1UP: Can you tell us a little about your personal histories with this particular game series?
Hally: I’ve been following videogame music since I was young, and I’ve found Mega Man music has always had a singular quality to it. It has a purity that appeals to many listeners. I’ve actually written articles on the history of Mega Man background themes, based on interviews like this one. I felt the burning desire to uncover just what it was that made these tunes what they are. (This is something Ippo-san and I have talked about on numerous occasions.) I ultimately came to the conclusion that while it’s something very distinctive, Mega Man music ultimately evades being pinned down and described in words.
Ryo Kawakami: I remember playing Mega Man back in elementary school and loving it. I even recorded my NES on cassette tape and had to experiment through trial and error to edit out the buzzing sound of the boss’s life bar filling up. Mega Man ZX was my first experience writing music for the series, and it sure did bring me back. It was an emotional moment for me.
Read More at Mega Man Music: The Blue Bomber Meets Blip Festival from 1UP.com.
BLEEPSTREET the label founded by Johan Kotlinski and reborn as a digital netlabel late last year is back with a new release from La Belle Indifference, “Get Ur Bleep On”
Label head Daniel F. Wehleit sat down with our inbox and answered a few questions about BLEEPSTREET and their mission in bringing chip sounds to the masses.
TCTD: How did the decision to revive BLEEPSTREET come about?
Daniel: It was late 2007 after returning from a gig in Copenhagen with Goto80 & Stu at the 8bit Klubben party, I was performing live as Computadora with Dr.Drama on visuals, after that gig it just felt right for all of us to start a label together centered on the 8bit sound.
After pondering for a few weeks we wondered what Johan Kotlinski was doing with Bleepstreet, it came out that he didn’t have the time to continue with it so we just paid him a few million dollars for the company and in return he sent us a blue package with 42 vinyls. That’s how we started… shortly after, we gathered a small team and we started planning in a semi-chaotic way from a small room in Berlin. We all met again in spring 2008 and we started to prepare the relaunch of Bleepstreet that finally happened last October.
TCTD: What do you feel is the role of a commercial label in supporting and developing chip artists, who commonly release their material for free?
We wouldn’t call ourselves a commercial label because we are a small label, but yeah we use a traditional record label model and we now have a global digital distribution deal. We still think netlabels are a great way for artists to distribute their music but we feel that a better way to develop our artists is by distributing their music through commercial channels.
TCTD: What are some of the challenges in marketing chip music to the masses?
Bleepstreet is an electronic music label with roots in the classic C64 & Amiga scenes, so the spirit is all about using homemade software, data-hacking on old home computers and so on, but the sound is not only about chip music, it is also about electro, techno and crazy data pop. Some of the early Bleepstreet stuff was made on Amiga and doesn’t sound like chip style at all, we want to continue working under that concept and to explore the use of chip music as an element and not as a whole.
BLEEPSTREET has many exciting releases in the pipeline. Check out the official BLEEPSTREET site for more information about the label and its artists.
Steel Raining is a web comic created by Alberto Silva from Spain. His description of it goes something like this: “In the world’s biggest metropolis, a silent buzz vibrates. A buzz that makes men in suits howl. There’s a symbol drawn with chalk on the floor, a girl trapped in an IC and a neon guitar.”
And why are we covering this here? Alberto, to promote the second season of his web comic, created a teaser edition that runs exclusively in Amstrad CPC machines. We minced a few words with him about what drove him, a non-retro, non 8-bit, non-coder person to do this.
You can read the interview and get the original Amstrad CPC executable right after the jump:
Ever wonder why Alex Mauer’s trilogy of NES chiptunes is called “Eat People”? Check out this interview over at Igloo Magazine.
Excerpt: ” I’m not really interested in chiptunes crossing into the mainstream, but it wouldn’t bother me if they did as long as it didn’t misrepresent what is going on in the chip scene. I think Anamanaguchi is good… but I’d rather see them put their guitars down and just hit play on the NES controller and stand there. (Laughs.) Not that they aren’t good or anything, it’s just that I’d rather be able to hear the NES by itself. Personally, if I was really good at playing, I’d rather make some nerd in the back of the room happy than get the whole room jumping up and down.”
