Videogames and electronic music: still the best thing

Videogames and electronic music: still the best thing

No arcade would be complete without music, but few are fortunate enough to ever have artists like Heathered Pearls and Michna be the ones to bring it. Now running three days instead of one, Kill Screen’s Two5six conference, where games and culture converge, will devote itself to a public arcade on Sunday, May 17 where the music of both artists will be featured.

From founding the eclectic electronica netlabel Moodgadget with Adam E. Hunt to becoming a “curator” of Tycho’s ISO50 blog, Jakub Alexander has been in the game for a while. But his exploration of ambient music most recently culminated in Heathered Pearls, the moniker under which he released his 2013 album Loyal. The music’s aim was to create relaxed environments through the repetition and erosion of melodies, an endeavor that resulted in Pitchfork calling the record “hypnotic,” with “textured loops that soothingly chafe against each other like fingers performing a head massage.”

Meanwhile Michna, the abbreviated name under which Adrian Michna produces his music, released his second, full-length album, Thousand Thursday, just last month. The record, he explained, “reflects the wide spectrum of electronic music I listen to both at home and in the club.” Mixing hip-hop with 90s London rave and traditional house music, Thousand Thursday offers a musical collage of the years between it and Michna’s 2008’s debut, Magic Monday, what Billboard called “more a collection of timeless, atmospheric sketches…purposefully devoid of cultural and contextural references.”

In his staggering, splinted study of 19th-century Paris, Walter Benjamin observed that, “there was a music that conformed to the spirit of the arcades–a panoramic music…” So come to Two5six and discover new digital playthings while surrounded by Heathered Pearls tranquil musicscapes and Michna’s ponderous synth beats. Two5six will take place Friday, May 15 through Sunday, May 17 at Villain (50 North 3rd Street) in Williamsburg, Brooklyn. You can buy tickets here.