As a child tossing and turning at night, I dreamed of three worlds. The first and least of these is Desert World, an eternal stretch of golden sand always viewed from miles up, where sparkling white rings reach towards me like a surf. I tried to find my way down to the ground, but there was always the danger of plunging straight through and ending up in Snake World, where monstrous snakes emerged from dark kitchens.
Somewhere between these two poles is the realm of Animals, not really animals, but eyelashes as thin as eyelashes, grooved and glittering, like food rotting to the point of becoming a tropical fish. I love Animal World. I used to spend hours trying to figure out how to hack into it. I was quite shocked to see its similarity in Rushing Morss: Pattern Circus – an irresistibly weird, light, sad, funny and creative album about creatures, songs, places and phrases by Jack King-Spooner and composer Helena Celle.
I think “album” is the best word? Each room and encounter in this game is like a dream in its own right, its own hypnotic cave of timbres and dummies, held together by some technique and artistic fixation. complex: twitch, CRPG-style characters of clay and garbage; sparing use of live action footage; excessive concern with flicker, distortion, interference, repulsive bright colors and general ugliness or grotesque; a sort of fanciful, post-club atmosphere of melancholy and dehydration. Cronenberg’s Existenz seems like a solid reference point although the first one that comes to mind is the Red Dwarf, with its monsters made of curry.
There’s a story lurking around the corners – a murder-mystery that doesn’t exactly involve a racer and an impoverished scientist. It takes you to places like underground bars, ponds and space stations. It includes tasks like sweeping for worms, shopping for pet food, fighting insomnia, and driving a glider or submarine that looks like undigested Walkie-Talkies. You are rarely asked to do anything more complicated than move around an area and talk or collect something or someone. I’ve only played through it once but there seems to be several endings. The writing is short, poetic, whimsical, wandering and perverse. Fun, playful and exploratory music; it reminds me of prog rock, though I doubt this is a completely false comparison – Jethro Tull but cool, maybe? Here, listen to yourself. Whatever it is, it’s one of the best soundtracks I’ve heard.
