“Saskrotch” (Used 3 times)

Tonight marks the first of two chip music packed shows at Austin's Datapop, a collab between the Alamo Drafthouse, and 8bitpeoples. While not a SXSW event, the two-day free showcase is a nice bridge between the techy interactive aspect of the first week of SXSW and its older rockier musical component. Featuring act such as Hally, Bit Shifter, Nullsleep and more, the showcase is but a taste of the various chip related parties and showcases throughout the week. Official SXSW highlights include the 8bit cumbia fueled nudity of Meneo, Pains of Being Pure at Heart affiliated Depreciation Guild,and synthbreak wunderkin Talk To Animals.

It is always interested to see which of these acts are the "bubble" acts that break through to the "next level" of "rock fame", but you can saunter into the showcases and tell all your friends that you where there first! To get you started, we uploaded this SXSW mix with tracks from FMA chip artist appearing at the events, so enjoy and see you in seven!

Along with Starpause, Overthruster was one of the most prolific of the the Minneapolis based lofi break-ish chip music assault group, :|krew. The group (pronounced COLON PIPE CREW) is one of the earliest US chip musicgroups to spring up in the early 2000's and their development, unchecked and Galapagos like in the wilds of the Twin Cities, owes a lot more to Punk, Breakcore, Bastard Noise and other types of harsh genres that you would not typically use to describe the sound that comes out of a Game Boy.

Overthruster has dozens of recordings on numerous lo-fi and no-fi Netlabels, and the tools he used to make these releases are equally diverse. His Game Boy material, showcased on his 2007 Dramacore release Slug Cock show a Game Boy that is far from interested in a nostalgic look back to one's childhood, and would rather focus on pushing the LSDJ tracker into its utmost limits, with harsh modulations, brutal hacked samples, and pulsing square percussion. Having always focused more on the noise and breakcore scenes, Overthruster is sadly not as well known in the chip community, especially amongst fans of the happier and poppier chipbreak artists like Saskrotch and Sabrepulse.

That's all for now, so enjoy Slug Cock and the rest of the Overthruster catalog elsewhere on the web, and see you guys in seven!