With the release of Jeppediinho’s debut album, “Games of Life”, we are reminded that sometimes the most profound rulebooks are written by those who’ve mastered a different kind of joystick. Jesper Holmgren, a former professional e-sports player, has constructed a thirteen-level odyssey that treats human emotion like a side-scrolling adventure: there are pitfalls, power-ups, and a final boss that turns out to look suspiciously like your own reflection. This is electronic house music that has scraped its knuckles on rock and roll, then stolen the keytar from a passing 80s pop band. The sound has a peculiar texture, like running your hand over cool, brushed steel that happens to be vibrating with a soul.
The game begins on a difficult setting. On “The Wrong Time,” the synths pulse with a nervous, out-of-step energy, the sound of someone winning a prize they have no space for. The anonymous vocalist, one of several international collaborators who serve as spectral guides throughout the album, sings of being “lucky in games” and “lucky in love” but feeling caught in a cosmic administrative error. It’s followed by the claustrophobia of “Lost In My Mind,” a track that builds its walls high and fast. The beat thumps like a frantic heart in a soundproof room, the plea “no one understands me” echoing not as a complaint, but as a statement of geographical fact from a lonely country of one.
Then comes the level where you realize the map you’ve been following was a forgery. “Illusion” shatters the dreamscape with a sharp, crystalline synth and a sense of cold, morning-after clarity. The betrayal here feels less like a tragedy and more like a system update, rebooting the listener’s perspective. It’s this disillusionment that provides the necessary catalyst for the album’s pivotal turn.
Suddenly, the music finds its footing. “We Are The Winners” bursts forth not as a gloating celebration, but as the grimly determined chant of a survivor. It has the defiant energy of a crowd pouring out into the streets after a city-wide power outage, finding a new kind of light in the collective darkness. This newfound strength is codified in “Im Unbreakable.” With its claim of having “ice in my veins,” the track doesn’t feel hot-blooded and boastful. It feels geological. It’s the resolute coldness of a glacial core sample, something that has been compressed by immense pressure over time into something solid, pure, and immoveable.
Holmgren then smartly dials back the bravado to explore the necessary mechanics of this transformation. “Real Love” and “Find Myself” are tracks about resource management—gathering the external validation and internal solitude required for the next phase. They are the quiet moments in the game where you retreat to a save point, sorting through your inventory and deciding what to keep. The aural landscape softens, the beats becoming a supportive framework rather than an insistent shove forward. I found myself thinking, oddly, of the Japanese art of kintsugi, where broken pottery is repaired with gold lacquer—the journey of “Find Myself” feels like tracing those golden cracks alone in a room.
The final act of “Games of Life” is an exhilarating sprint. From the liberated joy of “Feels So Good” to the instructional, almost philosophical clarity of “What’s Your Mentality,” the album sheds its skin of past grievances. “What Are You Waiting For” is pure, kinetic impatience, a track that sounds like it’s vibrating on the launchpad. It all culminates in the final, complex power-up of “The Power Inside,” a track that acknowledges the difficulty and the necessity of personal change, recognizing that activating your own potential often means saying goodbye to the person you were.
Jeppediinho has assembled an album that is narratively cohesive without being sonically monotonous. The anonymous voices he employs are a masterstroke, allowing the intensely personal journey to feel universally applicable, like hearing your own thoughts sung back to you by a helpful stranger. It chronicles the transition from being a pawn in someone else’s game to becoming the architect of your own. The album leaves you not with a high score, but with a mirror. Who, exactly, is the player now?
