Month: January 2009

  • Best Live Visuals II

    When I was making my first steps in VJing, around the early 2000s, I was looking around for information and stumbled upon these two mystic guys who were using Amigas to make their VJing while saying they were “the worst, and getting better at it”, a phrase that certainly denoted the kind of humour handled by them.
    As the vintage computer freak I am (and this was soon after I embraced the PC for the first time, still keeping my Amiga), I was interested about them and started to find some info. These guys were hard to get a hold on, and information was scarce! I realized they were playing in almost every show organized by Micromusic.net … certainly at the time the -only- crew dedicated to VJing for what was then emerging as “contemporary chipmusic”. Found 2 or 3 videos and wanted more. Nowhere to be found, and I was living in Argentina! How to catch the shows? Damnit! That was the catch. Kept drooling at those posters coming from the old continent…

    With 10 years in the game and no sign of stagnation, our next nominee is definitely the most experienced of the bunch, and the one with the heftiest trajectory. Today existing as a one-man workforce, after performing and lecturing all across the world (from the USA to most all Europe, passing through Russia and even China) and being one of the leaders of the project C64 Orchestra, our eyes are still rocked by this marvelous artist.

    Ladies and gentleman, a warm welcome to…

    The C-Men
    [Enschede, Netherlands]

    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/v-acAdEpmtY" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]
    The C-Men + Psilodump (Live @ En Festival i 8 Bitar 2008)

    (more…)

  • Best Live Visuals I

    VJs are a core element in today’s music shows.
    Wherever you will go to a show, you will see an assortment of screens with visuals on it. Unfortunately, the importance of the VJ is usually under appreciated.

    For certain they yield big power: they can enhance or destroy a performance. Many times I have remained in awe gasping at a screen on a music show, and many times I wanted to yell “turn off the fucking screen”… Having being a “full time VJ” (that means, this being my main and only means of income) for about 8 years, and having curated many a VJ events and exhibitions in that time, I am pretty certain of what makes or break a good one and some times believe me, for the sake of conserving the good name of live visualists, it would be best to shut the screen off :P

    The task is a complex one. In my view, the VJ is a bit of a “Swiss Army Knife” in the electronic music business. He or she has to have a grasp of visual aesthetics, obvious dominance of the video field (be it live motion video or animation), a bit of layout/design skills, music sense or, better, more advanced music knowledge and last, but not least, notions of scenography and stage setup, as well as all the tech know-how that makes each of these possible. They usually have to provide, as well, all the gear that makes their set possible, with no such thing as a “house backline” for VJs existing in many places (sometimes, venues will not even have a projector). It makes you think a lot each time you think that shoving images on-screen is an easy task.

    I’ll cut the babble short now and present you with our first nominee in the Live Visuals Award. Hailing from Philly in the United States, he is a very regular VJ at the monthly Pulsewave events at NYC, as well as other events around the area and abroad. Frequent workshop lecturer and fine 6502 coder, please welcome him:

    NO CARRIER
    [Philadelphia, USA]

    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/LQ1PBTsJ4lw" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]Cow'p + No Carrier @ Blip Festival 2008
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  • Best Demo Production V

    We finish off this category with the final and one of the most wanted pieces in the nomination rounds…

    Making jaws drop when presented at the X’2008 party in The Netherlands (where it got a more than deserved first position), Booze Designs’ demo brings forth a bag of surprises for our Commodores, pushing the 64 past its limits with an array of effects before thought impossible. Couple this with nice graphics and music (Dane doing a double role there!) and you got yourself a winner.

    The bar for tchnological achievement on the stock C64 platform has been raised once again, until X’2010 perhaps? :)

    Ladies and gentleman, this is:

    Edge of Disgrace by Booze Design
    [C64]

    Part 1
    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/yFdjWSaDlIo " width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

    Part 2
    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/0b4uGv-9xpw" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

  • Best Demo Production IV

    Even though this category has been devised with the milking of stock vintage hardware in mind, we had to put an Amiga demo in there.

    What do I mean with this? The expansions available for the Amiga computers, in many cases, have by far exceeded what we would consider an oldschool platform, and many of the demos being released today for the Amiga use fast accelerators and other stuff unavailable on stock hardware years ago. This puts the Amiga demoscene in a different spot to the C64 or Spectrum one. Unfortunately, the Amiga demoscene is not as blooming as other scenes nowadays. There are very few demogroups that are still releasing for it, and most just don’t cover old hardware like A500, or even a stock 1A200. Fortunately the combined output of these few groups is of high quality (Uprough being my favourite group) and every year we can count on some good productions.

    Getting a second place this year at Breakpoint’s Amiga competition and with some nice tech skills to wit coupled with a style which reminds us of “survival horror” games like Silent Hill, we present you our fourth nomination in the demo category:

    Soliloquy by Elude
    [Amiga]

    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/K57fEGPptdo " width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

  • Best Software

    A truly great software tool is often an transparent gateway that facilitates easy to use, and powerful control of all that  a chip has to offer.  A great developer needs to combine community input,  in depth knowledge of his platform, and the ability to separate feature glut from usability all in  a tool that makes the creative process easy even for the most basic user. Here are the nominees  for Best Software of 2008

    LittleGpTracker – The little LSDJ clone that could kicked it up a notch with tons of usability fixes and more sound design options. With the handheld worlds arguably owned by LSDJ and Nanoloop, more options for different types of sound synthesis and song design are always welcome, and few are as feature rich and usable as LGPT.

    maxYMiser – Developer gwEm is one of the Atari ST’s most outspoken advocates and he has produced an extremely well featured and usable sequencer that takes fine advantage of the built in hardware features such as midi and the advanced abilities of the newer ST machines.  Of all the chip platforms, maxYMizer has perhaps the lowest barrier of entry to running your sounds on true hardware, and gwEm is doing his best to let everyone know about it.

    Famitracker – Probably the number one entry platform for NES music is turning the corner with experimental support for many expansion chips and advanced midi controls to integrate with an existing studio setup.  With its use in many demo productions, game releases and scene tracks, NSF composition is on a decided upswing, and Famitracker deserves a good portion of the credit.

    Hively Tracker – This ambitious new tracker, with cross-platform aspirations shows that the innovation is not limited to retro sound chips alone. With various player support across many devices, 2009 is poised to be a big year for this feature rich and community friendly synth tracker.

    Loopy tools for PowerPak – Loopy has given Nesdev and the PowerPak a real shot in the arm with various mapper support, expansion chip additions, and a NSF player that has made it easier than ever to play whatever esoteric NES sound file on true hardware. Its usually a collection of smaller less glamorous tools that really give certain segments of the scene a kick in the teeth, and Loopy has really gone the extra distance for everyones benefit.