Category: Music Artists

  • Presidents Day Release Flood- 8GB, Coova and Bud Melvin, and more

    Many wonderful releases flood the webz over the weekend. First is two great releases from 8bitpeoples:

    8bp093
    Can you dig it?

    TCTD’s own 8GB has released his all new EP  “Pravda“. 4 hard hitting screeds of alien commie chip agitprop enforce the new old tech chip style.  From his release:

    “Those who lack discipline will be given some. 8GB’s Pravda (The Truth) continues their globe-trotting persuasion that has only one end: World Audiovisual Domination! 8GB’s open-minded approach to chip music twists the barriers of hardware limitations and attacks various oldschool platforms at the same time, while delivering the goods to shake booties all around and convert many chip non-believers to their regime. The Truth is out there, but the question remains: Smozhezh ti’ vi’derzhat’ pravdu?”

    Then 8BP dares to up the ante with a secret collab between Coova and Bud Melvin. How they came to meet, is explained on the release page:

    8bp092
    !!!!!! – B. Leo

    “After meeting in New York at the first Blip Festival, the scheme was hatched. The most unlikely of collaborations, between two of chip music’s most enigmatic individuals, would be conducted in secrecy over the next year. Delicately woven Game Boy loops conspire with hypnotic banjo patterns. Layers of guitar dance over uncanny vocals. This is the EP you might have once heard, far-off in the static between two AM radio stations.

    And finally the weekend saw the release of Two 8bit novices:

    Natty – These Days I Expect The Worst

    Dauragon – :re Baggage

    Easy Listening!

  • 8BIT to the Floor out on Kittenrock

    kr027The term compilation has been diluted in the past months, but this is one powerhouse lineup.

    Jellica writes:

    12 tracks of mainly chipstyle four to the floor techno and house jack trax from Monobyte Steve Pinus Mugo Tom Woxom Pocketmaster J8b!t Ultraelectronis Stàrpause Josstintimberlake and Jellica Dr. Von Pnok Buskerdroid Natsanugogo compiled by Tom Woxom with art by Stereotype

    Grab it.

  • GameSetWatch Interviews Classic Composer Hiroyuki Iwatsuki

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    GSW has an interesting interview with classic and current composer Hiroyuki Iwatsuki, who worked on games for The NES, the SNES, and more recently XBOX 360. The interview disucsses some of the difficulties composers had on the older hardware, and compares and contrasts it to today’s modern games. An excerpt:

    GSW: What are some of the important differences between composing for the XBox 360 compared with your work on the 16-bit Super Nintendo?

    Iwatsuki: The biggest difference between the Super Famicom and the Xbox 360 is the difference in memory. You could almost fit the contents of a Super Famicom cart within the memory space allotted to the music of a single Xbox 360 game. For Omega Five it adds up to a few megabytes because of the high quality of the recorded sounds. The Xbox 360 uses 48 kHz sound output, so naturally we were using those specifications. In retro mode, we consciously lowered the sound source to between 12 and 16 kHz, then rendered these files at 48 kHz to give it an antique quality. Even the retro tracks are large files, which is the sort of thing you could not get away with on the Super Famicom. Back then we were forced to be inventive and make sacrifices on sound quality so that the hardware could handle it.

    Read it.

  • Midweek Round-up with the II Comp. and more

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    Fortress of Baditude

    The Winter II Records com is out and its a doozy. It features the following tracks:

    01 Disasterpeace – Bird Season
    02 ok ikumi – white plains 96
    03 The J. Arthur Keenes Band – Stoic
    04 Fighter X – Winter Death
    05 Evil Wezil – Icebreaker
    06 Zan-zan-zawa-veia – Khei-moni
    07 Animal Style – Ancient Accumulator
    08 µB – ice flower
    09 iqtu – ice palace dub
    10 Derris-Kharlan – Shiva
    11 temp sound solutions – the last of all that lasts
    12 failotron – hullamzoret
    13 oxygenstar – the lazy gnome

    On top of that is news of two hot commercial releases:

    Spamtron – Never Say Die!

    Blast off into Spamtron’s world of fast-paced robot action with Never Say Die!, an eighteen-track thrill ride full of spammy wonderment! Experience tracks never before heard in one beautifully presented package. Spamtron takes chip music to the next level. No n00bs!

    Mommy Was An Asteroid – Morphballs 3″CD-R

    wots space-punk speeding thru space to do? …the only musical instrument afforded in such tight quarters is the beloved 21st century gameboy micro of course, so have gameboy will travel and hear ye my musical love-poem to a broad 8n a spacesuit called Samus!

  • YMCK ‘Super Mario Bros. Pt4″ and PiCOPiCT for the DSi

    [kml_flashembed movie="http://www.youtube.com/v/ZJJgzi0IbIM" width="425" height="344" allowfullscreen="true" fvars="fs=1" /]

    Tiny Catridge has a review of the new “artstyle” game for the Nintendo DSi, PiCOPiCT. It is a puzzle game with a soundtrack from jazzchip gods YMCK. The best part is he recently unlocked and made available for stream a rad remix of the original SMB boss music. You can stream it here.