This is the first official (non-sucky ;) release for Knife City, aka Luke Silas. Drummer for chiptune-rock band Anamanaguchi and gameboy thrasher, Knife City brings high-impact dance music that you can’t help but get down to. This EP is five tracks, available from bandcamp for pay-what-you-want. Stream and download from the player below, and support this guy if you can!
Category Archives: CHIPTUNE
Chiptunes and Chipmusic
A personal love letter to the entire MAGFest/VGM/Chiptune community. ♥ ♥ (DOPEY POST ALERT ;3 )
Thursday was my 32nd birthday. I had no big plans; working for most of the day, fishing with a buddy right afterward, dinner with my folks, & winding up the night at Joshua Morse’s Waveform 3 listening party on the always fun-tastic areciboradio.com to share in some good music, laughs, and a few beers with my nerd buddies. Nice, chill evening; I can had a content. =) Honestly, I’d almost forgotten that it was my birthday that week; my girlfriend and family had to remind me! LoL SO BUSY WITH LIFE AND PROJECTS (with the Chiptunes = WIN compilation being at the top of the busy yet awesome list!! ;D ). And then some of my favorite MAGfamily crazies surprise me in the listening party chatroom (and sorta crash it! HahahaSORRIES Areciboradio!!! XD ). Was some serious WIN, and enough to wrap up my birthday with more than enough happy to do the trick. I figured the surprises ended there. I FIGURED DAMN WRONG.
FIRST, THIS HAPPENED. <– CLICKY CLICKY, PLEASE. =D
As I explored the custom VGM designed birthday card, read the messages as they scrolled by, listened to the amazing music, I freaked out. My myriad of ridiculously talented, AMAZING friends, who collaborated to create this for me, watched, laughed, grinned, took joy in my freakouts and continued to make it worse by leading me on to discover more and more wonderful things about it (there’s even a secret code in it!! Hint: look at the score ;). Once they’d strung me along with that amazingness long enough, they dropped the REAL bomb on me:
AN ORIGINAL 5 SONG EP MADE ABOUT AND JUST FOR ME
I. LOST. MY. MIND. I’m still in shock. The amount of artistry and hilarity and genuine love that went into the crazy project, just… WOW. What the F**K I did to deserve this I DON’T KNOW. (I mean, I AM awesome, sure, but this is pushing it a touch even for me! hahaha ;D ). I’m not telling y’all any of this to brag about myself, boost my own ego, or anything self serving like that either (I really don’t feel like there’s that much to brag about anyways hahaha). I’m just sharing this as a testament to WHY I love the VGM/Chiptune/MAG/Nerda/etc. scene with every bit of me that is able to love:
The best motherf**cking people in the world are part of it.
The people that staff and volunteer the events, the various assortment of musical guests, artists, and speakers to entertain the happy, often drunken masses, and, of course, the awesome, CRAZY people who attend these events. And all of them, ALL OF THEM having the time of their lives, reveling in the sheer overwhelming goodness of being surrounded and celebrating with the most kindred of spirits. There really are no words to do it justice, and I feel I’m doing a fairly miserable job of trying to convey in words the powerful sense of awesome that you can get from being a part of, belonging to this community. hahaha XD Maybe that’s just it, though: you have to experience it to understand it. =) And if you haven’t yet, NOW is just as good a time as any to join us. THE MORE, THE MERRIER, BIZNATCHES!! 8D \m|♥|m/
Also (I said I wasn’t going to do this, BUT OH WELL WUTTEHFUKEVAR!!!!): HUGE THANKS AND LOVE AND STUFF TO ALL INVOLVED WITH THE ALBUM: Mike Villalobos (Lobos) & Amanda Lepre (LeRab-it) from Descendants of Erdrick; Grant Henry (Stemage) and Dan Taylor (Chunkstyle) from Metroid Metal & Yes Mayhem; Nate Horsfall (Foxxdragon); Chris Ryberg (Rugal); Jameson Sutton (Shadix); Thomas Dougherty (Nickeledge); Chris Davidson (Dj Cutman); Erik Peabody (VikingGuitar); Brendan Becker (Inverse Phase); Brandon Strader; and last but not least, my amaaaaaaaaaaazing girlfriend, Erin McQuisten (I LOVE YOU SO MUCH, BABY!!! ♥ ♥ ♥). Plus much love to all who signed the digital card!!!
YOU FUCKERS ARE SOME OF THE BEST FRIENDS A CRAZY SONOFABITCH LIKE ME COULD EVER ASK FOR & I LOVE YOU ENDLESSLY FOR IT SO THERE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!11111!111!1!11!!!11111!elevensoutthewazoo ;DDD
♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥
Friday Freakout: DANIMAL CANNON ‘SPLOSION!!!!!!11!1!1!
SUP BIZNATCHES. =D Yup, I’m back again. Wasn’t just a one shot deal last Friday after all. ;)
YOU’RE WELCOME, WORLD. 8) (blame Cutman for it ;3 ).
ANYWHOOO, today I’m spazwriting/writespazzing all over this bloggity blog about something not new, but still worth the wordy words; about the very first dude who exposed me to live Chiptunes (and at MAGFest 9 no less! LOVE THAT FRICKITY FRACKIN PLACE/THING/WORLD/AMAZINGNESS!!!).
In other words, my Chiptune obession = TOTALLY THIS GUY’S FAULT:
Dan Behrens aka Danimal Cannon.
If you’re into the VGM/Chiptune scene AT ALL, you’ve probably heard of this cat from one of his many damn bands: Armcannon, Metroid Metal, WeaponEX, The Polyamorous Polyrhythms (okay, I made that last one up ;3 ). And if you haven’t? Well, GOOD DAMN THING YOU’RE READING THIS ARTICLE THEN, AIN’T IT?!? ;3 At any rate, they’re all lkjasdfjlk AMAZING, but it’s his solo chiptune jamolas as Danimal Cannon that really takes the honest cake. (Get it?? Takes the honest cake vs. just takes the cake?? As in the cake is NOT a lie?? YES I JUST WENT THERE & I MAY MAKE AN ARROW IN THE KNEE JOKE NEXT WUT OF IT?!?!? ;333 ). It’s top tier Chiptunes that’s a nostalgic yet brand spanking new series of musical
journeys through nerdtastically mathematical, polyrhythmic yet danceable, guitar shredding wonderment of LOVEBEERSEX CHIPTUNES FTW!!! <–Which SHOULD have been his album name, but he went with Roots instead.
Pssh! WUTTEHFUKEVAR. >_> Awesome album title missed opportunity aside, his 18 track debut is one BADASSTASTIC mother that no Chiptune fan can afford to miss. And ZOMG! You can (finally) get a shirt to go with it! Which gives you super powers. Super powers of looking AWESOME, further increased by listening to the album’s AWESOME. It may just be the AWESOMEST AWESOME TO EVAR AWESOME. NOW GO BUY THEM BOTH AND EXPERIENCE THE AWESOMERY FOR YOURSELF. \m||m/
…UNLESS you first wanna go see an equally AWESOME series of Danimal Cannon videos taken by Emily Feder from the Chip Music Chronicle (more on that NEXT Friday! ;D ). You can find that goodness RITE CHAR:
AND be sure to catch the ridiculously talented little f**cker on his upcoming tour, which includes a stop at BLIPFEST. Yup, you heard me right: the sonofan8bitwhore is actually playing AT Blipfest this year. Another reason to catch that amazing Memorial Day weekend Chiptune extravaganza. I mean, as if you really needed another reason to go to that, amirite? IAMRITE.
Also, did I mention yet that HE’S GOT A BRAND SPANKING NEW TRACK COMING OUT ON MY UPCOMING CHIPTUNES = WIN \m|♥|m/ COMPILATION NEXT MONTH??? So yeah, stayed tuned for that! ;DDD Ttfn~!
\m|♥|m/
Big Giant Circles – Imposter Nostalgia
This post is long overdue! Jimmy Hinson, also known as Big Giant Circles, is a BAFTA-nominated music composer, rexmier, gamer, and staff member at Overclocked Remix. He’s best known for his work on BioWare’s epic Mass Effect 2, but this post is about something equality as epic, but in a different direction…
Imposer Nostalgia is BGC’s tribute to the game music of old, utilizing samples and synths to create compelling and energetic ‘fakebit’ chiptune. For those not familiar, ‘fakebit’ is a term for music that sounds like 8-bit, but in reality has many more bits. so many bits! This 20 track album is the cream of the crop of chiptune style compositions, with killer production that exhibits BGC’s expertise for sound design and mixing. Imposer Nostalgia is not to be missed. I digress, on to the music!
The album is available from Bandcamp for $5, or $10 for a hard-copy. Follow Big Giant Circles on Facebook and Twitter.