Alexei Shishkin's Videogame-Inspired Disco

Alexei Shishkin's Videogame-Inspired Disco

Self-described “DIY nobody of the internet void”, Alexei Shishkin has announced his eleventh full-length album for release via Rue Defense on September 5.

Following three releases in 2024, and Shishkin’s Play by Ear documentary (featuring Built to Spill, Pictoria Vark, Magic Sword and The Shivas), he opted to do something different with Good Times, creating the album from scratch in four days with Bradford Krieger at Big Nice Studio in Lincoln, Rhode Island. The result is an improvisational, eclectic, surreal, and lyrically disparate escape from reality, offering a unique amalgamation of indie, jazz, americana, and slacker rock.

In the past, Shishkin has referred to himself as “a label’s worst nightmare,” due to his prolific output and total disinterest in playing live, and on Good Times, he leans into being a reclusive, studio-focused, hobbyist musician, and documents all the joys that can come with this freedom.

The lead single, ‘Disco Elysium’, will be released on June 27, followed by the ‘Tiki Taka (2006)’ and ‘Ode To Carl Dennis’ singles on July 25 and August 15 respectively.

Alexei says, “This song was inspired by the game Disco Elysium, which is maybe the greatest video game ever made. You’re a degenerate, amnesiac detective coming off a crazy bender, and you’re trying to solve a murder that happened in a small post-revolution town. The game covers everything from psychology to politics to lost love to life, death, and introspection. It’s honestly one of the most well-written, exciting things I’ve ever experienced. I play through it every two or three years, and I just so happened to be playing it when we recorded this song, so I wrote about it. Shout-out to Robert Kurvitz who wrote most of that game. (Oh, and PS: in that game, there are four distinct sounds that play representing Intellect, Psyche, Physique, and Motor Skills – as an homage, we run through those samples as part of the first four bars of this song).”