Category: Chipmusic

Toons from various consoles.

  • Best Live Visuals III

    Slow monday is slow… but here I am presenting another nominee for the Live Visuals category.

    Hailing from New York, our next nominee’s game (no pun intended) is coding software for handheld consoles (and Pure Data) to get his vision across. A balanced blend of minimal shapes, all tinted by the laws of mathematics, is his forte. This guy has also that always needed good sense for music, making all the situations on-screen tightly in sync with what’s going on on the screens. On this year’s Blipfest, he was one of the most tight visual performances, and I can also see how he’s rapidly growing int the field. Giant steps!

    Having said somewhere else in this blog that he got kind of kickstarted by a talk given by The C-Men some time ago, he’s been into the chipmusic scene of New York ever since, being a frequent figure on the Pulsewave monthly night at New York as well as other events in the area, like all 3 Blip Festivals up until 2008.

    Another regular lecturer in the US and Europe, “he was awarded a residency at the Experimental Television Center and created a series of video podcasts for the pioneering composer William Duckworth”. Man, all these VJ guys are serious business.

    People, please give it up for:

    Paris Trentafeles
    [New York, USA]

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

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  • Best Track

    Getting this list down to five worthy tracks was a nearly futile effort. First there was the impossibly hubristic act of saying that only five songs where good enough to be considered, then the consideration of what effect time had on older tracks and will have on younger ones. But then I just let go and picked the songs that “I” liked and said damn the torpedoes. And now, with surely a great flurry of controversy, here are the nominees for Best Track.

    8bit What – Bud Melvin w/ gwEm

    Dis tracks are great when done right, and this tracks deliberate dismantling of a certain Best Label nominees vetting process is wickedly funny and well executed with next level sound design, catchy hooks and lyrics and an over all high quality we’ve come to expect from both these artists seperately, and now together.

    $$ Troopers – Huoratron

    In a year of “me too” dance beats, and hackneyed use of basic chip sound design, this track from Huoratron was a breath of fresh air. Yes the gameboy is heavily processed, but the spirit of its use is still intact and the track shows excellence on all measurable levels of ass kicking.

    Nullsleep- Shadows In The Sky

    Long considered one of the Ambassadors of the US chip scene, this track may be Nullsleep’s magnum opus. A great blend of complexity and simplicity the track performs the rare feat of making you forget the device being used, and focus soley on the song.

    Animal Style – DMG Guitar

    Animal Style – DMG Guitar

    An even more difficult effort for chipspotters is this track which rocks both Animal Styles compositional skill and his guitar abilities. A live powerhouse, the track has withstood repeated listenings and still kicks my ass every time I hear it.

    Cheap Dinosaurs – Hot Plate

    Having come late to the Chromelodeon party, One definiatly does not have to settle for this solo project. This krush groove esque synth jam seemlsly blends chip sounds and enhanced synthesis into an organic brew that foretells of a stunning chip future, where the composition is never overshadowed by the platform, and the artist is always amazing without an “for a chipmusican” qualifier.

  • 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)

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  • 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" /]