Minus Worlds – it’s an apt title for this tapestry of surreal music inspired by and modelled upon the stereotypes of videogame-music. Jim Nopédie (James Gales, aka Lighthouser) furnishes a digital exoticism for the listener to slip into; a space replete in the sonic regalia of 90s electronica.
Though it’s tempting to look to nostalgic underpinnings, thinking of Minus Worlds as the remnants of digital culture is more appropriate. Tracks like “Brash Beach” and “Skybox Sky” evoke their virtual equivalents, and they’re sequenced as one would move through a videogame itself: zone to zone; space to space. While the cues and signifiers are distorted and magnified for total recall, they are misshapen and bent into shapes akin to those familiar with the techniques of 0PN, Takao, or James Ferraro.
These spaces Jim Nopédie builds from the ground up, then deconstructs – the “Deserted Cave”, “La Casino Engloutie”, a “Greenhouse Glacier” – are familiar enough to us in their very real forms, but it’s hard to know for sure how much our conceptions of them are now shaped by, and kept from us, by our digital equivalents for them. This is not old music repurposed for looking back; this is retrofuturism cannibalising itself, its own past, its own “Save”, to create something far more future-concerned; future-obligated.
Music by Jim Nopédie (James Gales)
Artwork by Elias Toner
Guitar on track 6 by Asher Elazary
Remix by Nico Niquo
Mastered by Lachlan Wooden (tracks 1, 2, 3, 4, 8 & 9) and Simon Lam (tracks 5, 6, 7 & 10)
Liner notes by Nico Callaghan
Special thanks: Liz, Kim, Steph, Paul, Anthony, Hoge Tapes, Koji Kondo
