Retconned

Artwork from detritus is a plastic medium with a tradition in our post-consumerist Western world. Transposed into the world of electronic music there is a "wealth” of outdated hardware, and software, for the artist to draw upon. Jonathan Lukens of Atlanta has excavated sounds from ’80s video games, grainy drum programs and low-end Casio synth and made a post-punk album for the early 21st century. With 14 tracks taking up just over 23 minutes, Game Sounds solders together the experimentalism of glitch techno, the mantra/paranoia of Suicide and the sloganeering of anarchist punk. Lukens’s lyrics scratch at the scabs of America’s psyche — Ruby Ridge, Columbine, Gulf Wars — and then turn inward to glare at personal politics. Similar to the punk of yore his frustration is never balanced by solutions. When the inevitable "game over” lights up we’re left with an album that’s neither necessarily angry nor overly preachy — merely dissatisfied and, more importantly for the listener, fresh and exciting enough to spin again.