hi there. as usual i’m going to start by apologising for the length between blog posts (over 18 months – a new record?) i will be updating the front page of superflatgames.com this year (at least i keep telling myself that.) who knows, maybe i’ll even be releasing some more games in the next couple of years. however, this post is on an altogether different subject.
i’m releasing my new album on Bandcamp today, entitled “GHOST DRIVES” under my own name. i’ve prepared a few somewhat pretentious notes for your reading pleasure, after the jump. i’ve really put my heart and soul into this, and so i figured i could indulge myself somewhat.
jazz-style sleeve notes
so here it is, the album i’ve spent far too long working on, the larger part of four years i’m almost ashamed to admit. the title is supposed to represent the fragility of digital data in an age where a literal part of ourselves is stored digitally.
i was thinking of all these lost fragments of music, art, writing and videogames that i may or may not have on old failed hard drives, floppies, ZIP’s, sticks, DAT’s and CD/DVD’s in my drawers, or computers which have long since passed on, and so on. fragments of ideas that didn’t take form that were potentially better than ones that did. i’ve lost a great deal of digital work over the years (thank good for vinyl or i’d have little to leave my daughter) through combinations of travelling and failed hard drives and computers, and just being careless, and the modern age makes things even more ephemeral, with a reliance on the cloud and social media taking over the roles of preserving our creations, any of which could evaporate overnight at any point.
i feel that, these days more than ever, leaving behind something as a creator means going all in and shooting to make something that’s unique enough that people feel it’s worth preserving. so i made my humble attempt to try and make something that represented how i feel right now, without any concessions to genre or commerce, in the hope that it may at least turn out to be a little bit different, to try and give it some small chance of not being lost in the sea of ghost data.
that said, i do hope the next album takes slightly less time! this is my debut solo album, despite having had one out as ‘The Accidental Heroes’ back in 2002 with Silver, and and as i turn 40 today (which means i’ve been putting out records for half my life), it feels like a good time to release one. it will be coming to all other major online distributors soon, but i thought i’d give it a surprise release on Bandcamp first (as they are the best site for the artist currently, in my opinion.)
a very special thanks to Nick, Nick, Makoto, Dean, James, Kieran and Jimmy and to everyone who’s supported me on this project, to the kind fans of my videogames and music, and of course to my amazing family for putting up with me through projects like this.
~jasper