My Gameboy, my instrument.

Anyone who is familiar with my podcast-hopping has known that I am a bit of a music nerd. I love listening to it, talking about it, sharing it, recommending it, etc. Video game music has also been a huge part of my life. I can easily replay some of my favorite game tunes in an instant like the Legend of Zelda theme from the NES, M.U.L.E. from the C64 or anything new like Katamari Damacy’s main theme. Since I can’t seem to shake off the stuff I loved as a kid, I also really dig the chiptune music scene. When I was attending art school in 2002 I first heard a Glomag composition after I had ripped it from some poor person’s unsecured music folder on my school network. I then got into Bit Shifter and Nullsleep and found myself diving headfirst into the music scene. I also started an internship with New-York Tokyo that gave me plenty of opportunity to go to sponsored events and see these guys play live before they even knew they had a scene. Since college I haven’t really had the drive to listen to more of those songs since I’ve been so wrapped up in indie tunes and my electronic phase has semi-ended.

But if there’s one thing to bring you back to the music, it has to be a kickass documentary. You gotta check out Pitchfork.tv‘s One Week Only documentary. This week, it’s Blip Festival: Reformat the Planet. It’s a film about the chiptune scene and it highlights the original artists of chiptune music as well as a lot of new faces that really caught my ear. I would especially recommend it to people who have never heard the 8-bit obsessive sounds of this genre. It’s quite amazing that there would be retronerds who, like me, found the sound processor of their old consoles to be irresistible when you put Kraftwerk-inspired melodies to it.

I think everybody who played the C64, Atari, NES, Genesis and other consoles of that era, will find something here that they really enjoy. There’s no better community to be a part of. The records of most of these artists can be found at 8BitPeoples and a lot of their songs can be downloaded for free. Some of the new artists I would recommend are Random and chip/rock foursome Anamanaguchi. Hearing the 8-bit bleeping next to electric guitar and real drums is quite a nice harmony.

That’s my recommendation for this week. I believe Pitchfork.tv switches their documentaries on the weekend so make sure you get a chance to see it before they change it! Reformat the planet!