Another Childhood by Jim Nopédie
Another Childhood... but not the simple one we might yearn for, or be told to yearn for, amidst our contemporary obsession with returning to the past. On his sophomore album following 2020’s acclaimed ‘Minus Worlds’, Jim Nopédie challenges nostalgia culture’s halcyon depiction of childhood, and retro video gaming, in favour of something more intriguing, more eerily undefined.
The album plays as a series of vignettes depicting video game urban legends both real and imagined - hidden locations (and beings) within game spaces which players have scoured for countless collective hours. In the age of data-mining, it asks: Why are we still fixated on the possibility that within old video games might lie the unknown?
Track 5, “Drowned Town (Wet-Dry World)”, illuminated this very fixation last year as it amassed YouTube listens in the six-figures, amongst a rising online interest in “liminal spaces” and iceberg memes - eerie flipsides of familiar spaces and media. “Drowned Town” exemplifies Jim Nopédie’s masterful blend of the familiar and the new; its impact is testament to the evocative, digi-folkloric power of these sounds, and the growing fascination they engender.
But where previous album ‘Minus Worlds’ used the cartoonish, bright MIDI palettes of say, Super Mario World, ‘Another Childhood’ is more akin to the mythic, obscure landscapes of Myst. “Hell Valley Sky Trees” blurs the glimmering outer-space palette of Super Mario Galaxy into murky, spectral shapes. “The Far Lands” calls to mind C418’s iconic Minecraft soundtrack stretched and distorted into strange cries. And the enigmatic ending of “Reviving Aerith” depicts a transition between death and life.
What has remained is Jim’s unusual gift for intensely visual, transportive music - these are ten dark worlds to once again get lost in, resplendent with the modern ambient touches of Tim Hecker and OPN. At a time when we’re more inescapably virtual and nostalgic than ever before, 'Another Childhood' offers a vitally alternative perspective: on the knowability of virtual spaces, on our nostalgic memories, on what being a child was really like.
Tracklist
| 1. | Intro / Another Childhood | 2:23 |
| 2. | Who are you running from? | 3:58 |
| 3. | Hell Valley Sky Trees | 4:39 |
| 4. | Wounded Missingno | 3:00 |
| 5. | Drowned Town (Wet-Dry World) | 2:01 |
| 6. | The Far Lands | 1:26 |
| 7. | Temple of Light | 5:25 |
| 8. | Gyroid Face | 4:41 |
| 9. | Seventeenth Colossus | 3:30 |
| 10. | Reviving Aerith | 4:45 |
| 11. | Gyroid Face (Fire-Toolz Remix) | 6:06 |
Credits
All music by James Gales
Piano on track 3 engineered by Jem Hoppe
Remix by Fire-Toolz (fire-toolz.bandcamp.com)
Mastered by Angel Marcloid @ Angel Hair Audio (angelhairaudio.com)
Artwork by Elias Toner (instagram.com/doggonoid.draw)
Liner notes edited by Kim Ho
Special thanks: Josh, Albert, Monti
