♫♪  Nostalgia Corp - Eternal Desolation

Although Borges never mentioned it, the Library of Babel contains a whole entire other building devoted to media. That building, divided into several subsections, has one section devoted to video-game soundtracks, and another, less circulated section devoted to soundtracks of metaphysical video games. It’s there, in that section, while crouched on my knees thumbing through black plastic CD cases with crappy printed labels, that I stumble upon Nostalgia Corp’s Eternal Desolationa fake game for the PlayStation, and decide to give it a listen.

I start the game, as anyone does, in the Main Menu, but I’m not there with a controller in my hands, I’m at a library desk, with my Walkman on, listening to the CD, eyes closed, imagining the Main Menu, because this album is a video-game without the video-game, a drama rendered invisible, a narration rendered invisible, an embodiment rendered invisible. I listen with clues on my scent trail, my brain doing the bulk of the work, putting together the fantasy of another me, there, selecting my character, entering the prologue, going through several levels, and when the game malfunctions, as it wanted to, I enter a foreign land, a foreign level, and defeat a boss, the last boss, with a rocket launcher and a machete. The music ends, and I’m sweating in the library.

My theory: the repetitive, off-balance loops suggest the cyclical nature of life: the endless reincarnations we get, the do-overs, the chances to begin again, all of that taking it all back to the act of breathing itself, and the heart beating inside us, good or bad, machine or not.

Chocolate Grinder

CHOCOLATE GRINDER is our audio/visual section, with an emphasis on the lesser heard and lesser known. We aim to dig deep, but we’ll post any song or video we find interesting, big or small.

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