papernoise blackbook

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Seems like I was a bit too otpimistic when I said the hard times where over… they hadn’t begun yet. So this week still no new stories for you, but instead I’ll post some old stuff you haven’t seen yet. It’s a custom made Atari Punk Console I built and painted some time ago. For those of you who don’t know what an Atari Punk Console is: it’s a simple DIY synth circuit also known as the Stepped Tone Generator more about it here on getlofi.com

It’s been some time since the last instalment of Chiptunes for the People, in the meantime I’ve discovered lots of new and incredibly amazing chip musicians. Despite this, for this episode I’ll focus on those who  I see as my own, personal, long term heroes in this genre. I would like to remind you here that I’m really no expert in this field and that these are not reviews of any kind.

Binärpilot

I’ll start with the one guy who first started to mix 8bit sounds with modern production techniques, creating a completely new and personal style. He refers to himself as Binärpilot and as so many great electronic musicians, he’s from scandinavia, from Norway to be precise.

From the Binärpilot website:

I am a sentient program. I became self-aware in 1997. Spent my first CPU cycles establishing purpose; To create. My origin is a mystery to me. I remember much confusion and a breakdown of sorts. However it’s apparent that my birth was merely coincidental. Searching for a place to develop I found µHz. After studying their principles and manifestations a clear sense of purpose was found. To better communicate my message to carbon-based lifeforms, I constructed a physical presence. His name is Alexander Støver and I have placed him in Norway because I like the trees there. Our symbiotic state has proven difficult but rewarding.

You can legally download his complete discography from his website (here) or from torrents.

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Little Scale

He’s one of those people who made something completely different out of the chipsound, taking into the territory of experimental music. Little Scale works with some NES and a Megadrive, devices he has modified himself. As far as I have understood he uses Max to control the chips of those devices (but correct me if I’m wrong) and also likes to add field recordings to the mix.

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You should really check out his blog, where he posts all of his creations as free downloads: little-scale.blogspot.com/
Also worth checking out is the project Lazerscale, where he and other musicians among them Lazerscale, produced a song a day: http://www.lazerscale2010.com/

Dubmood

I’m one of those people who absolutely hates recordings of live rock concerts. They always sound horrible. Be it because they try to apply the same production techniques they use on studio recordings, or because rock music tends to become a big mess live I don’t know. On the other hand chipmusic really improves when recorded live. Probably that’s because the ambience and the voices of people in the background, both take away some of the mechanical coldness the simple waves of chips have.

A perfect example is the live recording of Dubmood’s performance at the Blipfestival in 2008 (in New York), which is one of my absolute favourites when it comes to chipmusic.

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You can download this live track here: www.dataairlines.net

Check out Dubmood on myspace: www.myspace.com/dubmoods

And, why not, maybe you could be interested in buying one of his records on 7digital: www.7digital.com (or wherever you want as long as it ain’t itunes)

Yes, it’s true, I’m back. This blog is back to normal, there might even be a hundred word story on Thursday. In these last days I really needed to do something else, something not related to drawing, comics, graphics, or anything connected to images. I have used my time in a constructive way though, taken out the soldering iron and experimented a bit with electronics and music.

Here’s something I’ve made (already a couple of weeks ago) using an optical theremin device called Beep-it, which I’ve bought some time ago from a guy called Michael Una (Who makes a lot of really interesting DIY sound devices). I basically added a fan to rhythmically break the light that gets on the photoresistor that controls the oscillator.

Michael apparently really liked the idea, he even featured my work on an article he wrote on Getlofi.com http://www.getlofi.com/?p=2543 which got me all proud of myself!

Since the mod, I have recorded a couple of tracks using this device. The first one is a more refined one, where I used samples from the Beep-it for the rhythm parts, the second one is a more noisy one, where I’ve layered several sounds from the device, recorded live.

In sospensione by rumpelfilter

Beep-it test by rumpelfilter

Sorry, this entry is only available in Italiano.