Rebecca Mayes is doing something entirely new. She is bringing together two opposing forces in a juicy jumble of creative conflict. Her beautiful, heart-warming, soul-food songs are musings on the latest video-games. That's right, each song is some kind of review, some kind of response to a game, one of those games that so many people spend their lives playing. She got into this quite by accident when a friend asked her to write a song for his website www.gamepeople.co.uk. Immediately the song spread like internet fire across the gaming world. Who is this sweet-singing, witty, subversive, quirk-girl and why is she singing about games? Rebecca wrote a few more songs and before long she found herself at the centre of a media storm, in all the top gaming magazines and websites, with fans demanding more. The well-known gaming website The Escapist Magazine quickly offered to employ her to write a song for their site every fortnight. And not just write a song but make a video too. Cue Rebecca dressing up as the latest video-game characters and playing her instruments against the backdrop of Dartmoor, Devon's quaint steam train, and her local launderette. The result is the most quirky and creative take on the art of review out there. This girl plays all the instruments herself, records and produces the songs, shoots and edits her videos, all within the space of two weeks. Although a self confessed nu-folker she has experimented with a range of genres including heavy metal, eighties synth, classic rock and neo-country. The rest of the songs are sparkly, acoustic, contemporary fusions of post-pop folk. Banjo, accordion, glockenspiel and zither are her signature instruments, with keyboards, guitars and beats layered in support, creating a rich, charming sound all of her own. The songs stand by themselves as exceptional pieces of music independent of the gaming context. Then came the next level. Charlie Brooker commissioned Rebecca to write a song for his latest BBC program 'Gameswipe'. She wrote him a sweet, folky lullaby about the frenetically violent game 'Madworld' and sang it sitting in a cornfield with scenes of the blood-soaked game spliced in between shots of her ukulele, blond curls and floaty dress. Suddenly something that seemed only relevant to the gaming population gained the attention of mainstream culture. The songs speak beyond the medium they refer to. Full of heart and intelligent reflection they point to a yearning for deep meaning, as most good folk songs do. 'Video-games are fascinating,' says Rebecca, 'there is a huge pre-occupation with distorted power - the power to kill, control and win. A lot of what comes out in games I see as an exploration of the human psyche, especially what is repressed. The gaming industry seems to be a meeting ground for a lot of what is live in our culture at the moment, bringing together elements of film, music and technology, and it is increasingly becoming the majority past-time for young people. There is a lot that I feel drawn to comment on.' Rebecca pleads with gamers not to shoot zombies in Resident Evil 5 ('they just need to be loved'), she rails at the commercialization of women and violence in Velvet Assassin, and she highlights the homogenization of beauty in a song called 'The Mirror'. Her review of Modern Warfare 2, a game which grossed more than Avatar, is a touching love-song to gamers worldwide urging them to 'fight for their lives.' She sings, 'will we talk about this game for years to come, or will we talk about you, oh what might you do?' Rebecca is doing what no other has done, creating a never-before-heard-of niche that only she could fill, with true creativity and originality.'The epic win' is a gaming term for euphoric moments of conquer. 'It's about getting to the summit of achievement, which you've been striving for for hours, where you finally lose yourself in the best feeling ever,' says Rebecca. 'This is ideally where I am throughout the creative process, finding a continual place of wonder from which to be inspired. And it's also where music, and art in general, takes us.' One of Rebecca’s songs is going to be featured on this summer's Glastonbury Festival CD and The Great Escape CD. There's no telling what she might do next.Check out Rebecca's videos on https:\u002F\u002Fwww.escapistmagazine.com\u002Fvideos\u002Fview\u002Frebecca-mayes-muses