First Sun

Thomas Loupe (First Sun and Just Below Purgatory) is an American musician, producer, composer, and sound designer from Austin, Texas. After being heavily influenced by the experimental music scene, he began creating his own experimental glitch music. First Sun's music is typically defined by glitch musical components and randomly syncopated drum rhythms, experimental synth patches, and wide synth pads. In 2008, Thomas entered the video games industry as an unpaid Quality Assurance Playtest Lead for Unknown Worlds Entertainment's award-winning title, Natural Selection 2. During his four years assisting UWE, Thomas continued to create music. Unknown Worlds would later use his music in promotional videos or in game jams. He later assisted Simon Chylinski with sound design on the game, earning him both the QA Playtest Lead, and Assistant Sound Designer credit for the game. After the release Thomas continued working on games and game music, earning additional credits for NS2: Combat, also published by UWE. Four years after the game's release in 2014, Thomas became homeless due to lack of income as a contracted sound designer and composer. While living in a friend's house in March of 2018, Thomas composed music tracks as part of his application for Sound Designer and Composer for Subnautica: Below Zero, which later went viral, garnering over 1,500,000 plays worldwide. Image-Line FL Studio later sponsored First Sun.