“Chiptune” (Used 23 times)

The world's premier international chipmusic event event, the Blip Festival returns to NY May 19-21. WFMU will be there live streaming direct from Eyebeam to your home computer. We'll also compile another Blip Festival collection here at the FMA for all to share!

Produced by 8bitpeoples & The Tank, the Blip Festival celebrates the best and brightest from the realm of chipmusic and its related discilplines. This year, artists from all over the world will converge at Eyebeam, the leading not-for-profit art and technology center in the USA, for three days of arresting music and visual art utilizing former heavyweights of computing like the Commodore 64 and Amiga, the  Atari ST and 2600, the Nintendo Entertainment System and Game Boy.

WFMU will once again be webcasting live from the Blip Festival! So if you’re not able to make it to Eyebeam in the flesh, you can surf on over to wfmu.org each night for the live stream, Accu-Playlist, photos and a realtime comments board. WFMU DJs Bennett4Senate, Marty McSorely, and Jason Sigal will be joined by special guest DJ XC3N from Montreal CISM | 89.3FM to host and DJ between sets both on the stream and in-person at Eyebeam.

Highlights from these performances will be available from the Free Music Archive, where you can also enjoy a vast collection of mp3s from the 2009 Blip Festival at the Bell House in Brooklyn! Below, True Chip Till Death's Peter Swimm (who is also a 2011 Blip Festival performer!) made a mix of highlights from artists who performed at the most recent NYC edition of the Blip Festival:

Check out blipfestival.org for more information, and this year's incredible lineup which includes musicians like Anamanaguchi, Bubblyfish, Tristan Perich, and Minusbaby paired with visual artists like visualicious, m7kenji, No Carrier, and Party Time! Hexcellent!, plus "Arcade After Parties" hosted by Babycastles and a whole lot more! See you at Eyebeam and/or surfin' the live stream!

Doc Deem has been making music since 2000, mostly in a field known as experimental electronic, his sound wavers between danceable and maddening to more emotionally resonant, creating awe-inspiring atmospheres with cinematic scope.

His second release on S27 "The Rutherford" continues in this vein whilst expanding from his previous self-titled release, 9 tracks which are both harsh and beautiful in equal measure.

   LCL netlabel just released the second volume of hte "Recto Versus" serie, where an artist from the label remixes and is remixed by other musicians, coming from LCL or invited.

   After Volfoniq on volume 1, the second opus of the "Recto Versus" serie puts an artist from the label at the center of a vast collaborative work that lasted for one year and spreads over several countries.
   The aim of the project is to push further the use of creative commons licences and promote them widely, while exploring all the aspects of a musician style with his own eyes and foreign ones.

   Arrogalla involved several artists from Sardegna (his birthplace) that produce folk related electronic music just like him, as well as european, american and asian producers from various musical styles.
   Thru 20 tricky tracks, together, they expose their vision of a generous and universal musical language, using numerous sonic vocables : dub, ska, lofi, dubstep, minimal, electronica, chiptune, funk, deviant hiphop, grime ...

   Explore this compilation on FMA, and learn more on the release page on LCL netlabel website.

With summer just around the corner, its time to get less aggressive with these chip music things, and get into good old fashioned summer jams. Perhaps the earliest US chip music artist to embrace the idea of creative commons releases was California's Timothy Lamb, aka Trash80. As a member of the 8bitpeoples collective he has released a number of online recordings, including this weeks featured EP, Icarus.

 A bit of a Renascence man, Lamb not only is a talented musican, with his smooth dance flavored tracks, but a programmer, graphic artist and hardware designer. Projects like his "Prosound Mod" to improve audio output on the Nintendo Game Boy opened the door on on a whole slew of mods to make the corporate toy more suitable for the trenches of club warfare, and his software and hardware projects like Arduinoboy, OKi Computer, and ChipSynth has made it possible for all kinds of crazy chip sound integration into the "pro" producers setup.

Above all his music is the most impressive, as showcased below on Icarus. Check out why TCTD picked it as the best release of 2008, and we will see you again in seven.

At times the chip music community can seem a little insular at a distance. Fiercely protective from exploitative outside elements, many feel that they cannot break in from outside, but the fact is that many chip music insiders are themselves huge music fans, eager to hear infinite variations on the chip music concept. This week we bring you the work of Nathan Meunier,  and his ep The Beacon.

Like many chip artists, he comes to chip based production after writing and performing elsewhere, in Nathan's case it was indie rock. The tracks here reflect that, with a series of moody instrumentals punctuated with jangly guitars and soft squares. Nathan's path to chip came through his other focus, writing, He is currently working on a nonfiction book entitled Geek Beat Manifesto, which explores the rise of spazzy subcultures like Chip Music, Video Game Cover Bands, and Nerdcore Rap. Take a look at the EP, and check his writings on his website, and we will catch you in seven.