at Tarsier. They have a style that's very recognizable. Absolutely. The art team at Tarsier is world-class. To me, it's the best art team in the world. No question about it. They are incredible artists.

I mean, if you look at some of the concept art, you look at the concept art and you look at the scene in the game, it's like, it's the same. It's the same image.

Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, it's to be able to pick what projects. And also, I think one... It may sound simple, but one really big factor is that you are able to kind of design your own space, how you work. Just simple things like I can decide in a heartbeat if I want to buy an application or if I want to go and buy a cello. I can do that. It's no problem. I can design. I can go and buy a new chair.

It doesn't have to go through five different approval layers to make sure it's in the budget or whatever. Yeah. And also being able to pick projects. And I also wanted to try some other type of game. I mean, I don't mind working with games. But I get bored if I have to do the same game over and over again. I want to try to do something new every time.

I don't mind horror at all. I think that's a really fun genre to work with. It's more like Little Nightmares. It's a lot about building suspense and hide and sneak gameplay. It's a lot of stealth. It's not that much kind of typical gameplay. So one thing I want to do, maybe do a game that has more gameplay, more classic gameplay.

Yeah, something like that. That would be fun to try. And I also had the opportunity to do sounds for that feature film. It's actually an Algerian animated movie called Shamsa that I did a couple of years ago. So I had the opportunity to do sounds for that. So I could kind of try to work with a film.

It wasn't the first time, but it was the first time I could do both sound design and music for a feature film. That was really interesting to me to try that.

The last few years? It's probably... it's probably Animal Well or Elden Ring. I mentioned those previously. Yeah. I mean, Elden Ring was... I never finished it, but it was really... It was an amazing experience anyway. That's a good choice.

All my friends are game developers and I still really like games. I do play games sometimes, of course. We do have a video game club, me and some of my friends play. It's similar to... Like a book club kind of thing. Exactly, like a book club, but with video games. So we are mostly playing kind of indie games. We played Animal Wealth a while ago.

I'm really lousy at keeping track of upcoming games, to be honest. No, that's okay.

The thing is, I'm always super late to the party. Like, Elden Ring was released...

few several years ago but i it's always like that it's like oh i should play that at some point and then two years later i pick it up and play it yeah it's always like that i'm terrible at doing it it's always it's also that john you were talking about this kind of indie thing like like everyone's playing that now i don't want to play it like right Yeah, no, I get that.

Everyone is watching Squid Game now. I'm not going to watch it. But I'll watch it two years later anyway, just to miss out. Not to miss out. That's awesome.

A couple of times a year, maybe. Yeah? Yeah. uh do you eat at the food court yeah but it oh man that food isn't good at all no no that's what john was fishing for right there i mean this they serve these uh green peas uh and they were like all like raisins oh god gross what what do you what do you think about uh pickled herring

oh um it's it's okay i'm i'm actually a vegetarian but uh okay but i do i mean i i before i became a vegetarian i ate them but it's okay uh i do like the schnapps you usually drink like a schnapps two two herring like you know when in christmas and easter and stuff yeah just kind of like a belly warmer kind of thing yeah yeah like a spiced liquor kind of thing that that's really good

Sweden. I mean, my favorite food is Korean food and Vietnamese food. Because Swedish food is only meat. Meat and potatoes.

and then sorry one last question what is your favorite Swedish movie that an American might not have heard of Swedish movie oh that's probably there is a Swedish hyped director called Ruben Östlund he made a movie that's unpronounceable for us Ruben Ostlund thank you he made a movie a few years back called De Ofrivilliga Let me check whether I was in English.

Yeah, that's also an amazing movie. It's called Involuntary in English. That was a really good movie. Sounds better in Swedish. Yeah. but Let the Right One In is also I mean actually he's my one of my favorite authors the author behind Let the Right One In gotcha awesome brilliant movie

Yeah, that was great. Outer Wilds.

Thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. It was really fun.

I'm terrible at social media, but I do have an Instagram, Tobias underscore Lilja. I will post something there, like updates about new projects and stuff. That's probably the best way.

Yeah, it's really cool. They are using narration in such a unique way. And yeah, it's cool. It's really cool.

It's usually just someone says, I heard about this game. It seems cool. And then we just check it out and just play it. I mean, we don't always complete the game. Maybe we just play it for an hour and try it out.

You're just like little samples of... Yeah, and it's a great way... We also spoke before about taking the time to play video games. And that's also a good excuse. Like, I need to play this game now because I need to say something about it tomorrow when we have coffee and talk about it. There you go. There you go.

Yeah, I'm actually kind of like that. I want to complete games. I tried to play through Elden Ring last year. I got really far, but it was just too big. That game was just overwhelming to me.

I play it kind of casually. The thing is, I don't really like the boss fights in those games. I love the exploration part and playing the non-boss fights. Best exploration in a game. Yeah, the exploration in Elden Ring was amazing. But it gets a bit repetitive after a while, I think. And the boss fights aren't that... After a while, they start reusing bosses.

It's the same boss, but now it's a ghost. But I already completed this boss I don't want to Yeah

I actually wanted to work with film sound at first. So I tried to get gigs in the film industry, like sound recording and music for film and short films and commercials. And I did some freelancing with that for some time. But it was difficult to get jobs in that industry. And suddenly, by fluke, this Tarsier Studios... job showed up. So I applied for it. This was in 2011.

So I didn't have any experience in video games. But I applied for it anyway. And this application, they needed someone to... They had recently opened up a studio in Malmö, Tarsier Studios. And they needed someone to take care of the audio. They did a lot of licensing work for Sony. So they were working on LittleBigPlanet. And they were working on the... Do you remember the PlayStation Vita?

The handheld? So they were doing LittleBigPlanet for the PlayStation Vita. And they needed someone to handle the audio part. And I was kind of... At that time, I had like a part-time teaching job at the university teaching sound design no sound design not okay and so i just had just been what's the word let go from that job and so i needed i was like i need a job

And they were also like, we need someone to do this. So it was a good match in time. And I lived just around the corner from the office. And I think I did a decent work sample and interview as well. So I got the job. But it was... Yeah, it was a difficult first few years since I had no experience in video game development.

It was kind of a big threshold in learning all the... I mean, it's a very technical job. A lot of applications you need to know and...

uh how to implement sounds in games and stuff it's it's very technical uh so but uh but uh the good thing was that we were kind of base we were using uh the same game engine as a little bit planet two uh so we so it was more about we could kind of reuse a lot of the tag the code and we used the same audio pipeline kind of uh so it was a good kind of learning project for me to

add sound effects to the game.

Yeah, exactly. So I could focus on making sounds. I wasn't making music at that point. I was writing so-called music briefs for other composers. Which means that I kind of explain, like, this level needs this music. And I tried to kind of explain what kind of music we needed for another external freelancing composer. And I sourced a lot of references for music that we liked, that would fit.

And I also... Did you play LittleBigPlanet at all back in the day?

Yeah, they had this thing where you could, as a player, create your own levels. So we needed to create some kind of music library so players could pick a music track for their level. So one big part of the job was to kind of source, try to find music for this. I mean, existing release music.

Some of it was composed original music, but we also kind of sourced available release music from indie rock bands and stuff. So that was a big part of the job, just to find these tracks. And I did that work together with Sony. Martin Hewitt at Sony helped us to contact these record labels and license these tracks to the game.

I mean, audio, both sound effects and music is usually late. Like often it's kind of lasting. Really? Okay. Yeah. It's very common. That's interesting. But one thing, like game development, it's a lot about iteration. You do one version and then you change a bunch of stuff and then you keep doing versions all the time. So it's not very often you nail something on the first try.

It's a lot of kind of... You inch closer to the answer every iteration. And that's the same for all disciplines. Both level designers are kind of trying out... It's a lot of trial and error, essentially. You're building a layout of a level and you do some tweaks and...

it's the same thing for the artists that do that maybe the level art and it's the same thing for me like trying to i'm continuously tweaking both sound effects and music until everything fits and it takes a lot of time it's a yeah it's and it's a very it's uh it can be a bit of a lot a big headache um it's difficult to plan the work because everyone is working on everything at the same time it's kind of building like building a house changing all the time

Yeah, and it's changing all the time. And if the end result isn't that fun to play, you kind of have to rethink the whole thing. So it's not a guarantee that it will be fun in the end, even though it's like a perfect idea on paper.

I honestly kind of like that way of working trial and error and just trying it out and you have to kind of use your gut feeling all the time like is this cool is this fun and I kind of like that way of working

Hi, guys.

I don't have a formal music or composer training. I mean, I have three older brothers, and they all kind of listened to a lot of music when I grew up. And I was also listening to a lot of music when I grew up, especially electronic music. Yes. Do you have a favorite? Favorite music?

I'm good. Thank you. Thanks. Thanks for having me on the show.

Yeah, I mean, when I grew up, I listened to a lot of techno, underground, like Chemical Brothers. I loved them when I was a kid. The Prodigy.