Saturday DJ Quiet and I made our way to NYC for the third night of BlipFest 2008. It was awesome, and next year I intend to secure lodging in the city for the whole shebang.
BlipFest is an annual chiptune music fest. Chiptune is a section of music space where the audio pallettes set forth by the limited capabilities of (early) videogame sound chips is employed. It often blends with less restrictive forms of music composition and performance; instead of a static score, some of the song might be performed live on a (necessarily custom built) instrument that generates sounds in this range. All manner of mixing equipment and community/custom programs is employed. It also lends itself to trippy, pixelated visual art and videogame “remixes.” Blipfest brings together some of the best chiptune artists (some all the way from China) and great visual artists to accompany them for four nights of awesome.
Anyway, after some Googlemap induced mishaps we found our way to the venue in Brooklyn, which was nice if small for what ended up being a sold out show. We came in at the beginning of Bubblyfish‘s set, which I recognized as her cover of Kraftwerk’s “It’s more fun to compute” off the 8 Bit Operators comp although I hadn’t connected the song and the performer until that point. It was my favorite set of the night, probably pushed to the top by the Bubblyfish’s exuberence and the visual mixing backing her up. It was also the most dancable set. What live music I’ve caught since becoming a parent hasn’t gone much beyond inducing the jump and cheer, and I hadn’t even anticipated a mosh pit at this event, but by the end of the (all too short) set I was happy to pay the $2 to check my hoodie and sweatshirt so that I didn’t have to make the homeward journey in the snow while soaked from the inside out.
The rest of the night kept the energy up, with sulumi, Cow’P, nullsleep and Stu gracing the stage before I left in an attempt to make the 1:49 train back to CT. The visual art was also perfectly done for the scene, and the crowd was full of fans there to enjoy the performance, not the venue drinkers who could care less who was on stage or jerks there to start shit as I have grown accustomed to. I even got to see, albeit briefly, the one cousin I seem to share a taste in music with. I look forward to Blipfest 2009 and intend to catch some more chiptune shows in the meantime.
For tons of free chiptunes, make sure to check out the discography at 8 Bit Peoples, a chiptune label that uses the BY-NC-AT Creative Commons license (especially nullsleep, one of the label’s co-founders.)
Here are some samples:
Follow the red dots – music by Bubblyfish, visuals by Raquel Meyers