This year, I’m so thankful for the opportunities I’ve had to introduce people to the music, and for all those who’ve shared their music with me. It’s been a transitional year for me, moving to Philadelphia, playing more shows then ever, and I’ve had the amazing honor to start my own label with some of musicians I admire the most. To celebrate, I’ve prepared some epic discounts, and have a new album preped for release soon. Use the social media buttons at the bottom of this post to share the sales with your friends, it’s only for very limited time…
And to top it all off, I’ll be releasing a new EP on Sunday created from samples of the hardware music from my new favorite thing, the Wii U. Watch for it on Sunday!
A huge thank you form everyone who’s supported me this year by paying for a download, coming out to a show, or reading this blog. I’m truly grateful for each and every one of you. Feel free to use the buttons below the post to share these sales with your friends. Enjoy the music!
This is a mixtape of pinball chiptune remixes I put together for a big pinball charity event in Brooklyn, Pinball Pinsgiving for Hurricane Sandy relief! The chiptunes were recorded from a collection of pinball machines, but unfortunately the raw recordings had no metadata, so I don’t know what machines these samples are from. A bunch of helpful pinball fans (and redditors :) have contributed the name of some of the tracks in the Soundcloud comments. If you can pick any of the machines out, please take a moment to post in the comments!
If you liked this mix, why not download an album,
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Art by Tron Bonne,
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Artistic growth is an awesome thing to behold. To witness an artist’s humble beginnings, their developmental period (which some might say never truly ends with an active artist!), and their transition into a truly legitimate, confident professional in their field; just AWESOME. Truth be told, I feel as if I’ve witnessed at least a part of this progression with today’s artist and his latest release:
Epic Elevator Music
by The Bitman
To start off, “Epic Elevator Music” is eight *STELLAR* tracks of hard hitting, powerfully driven, yet wildly stylistically varied LSDj goodness of the highest mark. It’s another one of those chipalbums that I knew would be an instant favorite of mine before the first track even finished, and 100% confirmed after about eight back-to-back playthroughs. DAMN GOOD JAMS.
It’s upon comparison to Max Dolensky aka The Bitman‘s previous two EPs from earlier in the year, “Ten Day EP” & “Nimbus“, that his growth becomes strikingly apparent. Neither of these albums are bad. In fact, they’re both quite solid & worthy of downloading! That said, EEM is on a completely different level of chipartistry. The complexity of the compositions, the more intricately designed melodic structures, the wonderful variety and blending of different musical styles, the greater aptitude regarding LSDj composition and mixing technique; everything is better, stronger, catchier, more aptly composed & inspired.
According to Max, some of this development simply comes from gaining more experience with his craft, but the lion’s share of it comes from gaining more experiences. By this he means learning from and collaborating with other chipartists and awesome people within the scene, and of course by participating in live performances. BRKfest in general stands out as a poignant turning point in his chipmusic career, much as it does for so many other chipartists that attended &/or performed at it. (For more thoughts straight from The Bitman himself, keep an eye out for an in-depth transcript of our *AMAZING* chat coming soon to the ChipWIN blog!!).
But if you think The Bitman has reached his developmental plateau, check out this rough draft of a brand new track he’s working on:
Right at the start, the powerfully sexy vibe and addition of the live brass (!!!) set this track apart from his already unique & established stylings, hinting at the potential for even further artistic development & just the overall exceptional future he has in store. And if you’re interested in seeing how that pans out (and how can you NOT be after hearing that track?!!?!?), you should probably stay tuned to The Bitman in the near future (i.e. more like this coming very soon~ ;).
While you’re here don’t miss the article written about him recently in the school paper of his Alma mater, the University of Alabama. It’s complemented by a video interview as well, which you can check out here:
But enough of my blathering already! Get to the real reason you’re here: listening to someAWESOME CHIPMUSIC!! 8) And while you’re doing that, make sure to donate some $$ to the “help Max not be a broke college student” fund. Always a worthy cause, especially when there’s more artistry to develop. ^_^
For those of you who have been into Chiptune music for a while, you probably remember the website 8bitcollective.com. Plagued with site issues like downtime and a finicky uploader, 8bc held a special place in my heart, it was an incredibly active portal for free chiptune music. Every submission was downloadable, and its where I learned of many of my new favorite artists, included Smiletron, MisfitChris and Electric Children.
At the end of 2010, 8bc went down for good. Luckily, some crafty people took the time to create this: an archive.org collection of every song on the 8bc database. Just over 18GB, this collection is massive chunk of chiptune history, and includes some songs that can’t be found anywhere else. And the best part, this collection is entirely legal under Creative Commons.
For those looking for a new Chiptune fix, check out uCollective, a website started in the spirit of 8bc, with much more attentive developers ;)
Epic Elevator Music