Dusty Cartridge: Origins

With the newly-released cassette tape edition of my album Dusty Cartridge: Soundtrack to a Forgotten Kingdom (available now via @Cave Bird Records!), I thought it might be fun to share a little more of the backstory for the album.

Where It All Began

In early 2021, I started writing an album of various “acoustic” genres (like bossa, samba, tango). It was a departure from my more electronic music, and I enjoyed the challenge of writing in styles I’d never attempted before. The working title for the project was Munditos (“Little Worlds”). By November 2021, I’d managed to write 5 or 6 tracks for the project, and I shared them with my brother Sam for feedback. His response: “You’re just making a bootleg Zelda soundtrack.”

Growing up, we didn’t have any game consoles, so I experienced a lot of video games vicariously through my friends. When one of my friends upgraded to a Gamecube, they let me borrow their Nintendo 64 (which I uh, never gave back), and this specifically introduced me to the world of The Legend of Zelda. Something about the music of the Zelda universe really grabbed me. It was diverse, it was memorable, and it planted these tiny emotional seeds inside of me that began to shape the kind of music I wanted to write someday (perhaps it’s a little silly to say that playing a video game as a child was such a profound experience, but without this experience, I wouldn’t be writing about this album!)

So anyway, what started as a “haha wouldn’t it be funny if I made a bootleg Zelda soundtrack?” quickly snowballed into “no but seriously, I should make a bootleg Zelda soundtrack.” The songs I’d written for “Munditos” were repurposed (for the curious, these were Sallet Town, Malachi’s Shooting Gallery, Duskstone Tavern, Aquabara Village, Windkirk Village Square, Staves & Stoves Pawn Shop, Ballaban Outpost), and Sam and I began brainstorming various video game location tropes that I could write music for: spooky tombs, volcanic temples, pastoral towns, and everything in-between.

We devised lore for these imaginary locations: what kind of characters would be there, the backstories for how the world fit together, sharing reference music and locations from video games we enjoyed. It rapidly took shape—there were days were I wrote two or three complete tracks in a single session—and we began tossing ideas out for titles. Sam was the one who proposed “Dusty Cartridge,” and I came up with the subtitle, “Soundtrack to a Forgotten Kingdom.” It was perfect, conjuring up images of old, half-remembered video games that one might have played at a friend’s house as a child.

The Artwork

While I was primarily working on the music, Sam started creating artwork for each song. In Photoshop, he created digital collages, combining photos I provided with bits and pieces from stock photo libraries (and some Google Image searches). This was before generative AI poisoned art in general—all of this is handmade! Sam then processed those images through a program called PixageFX to pixelize them and customize the color palette to 3 or 4 colors (honestly, his process deserves a blog post of its own). Here are a few of my favorites:

This is the artwork for Reefscream Grotto, featuring a flying(?) whale reminiscent of the Wind Fish from LoZ: Link’s Awakening.

This is the artwork for Frostburn Mountain. I love the sense of depth and space in it—it’s so easy to imagine yourself standing by the creek and looking out at those distant mountains!

This is the artwork for Highlands at Night. My favorite detail about this one is that the base image is a photo I took of a sunset reflecting on a puddle of water. With Sam’s addition of the distant bridge and castle, it transformed into something so much larger than life! The original photo is below:

While the album ended up with 32 tracks, Sam ultimately made more than 40 pieces of artwork. Most of these are included as a digital booklet and are on the album page itself. If you haven’t seen all the art, I highly recommend checking it out!

The Album Cover

The album cover was one of the last things to come together. Sam had dabbled in 3D modeling in Blender and Unity, and sent me this render he’d made of a bunch of N64 carts (with custom little labels featuring my other album arts!).

I loved the basic premise, but I wanted the cart to become the focal point. I made a pathetic sketch in Microsoft Paint to illustrate my vision. This isn’t too far off from what we ended up with, but it took many iterations to get it right.

Here’s a few of the variants that didn’t make the cut:

The idea that finally landed was to use a map instead of a table. We found Azgaar’s Fantasy Map Generator and plugged in all the names of our various regions, landmarks, and towns. Sam used Photoshop magic to make the map feel more like a weathered piece of paper, the perfect backdrop for the cover.

It still took multiple iterations to settle on the cover image (especially the font, which ended up being Gorey), but I’m so happy with how it all turned out!

Conclusion

This project was such a journey to put together. I cannot deny that it was largely a vanity project, but I really had a ton of fun building the world around the music. It was great to collaborate with my brother to develop the world and bring it to life in the images. I also enjoyed spending time digging up old memories of games I enjoyed as a kid, revisiting the soundtracks that shaped me and feeling nostalgic about them; I hope that this album stirs up some of the same feelings in you!

When I first released it in 2022, I really expected Dusty Cartridge to find an audience quickly, but that didn’t happen. It wasn’t until I got involved with the Ampwall community that I started to hear feedback from people like @Steve Wiener, @Sylfvr, and @Cave Bird Records about how much they enjoyed the album, which sparked my interest in getting it in front of more eyes and ears. I am beyond thrilled that Cave Bird Records agreed to make it into an actual physical tape, and I am so happy that it is finally making its way to more listeners!

If you’ve made it this far in the post, I have a 32 track sequel album in the works, tentatively titled Expansion Pak: More Songs from a Forgotten Kingdom. It’s an extension of the Dusty Cartridge universe, revisiting familiar themes and locations, and digging more into the inhabitants of the world, with more art (and a couple of original tunes) by Sam. Stay tuned!!

Thanks for all your support! I really appreciate you!

- Ed