Category: Interviews

  • Dma-Sc Interview

    French language interview with Atari ST chiptuner Dma-Sc.

  • Interview with Jellica on CCS

    I did an interview with Jellica as part of this roll-call on 8bc

    µB: Now that it has matured a bit, how would you describe the scope or agenda of Kittenrock?

    Jellica: As somewhere to release chipmusic with a modern edge that moves away from the 80s and 90s demoscene and VGM styles. Obviously there are exceptions, and I love a lot of the music from that era, but I also enjoy a lot of modern electronic music. So it’s a way to combine the two. There are plenty of chipmusic netlabels that release a lot of pop, progrock and VGM oriented styles, but nothing much that really supported the more, I guess, Warp Records/Rephlex, Techno, Electro side of chipmusic.

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  • TCTD Interview with AY-Riders’ Yerzmyey pt2

    This is part 2 of an interview with AY Rider, Yerzmyey. Please look here for part 1.

    LB – I think my favorite release of yours was FREAKuencies on 8BP but I like Interphase on DWD a lot too. Which of your own releases do you like most and why?

    Y – Actually I don’t like very much my own music. If You ask me about music, I simply prefer AY-RIDERS’ albums. It’s good to gather a bunch of various people to get various and diverse album(s). Then it gets much more interesting. As for myself, I mostly try to fight with the AY’s limitations. :) It’s damn hard to force it to generate some _interesting_ synthethesized sound. All we get is only square waves or some acid noises. In contrast to the Atari ST, we use only original hardware posibilities or AY/YM chip, so the work is harder. Anyway, if You want to listen to good ZX Spectrum music, then don’t listen to my crap but go quickly and download AY-RIDERS albums. :)

    LB – What inspired you to start writing music? Was is a particular song or game or person?

    Y – Hmmmmm. From the music side in general, probably it was electronic music. Marek Bilinski’s art creativity or KOTO’s stuff… Also Vangelis, Jarre, Kraftwerk… Hm. From the game-music side, it was ZX Spectrum stuff, like “Agent-X”, “Chronos” or “Raw Recruit”. Generally – all the incredible stuff from Tim Follin. We used to say that they’re NOT games with musix but – musix with some games attached :)musix with some games attached.  And for demo-scene inspirations, surely it was Ziutek from ‘Ethanol Soft Inc’ group, as well as Hacker Kicia (with his demo songs for SoundTracker 1.1 ZX AY editor).demo-songs

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  • TCTD Interview with AY-Riders’ Yerzmyey

    This week TCTD talks to Yerzmyey, organizer of AY Riders, producer of awesome tunes, lover of the z80 and generally all round amazing guy. So thanks very much to Yerz for being so generous with his time and lets get down to business!

    Lazerbeat – Where are you from?

    Yerzmyey – Ah, well. I come from Rubber Planet. ;) A place where all computers have rubber keyboards. ;) Well, actually that’s not exactly true. :) ZX Spectrum was highly popular in PL, in 80s and early 90s, however, somehow it stopped suddenly and now literally only a few people support the machine here. Cry, cry! As for geography matters ;) , my mother’s family came here from Czech and Austria (in that time it was connected with Hungary) and my father came here from Lithuania.

    LB – It looks like you have been active in the Demo scene for for over 20 years. How old were you when you founded H-PRG? Why did you start it?

    Y – First programs we made with Mr Hangman about 1987. We were 12 years old or so, in those days. :) We were only making games (just occasionally some simple pseudo-demos, haha). The games were not that bad actually :) – ugly but playable. Sadly in those times the only thing we had for saving the progs – was a tape-recorder, so the games didn’t survive to the present day, heh. Our the earliest programs that have survived come from 1989, so I took the date as a beginning of the HOOY-PROGRAM group. :)

    And what is funny, it wasn’t me who started all of this, it was my younger brother (who isn’t very interested in 8-bit nowadays, after all) who met Mr Hangman – and HE started making ZX games with him. :) I only joined them. But then my brother lost interest (well, not in playing games but in making them :) ), and I stayed. In this way we founded a team. ;)

    They were funny times. :) I remember that we had to be very careful and save our programs very often because every time Mr Hangman’s refrigerator/fridge turned on – then ZX Spectrum got reset, hahaha. :)

    Also, while loading (from tape of course) everybody was forced to leave to room, so as not to disturb the loading process. (more…)

  • Rainbowdragoneyes interview at Denpa no Sekai

    Nashville musician Eric W. Brown (aka Rainbowdragoneyes) talks about his renewed love for chiptunes after a rock solid performance at Blipfest 2009, as well as discusses his Power-Metal-meets-Eurobeat project MAGIC HAMMER.

    Make sure you check out his most recent track RAPE CASTLE, a monumental edifice of sinful chiptune pleasure. You’ve never heard anything quite like this!