Dean: Mandalus makes electronic music with Grand Theft Auto cool

The first trailer for the beyond-long-awaited Grand Theft Auto VI was released last December, but ahead of time, some online hawkshaws believed they had worked out what the accompanying song would be.

Word spread around gaming forums, blogs and social media that Rockstar Games, developers of the Grand Theft Auto series, had selected a fresh update of the old Genesis song “That’s All”, remixed by a producer named Mandalus.

The track appeared on YouTube in a clipped 90-second edit – ideal for a trailer – accompanied with a silhouette of characters from the game and series of Grand Theft Auto-related hashtags in the bio.

“If this is the GTA 6 trailer song, it is DANG perfect,” wrote one commentator. “Future us shall see if this ends up being what we hear.” The video rocketed to 175,000 views in a week.

As things turned out, the speculation was incorrect – the chosen tune was actually Tom Petty’s “Love is a Long Road”. In a masterful gambit, Mandalus had finessed the legions of gamers thirsty for information on the project. “If you really want to hear this in GTA VI, let Rockstar Games know!” now reads the video description. And so they should.

The interesting thing, from our perspective, is that Mandalus is the nom de plume of Dublin electronic music producer and visual artist Des Foley.

Should Foley catch the attention of the right decision maker at Rockstar, it would be a huge break. Grand Theft Auto games are cultural pillars and music is intrinsic to the experience.

Due for release late next year, Grand Theft Auto VI returns the series to Vice City, an analogue of Miami. A classic previous installment, Grand Theft Auto: Vice City, was released in 2002, but set in 1986. That game solidified a vision of 1980s Miami as one of America’s true pop culture epicentres, with its own distinct flavor and image – the palm-tree’d, neon-drenched Art Deco paradise city of Scarface and Miami Vice; a city built on synthesisers and drum machines.

Grand Theft Auto VI appears to be set in a contemporary setting, but Mandalus’s remix of “That’s All” trades in nostalgia. The original song was released in 1983, during British band Genesis’s Phil Collins-led commercial peak. It’s a slick pop-rock ditty about a dead-end relationship, built around a bouncy electric piano riff and steady drum beat.

In the hands of Mandalus, that easy-going nature is stripped out, replaced with a darker electro-pop bounce, teasing out the hard-edged attitude in Collins’ voice that was previously undetectable. Mandalus has no use for the original’s bridge, the softest part of the vocal, so it’s discarded. Most beautifully, he adds a drum roll that mirrors Collins’ most famous percussion break – rock music’s most famous percussion break – from “In The Air Tonight”. For me, Mandalus’s version surpasses the original, no question.

Prior to becoming Mandalus, Foley played guitar in a pop-punk band in the mid-to-late 2000s called Mr. Lightweight. In 2009, he became a founding member of Jody Has A Hitlist, but his stint in the group was brief. Several years of musical darkness followed, until a trip to Ibiza in 2017 convinced Foley to turn himself over to electronic music.

“This project started out of a desire to create and produce music again after a long break,” he has written. “Now with a lot more life experience and awareness of other kinds of music, I feel I’m much better equipped to express myself. Mandalus is a means for me to share my personality through music I’ve created, and I aim to expand this project into something bigger over the next decade.”

Foley’s most significant statement so far is the EP Loading, released in 2019, a short set of electronic arrangements full of atmosphere, grit and nuance.

Across four songs, the intrepid button-pusher slips between different moods. The dubby, percussion-focused title track slowly speeds up, like Mandalus is squeezing the acceleration pedal, inducing a sense of panic perfect for the deepest, darkest moment of a club night. In contrast, “Desert Ego” has trippy vocal chops over a thumping bassline, offering a sweet sense of relief, while “Lost in Something” invokes the throbbing, propulsive electronic soundscapes of Giorgio Moroder.

Since then, Mandalus has primarily released music in single bursts. There’s a few other unofficial reworks of tracks by the likes of Grimes and Tame Impala, and what appears to be an official remix of a song titled “Roy Orbison” by fellow Dubliner Dashoda. It’s another luxe 1980s-style pop song for driving in the rain, synths billowing like fog in the headlights.

Scan his YouTube page and you’ll find some on-camera DJ sets too, including one recorded in the grand surroundings of Mount Shasta in California at sunrise. And there’s a clip titled “Lee Carvallo’s Putting Challenge”, a song from the genre known as Simpsonwave, a micro genre/internet meme that toys with listeners’ sense of childhood innocence and nostalgia by splicing clips from The Simpsons with spaced-out electronic beats.

At time of writing, that video has yet to clear 100 views. But if there’s any justice in Vice City, the paperwork from Rockstar is in the post, and with it, the boost of profile that Mandalus deserves.