Inactive Worlds

Le Matin’s Charles Torris returns with his first electronic exercise overseas, crafting an album equal parts punchy and funky, a fine blend of dance floor and dystopia. I like to imagine Inactive Worlds as the soundtrack to a bygone mid-90s MMORPG from the defunct Delphine Software. That, or a haunted Hypercard overgrown with mold, the computer’s corrupted microchip seeping a corrosive acid
The snow melts. The ice thaws. Time for spring cleaning. You ascend to the attic. In a dusty box, a crumpled, yellowed notecard. On it, a jumble of numbers: a password. Beside it, a disc: Inactive Worlds. Curious, nostalgic, you boot up the old PC and log in…
Instead of a lively hub filled with gamers from around the globe, you’re left with empty space and pixelated polygons. With nobody to talk to, you trawl through abandoned artifacts and hidden messages hinting at a once thriving online ecosystem. Perhaps someone else is playing, deep in the depths… You press on, past buzzing neon hotels, through bubbling swampland, the endless acidic rain burning divots into your exposed skin. The rotating sky cast in a revolting greenish hue. Finally, you hear a murmur. A throbbing. A rattling. It crawls up from the ground. You edge closer…