| A Beginner's Guide to the Blip Festival & Chipmusic CultureThose familiar with the chiptune scene already have a pretty good idea of what to expect from this year's Blip Festival. But to the uninitiated, the whole idea of ‘chipmusic’ and its associated culture might be a bit overwhelming, and perhaps a tad confusing as well. Fear not, for within this article I will attempt to demystify the culture surrounding the Blip Festival, as well as clear up some common misconceptions about chipmusic and its practitioners. |
| Zen Albatross' Unofficial Guide to Blip Festival 2009Blip Festival itself might be only 3 days long, but thanks to a number of additional shows & events taking place in Manhattan and Brooklyn, the festivities this year will be extending it to a full six days. Plus, I’ve got the skinny on a couple of unannounced events featuring Blip artists that will be occurring during the week of the festival. Hit the jump for the lowdown on ALL of the happenings at Blip Week 2009, including the official full schedule for Blip Festival 2009. |
| Giant Robot & Attract Mode hosting West Coast Chiptunes Micro TourVideogame culture blog Attract Mode is teaming up with Giant Robot to bring together the East and West coast chiptune scenes for a West Coast micromusic mini-tour starting next week. The tour kicks off on November 7th in Los Angeles, with a chipmusic workshop at the Japanese American National Museum. Afterwards, head over to the Chop Suey Cafe for a live show featuring Trash80, minusbaby, StarPause and Crashfaster with visuals by Daniel Rehn and Paris Treantafeles. |
| OverClocked ReMix releases Castlevania: Sonata of the DamnedLooks like OverClocked Remix is serving up a Halloween treat of their own this year: ‘Castlevania: Sonata of the Damned' is a new remix project arranged, performed and mixed by the insanely talented Joshua Morse. It offers 7 tracks of re-imagined Castlevania music, including tracks from Dracula’s Curse, Symphony of the Night and even some of the newer titles like Portrait of Ruin and Order of Ecclessia. |
| Chiptunes in the streets at PAX 2009Video games are cool and all, but one of the major highlights of my weekend at PAX was Lo-Tek Resistance, the impromptu street performance engineered by members of Crunchy Co Records. Anyone near the front entrance of the Washington State Convention Center on Friday was treated to three amazing hours of Game Boy-powered jams from Fighter X, Seanbad, Circles, Spamtron, Infradead, McFiredrill and even Anamanaguchi’s Ary Warnaar. |
| Minusbaby releases new album + music videoChipmusician Richard Alexander Caraballo, known better by the moniker Minusbaby has released his latest album, ‘Left’ for free on 8bitpeoples. Rich imparts six tracks of trance/reggae-style chiptune grooves, a brilliant follow-up to 2008’s ‘Saudade For Beginners’ which marks 8BP’s 101st release.
Also, check out the music video for the album's first single, 'A Large Part of Your Mind Sliced' created by Asif Siddiky from 2 Player Productions. |
| TIME Magazine interviews Shnabubula, distorts everything he says about chiptunesSamuel Ascher-Weiss (aka Shnabubula) was recently interviewed by TIME Magazine about his work on the recent 8-bit Miles Davis tribute album, 'Kind of Bloop'. Unfortunately, the reporter didn't like anything he had to say and took it upon herself to misquote and distort Sam's entire message about the importance of chip music. Way to go, big print media! |
| High Strangeness soundtrack previewIn anticipation of the upcoming indie adventure game 'High Strangeness', Pause Music has released a free sampler of the game's soundtrack composed by Rich Vreeland (aka Disasterpeace). |
| 'Video Games' - Insane Pixel Art AnimationThis incredible animation by Musclebeaver starts with the simplistic innocence of Pong and quickly expands into a massive videogame orgy. Literally. Bonus points for using Guybrush Threepwood from Monkey Island. |
| Pterodactyl Squad to release 8-bit Weezer tribute albumThe folks over at Pterodactyl Squad, the excellent chiptunes netlabel, are preparing to release a tribute album featuring the songs of Weezer performed entirely on 8-bit hardware. Artists contributing to the project include Anamanaguchi, Bit Shifter, PDF_Format, I Fight Dragons, Tugboat, Unicorn Dream Attack and much, much more. |
| Rhythm Heaven's 'Love Lab' Remixed by Dale NorthThe ever-talented Dale North of Destructoid, OCRemix, etc released this excellent remix of the 'Love Laboratory' song from Rhythm Tengoku Gold (US: Rhythm Heaven). Dale sings original lyrics for the tune, accompanied by the artwork of Jonathan Holmes from Destructoid. |
| April is Support OverClocked ReMix MonthSo I am a bit late to the party, but did you know that April is Support OCR Month? OverClocked ReMix is a video game music rearrangement site that has thousands (THOUSANDS!) of new takes on classic video game songs. From new to old, obscure to famous. |
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