“Spirit Duplicator” by Holy Love Incorporated

Here’s a fun little fact about the original Sony PlayStation: With some games, it was possible to remove their disc once they’d finished loading, put in an audio CD, and play the game to the soundtrack of your choice. Which is why my brother and I spent most of our time tearing around the tracks in Namco’s original Ridge Racer whilst listening to Joy Electric’s Melody and The Rentals’ Return of the Rentals.

I mention this little slice of nostalgic video game lore because the debut of Andrew Horton’s Holy Love Incorporated was billed as “RIYL Orbital, the Future Sound of London, the KLF, Coldcut, or if you ever played Ridge Racer at a trailer park sleepover.” Forget about Orbital and Coldcut; it was that last bit that piqued my curiosity.

To be fair, Horton’s airily hypnotic ambient textures and muted house beats bear little resemblance to Shinji Hosoe’s energetic techno soundtrack. But it does sound very much like something my brother and I would’ve zoned out to as we raced through the game’s texture-mapped graphics (which looked so realistic back in the mid ’90s) in pursuit of the black Soldat Crinale.

This music is an interesting turn for Horton (who also serves as Good Glass Records’ head honcho). His previous recordings under the Young Hierophant moniker dabbled in classic horror soundtracks and rustic Ghost Box-esque hauntology. Holy Love Incorporated’s aesthetic, on the other hand, is a bit more modern — and by “modern,” I mean, of course, the ’90s. Or rather, the ’90s as envisioned through countless hours watching MTV’s Amp… and playing Ridge Racer.