The Music of Car Park Capital

Kent Kercher has spent his career exploring retro game music in every way: as a fan, first; as a software developer and lead audio producer (Super Audio Cart 2, Impact Soundworks); as an independent researcher (“Limitations and Functionalities”, presented at both Music and the Moving Image and GameSoundCon); as an editor (The Game Music Handbook, Oxford University Press); as a collector of vintage synths, ROMplers, and MIDI hardware; and, of course, as a composer (the Low-Poly Loops mini-series of albums; Super Kiwi 64, SIACTRO).

All of these weave together in The Music ofCar Park Capital.

The game itself is a sort of mise en abyme, a postmodern take from our 2020s vantage point on the rapid urbanization of the 1950s and 1960s through the fun-house lens of the 1990s tycoon sim: a dream within a dream. The soundtrack follows suit, its pseudo-corporatized sheen of cartoonish realism driving through each track with one foot, uh, tire in the musical styles of the midcentury, the other in the musical hardware of the millennium…and the third in the musical production standards of the modern day.

Car Park Capital will be growing throughout Early Access. So will this album! Check back soon—there is a “lot” more to come.