Unpacking with Jeff van Dyck

Steal a moment away at ACMI’s Listening room, a space perfectly built for experiencing your favourite records, with composer Jeff van Dyck and his music from the beloved Australian game, Unpacking.

Between intimate acoustic guitars and nostalgic electronic melodies, Jeff speaks to the inspirations and processes behind this score, where every carefully placed instrument and effect tells a stroy of growing older, growing up, and finding who you really are.

Jeff van Dyck was born and raised in Vancouver, Canada. He was mentored by a childhood spent in studios with his father, Ralph Dyck, also a composer and technology specialist. “My father worked in R & D for Roland and was the originator of the MC-8 micro-composer. I got to hang around when he worked with artists like Toto, Michael Jackson, Oscar Peterson and Paul Horn. I was constantly surrounded by professional musicians and the creative process. It was inevitable that creating music would become my life too.”

In 1992, at the age of 23, Jeff began to make his mark as an audio lead/ composer/sound designer at Electronic Arts, working on classic computer game franchises including FIFA Soccer, NHL, NBA and the iconic Need for Speed series.

After 5 years of sports games, Jeff was ready to take on more cinematic styles of composing. He relocated to Australia and began contracting to companies around the world, creating orchestral, electronic and ethnic/historical soundtracks.

During this time, he started a decades long collaboration with one of the most successful RTS franchises in gaming – Total War. Jeff was awarded a BAFTA in 2001 for the soundtrack Shogun: Total War Warlord Edition, was nominated again in 2005 for the soundtrack Rome: Total War and led his team to another BAFTA in 2015 for Alien:Isolation.

Jeff’s music has been licensed for several documentary series on The History Channel and the BBC. Jeff has scored several short films and a feature film. Jeff continues to work in the game industry, working on such projects as Assault Android Cactus, Hand of Fate II, Submerged, Forts, Paint the Town Red, and most recently the multi-award-winning game Unpacking.