Oh my god! Its here for all the beans! Let’s DO IT!
The Best Artist is an incredibly subjective category. Being proficient on multiple levels is good, being synonymous with a style, or simply executing at a high level, all important things. Here are the innovators, the dominators, and the taste makers that are 2008’s Best Artists.
A multidimensional talent equally at home in art as in music, minusbaby had one of his most fruitful years with his various releases in music, art directing the Blip Festival, and taking his live performance to the next level. Always interesting, and ever moving, he could be a candidate in this category for years to come.
gwEm
As a coder of Maxymiser and a tireless advocate for his platform, gwEm has justification enough to be here. But he is also an awesome musician and live performer who seems equally at home in the club as he would be behind a podium waxing philosophically about chip, and the worlds view thereof.
Mr. Melvin is one of those talented multi instrumentalists who has the ability to excel at whatever genre he is involved in, and we are lucky to have him in our scene. At times funny, profane, and groundbreaking, his style is laid back and deceptively simple at times, but still waters run deep. Able to blend many styles in his own unique voice, and a amazing live performer, Bud is one of my personal favorites, and one everyone should have at least a passing familiarity with.
goto80 is also one of the best voices in the scene, especially for his firm connection to chips demoscenes roots. As a musician, performer, or blogger, his style is a breath of fresh air, even on works that are now seemingly older than most musicians in the scene. Able to bend and break the rules of chip composition with ease, he is perhaps most consistently inventive and fun musicians in the scene.
No artist is better on his own platform (just ask him!) than stu. Atari Solo was a soliloquy to the decimation of expectations for the poor little atari sound chip and his live show straddled the line between absolution and obliteration. One of the most exciting and accomplished composers in the scene shows signs of only getting better going into 2009.
goto80!
not only one of my favorite advocates in the scene, but he also made my favorite track this year ( Bluestam3prv on the Cruncy Recs compilation)