8 Easy Pieces

The pitched fork has pronged another prize with the fantastic documentary, Reformat the Planet on the emerging Chiptune scene. Chiptune (as distinct from 8bit music per say) has been around for about a decade, and is finally garnering some critical acclaim. Not content with inventing punk music, Malcolm McLaren hopped on the bandwagon early, writing an hilarious piece for Wired in 2003 claiming the birth of a new scene, ‘Chipmusic’. In the article McLaren is escorted my mysterious French underground electronic musicians to a dingy factory where credibility and curry powder mix in malodorous clouds, and odd young hips with blackened teeth play unironic retro-future music on outdated consoles and computers. Since those halcyon days chiptune has conspicuously failed to set the world alight - though it has had an ‘influence’ on mainstream hiphop and indie acts, on underground scenes like nerdcore and laterly on art and fashion [1] [2]; ultimately achieving the honour of being featured in the latest issue of Analogue. Reformat the Planet is only available for four more days, so check it out!

Update: For an Irish take on 8bit, check out the hyperkinetic 0010100, who mercifully avoid the europop chinz of much euro chiptune.

Update 2: If you’re in the UK or can get your clogs on and hop on a ferry, there’s a Chiptune Alliance tour on right now in Scotland and England, featuring some of the artists featured in Reformat the Planet including Anamanaguchi, Sabrepulse, and Random.

Omodaka - Kyoteizinc

Andy’s the expert on Japanese electro, but I’m captivated by one new chiptune artist in particular, the enigmatic Omodaka. The great graphic novelist and comic writer Warren Ellis recently posted the video below, which is a beautifully pure attempt to express music through imagery. I’m convinced there are only two ways to make a truly great music video, a piece that enhances rather than merely embellishes the music it illustrates. The method used in this video, is to create a pictorial analogue to the music, a constructed synesthesia, articulating the sounds rather than the conceptual content of the piece. The track is effortlessly fleshed out 8-bit drum and base, and the video, directed by Hiroshi Kizu, features a dance performance by Masako Yasumoto. You can subscribe to Omodaka’s ‘Far East Recording’ videos on Youtube.

[youtube:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JEfNoEYR2-8]