You Look Blue

We were walking around to check out the art bazaar at Rantai Art Merdeka during the launching last night, when we heard these bleeping noise, drum-and-bass electronica like sound, from a colorful booth at the end of the row.

It was the ChipChip Hurray!!, “the 1st Malaysian chiptune community” booth and these kids, among them Aimen aka Mikrobotmen and Am aka My Empty Battery, as I know them later, were busy playing music on their GameBoy!

Yup, the big old brick-y, some might considered ugly, grey portable Nintendo console.

From Wikipedia, chiptune is “music written in sound formats where all the sounds are synthesized in realtime by a computer or video game console sound chip, instead of using sample-based synthesis.”

Remember all those Mario Bros, Donkey Kong, Zelda, Pac Man, Asteroids, etc. video games with their lo-fi music and sound effects? Well chiptune or 8-bit music take its sound from those games and players manipulate and compose them into songs in realtime.

Now last year I came across an old article on Wired called ‘8-bit Punk’ about the birth of the new music genre that started in 1998 in German when Oliver Wittchow, an art student, was programming a music application for the GameBoy called Nanoloop.

Two years after, a Stockholm engineering student, Johan Kotlinski’s programme Little Sound DJ or LSDJ popularized the genre due to its better usability and features compare to Nanoloop. Though both programmes are widely used by chiptune artists today.

Then I’ve been looking if anybody here would taken up the music. 1800-Dracula was the first that I know doing it, but not anymore and they had limited shows. To no avail, my search for a local burgeoning chiptune music seemed to meet a dead end.

But all that changed tonight when I stumbled upon the ChipChip Hurray!! members comprising of local young musicians and students that came from all over the Klang Valley. They were doing introductions about the music and demonstrations on how to play by playing some of their own awesome tunes.

They were also promoting an event called Colourama ‘08 that “combines fashion, trend, video, music and design in one place with the 8-bit concept from 1982-1990 era”. Organized by two local indie brands Bangkit Art Studio and Wearenvy Design, the one day event will be at Galaxy Ampang on 1st November and features chiptune DJs, artists, bands, fashionistas from around the region promoting the movement.

Coolness.

And I’m sure hell gonna be there!

Check out this video of Mikrobotmen and Newen aka Moronbeat performing last night;

More on GameBoy music here.

Details on the Colourama ‘08 event here.