With the chiptune/video game music scene in full revival - its difficult not be slightly intrigued as to why people would make music with such old and obscure technology. A good introduction for beginners would be Bit Shifter’s latest release on chiptune label 8bitpeoples.
Its a dizzying 15 minute romp through the 4 channel sound chip of Nintendo’s Game Boy. It starts off with “Chase Init”, a simple slow-building melody that lasts for a minute. It does nothing to prepare you for the barrage of uptempo pop that comes next.
The infectious happy melodies and frenzied bitcrushed drums of “Activation Theme”, “Hexadecimal Genome”, “Particle Charge Reformat The Planet” and “The Information Chase” will stay on your mind for a long time and put on a big smile on your face. One of my favourite releases on 8bitpeoples and my preferred soundtrack when i’m playing old retro games.
Posted on July 23rd, 2006 by ikram · 3 comments
uzyn
July 23rd, 2006 at 1:36 pmWelcome onboard, ikram. Nice review, at least we’ve got some diversity now among the mainly IDM reviews.
Gratisvibes » Blog » Strength in Compilations
November 15th, 2006 at 5:36 am[…] Room brings us the first track which is a sort of idm tune that prominently features piano style melodies reminiscent of the kind you would find in the Aphex Twin album, drukqs. What follows after are two more tracks that delve deeper into the realm of glitchy idm and ‘drill and bass’. Four great ambient-esque, glitchy and downtempo tracks make up the middle of the album. Almost relaxing, surprisingly, we are greeted on the way out by a lofi uptempo 8-bit track by Bit Shifter and another track that has an 8-bit vibe that doesn’t quite sound 8-bit by Puzzle. A great sounding glitch pop track by Johnny Square rounds out the compilation giving the whole album a satisfying feeling of completion. Half melodic half noise, the compilation becomes its own entity as a whole and the tracks feel incomplete if listened alone. I especially liked how well the glitchy second part of the Orkis flowed into the sombre, eerie moods of Three Goes on Forever. […]
Digital Music Downloads » Bit Shifter-Information Chase
November 7th, 2007 at 11:07 pm[…] Gratisvibes - The Creative Commons-Licensed Electronic Music Blog … A good introduction for beginners would be Bit Shifter’s latest release on chiptune … It starts off with “Chase Init”, a simple slow-building melody that lasts for a minute. […]