Preview the Manchester International Festival commissioned game, Songs of the Lost now.
Jlin has provided the soundtrack for a new video game, which was part of a commission for this year’s Manchester International Festival (MIF 2019). The game, titled Songs of the Lost, has been created for MIF 2019 by the Canadian designer Paloma Dawkins along with a team of international collaborators and promises “a magic-realist game odyssey through a surreal and absurd digital landscape”. Electronic composer-producer Jlin had provided the “shape-shifting soundtrack” for the trippy audiovisual game. Watch a teaser for Songs of the Lost in the player above.
“Everyone is talking about borders these days, and I want to imagine what borders would be like in a post IRL world,” Dawkins commented. “If some kind of super AI was uploading minds into a database, what kind of system would be in place to separate the bots from the real people? I imagine that humans would have no more privilege in this kind of world, our advantage has ended. This game is about that scenario. You are asked to voluntarily give up your autonomy and exist in the garden for eternity as a shadow of your true self.”
Jlin has produced ten new tracks for the project and is one of eight collaborators on the overall game which is said to be a “psychedelic audiovisual experience”. The soundtrack marks Jlin’s first new solo work since 2018’s Autobiography. It isn’t the first time a video game has been made especially for MIF – in 2017 Nina Freeman created Lost Memories Dot Net for the festival.
At the weekend (20 July) Jlin performed live at MIF19’s Queens of the Electronic Underground curated by Mary Anne Hobbs, which featured a host of international female electronic artists including Aïsha Devi, Holly Herndon, Klara Lewis and Katie Gatley. The festival itself took place over two weeks (4-12 July), with other highlights including a David Lynch takeover and performances from Skepta and Janelle Monae.
Watch a teaser for Songs Of The Lost featuring music by Jlin in the player above. You can download the game for free here. Revisit our feature In Sync: Holly Herndon interviews Jlin.