I’m back! Workload has not diminished in the last days, but I thought “who cares?” so tomorrow there will be a new hundred word stories post, and on friday some Gietz goodness as well! In the meantime, remember me talking about 2010 being a year of music for me? About Rumpelfilter, my musical project? Well I’m kind of getting more and more into chiptunes, I would never have thought I’d like something like that… but then I discovered several bands that really convinced me that chiptunes can be great music, and now it’s becoming a drug…
To be earnest I still have a little problem with the pure chiptune sound, especially when it comes from a Gameboy. I prefer it when people do something more with the chip sound than just record it as it is, or if they add some acoustic instruments or voice.
Since the principle of being an addict requires to drag other people into it as well, here’s a couple of free-to-downlad albums you should really check out (preview track included!):
Ninja 9000 – Bit Collapse EP
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It’s his fault if I’m a chiptune addict now, this guy makes everything with a software plugin called chipsounds, so it’s not “the real thing” but he is just so good. Chipsounds is a great plugin btw, does a great jop in emulating all of the great 8bit sound chips, from the SID to the Gameboy, I think I’ll be getting my own copy in the near future.
Ninja900 is actually a side project by Gisle Martens Meyer of Ugress fame. If you know his other projects you should recognize him immediately, he’s got a very distinctive style. With Ninja900 he managed to create some really polished and well produced tracks while keeping the roughness and simplicity of chipmusic sound.
Pornophonique – 8-bit lagerfeuer
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As they describe it: “a guitar, a Gameboy, a C64, two guys (…)”. The idea is to mix campfire athmosphere with chitune sounds, and it works quite well imho! Pornophonique must have had a lot of fun while making this album,at least that’s the feeling I get while listening to these tracks!
The J.Arthur Keenes Band – Pamplemousse
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This is one of the more recent releases. One of the best for this first part of 2010! Sometimes the chiptune sounds and melodies in Pamplemousse can sound quite rough and simplistic, but that’s only the first impression (usually at the beginning of a track), once the song gets going, and the voice starts, it creates a really nice contrast between the simple aliased waves of the Gameboy and the smoth “analogue” sounds of the guitar and the voice.
These are just 3 among many, there’s a lot more out there… check out 8bitcollective.com or chipmusic.org if you want to discover more stuff… or just come back here in a week, I will post some more links to albums I like!
Gisle couldn’t possibly use Chipsuonds for Ninja 9000. Chipsounds wasn’t even released in 2007!!
I thought Chipsounds has been around for some time, but apparently I was wrong. Anyway I took the information from his blog. He says he’s working with Chipsounds and that he doesn’t have any hardware anymore (only software stuff on his laptop) apart from one Thingamagoop. Probably he was using some other plugins before…