Author: tctdbot

  • Review of the 8-Bit Tarot deck

    dscn3002-smallI just got my copy of the 8-Bit Tarot deck in the mail today, and wrote a review.  Excerpt:

    The 8-Bit Tarot, designed by Indigo Kelleigh and published on lunarbistro.com, fuses the vibrant, digital, and modern-retro aesthetic of 8-bit with the mysticism and tradition of tarot. The deck itself is $30; for comparison, a standard Rider-Waite deck will cost you about $12 on Amazon, and a Robin Wood deck $13-14. The deck is packed in a box made of thin cardboard, suitable for display but not for travel (at least by my own, somewhat destructive standards). The cards themselves are small, especially by tarot standards — 2.5″ by 3.5″, or a little bit smaller than a playing card. “Standard” tarot cards are more like 3″ by 5″. You can get a sense of the art from the deck’s homepage at Lunar Bistro. The cardstock is glossy, a little thin, but turns out to be quite stiff; due to the cards’ size and stiffness, they are very difficult to shuffle.

  • Kind of Bloop: An 8-Bit Tribute to Miles Davis

    kindofbloop[Editors Note: Seems like they have already reached their goal, but have said else where that anyone donating will get a copy of the cd.. so consider this a preorder?]

    Excerpt from the man behind the project, Andy Baio: “What would the pioneers of jazz sound like on a Nintendo Entertainment System? Coltrane on a C-64? Mingus on Amiga? For years, I’ve wondered what “chiptune jazz” would sound like, but there are only a tiny handful of jazz covers ever made.

    To satisfy my curiosity – and commemorate the 50th anniversary of Miles Davis’s “Kind of Blue” – I’ve asked five brilliant chiptune musicians to collaborate and reinvent
    the entire album in the 8-bit sound.
    (more…)

  • gwEm interview at bedroom producers

    gwem_swearingOur first robot submission is a doozy, a great interview with gwEm at Bedroom Producers. An excerpt:

    bp: Your music arrangements are quite complex, and yet you’re a solo artist basically. How hard is it to prepare and setup your live act? Do you bring your own equpment everywhere you go?

    gwEm: Good question. I’ve spent a long time refining this. I bring as much equipment as I can, but obviously sometimes its heavy and impractical to bring some things. In the minimum case I have a Steinberger GP guitar, which is a headless design, but still with a cool Flying V look. It fits into a suitcase. For a mixer, I have a Rolls Karaoke Mixer from USA. One problem is electricty – you never know which voltage and plugs will be available, so everything runs off battery. I usually ask for a microphone and stand, but I can bring it in the suitcase. The main parts of my tracks play from a Nintendo DS. I used to use a minidisc, but it was becoming unreliable. Now, in the ‘luxury’ case I take an 8 channel Behringer mixer, an Atari ST, a DS, a proper Flying V, and I bring my drummer and two microphones. He uses a Yamaha drum pad, but his luxury is a real drumkit. Oh, and i forgot my SansAmp pedal – it’s a sort of analogue guitar modeller – it sounds very nice, and its small. Plus there is no latency. I also bring a guitar tuner, and some cables :).