Early video gaming console developers must have had no idea that, twenty years later, a ragtag group of musicians would begin hacking their creations to produce a wacky genre known as chiptune. Often driven by nostalgia for the heyday of pixelated Mario and Luigi, this loose association of bands and producers creates a dizzying variety of music using the same stable of 8bit sounds, from Sabrepulse’s breakcore to Bubblyfish’s ambient dreamscapes to Hayzee’s chip-hop. Or, as 20 year-old Pete Berkman, the brainchild behind NYC-based group Anamanaguchi explains, “The whole idea is like back to the basics, everybody using the same sounds that are totally minimal and trying to make something that sounds bigger than the Game Boy or bigger than the Nintendo.”
Pete, a music technology major at NYU whose father taught him to read by playing The Legend of Zelda, composes songs in DOS and plays guitar at live shows. Twenty-three year-old James DeVito serves as the group’s bassist and Nintendo master, 20 year-old Ary Warnaar plays guitar and Game Boy, and 21 year-old Luke Silas bangs the drums. So just how do an innocent Game Boy and Nintendo go from being a child’s playthings to vessels of the holy order of rock n’ roll? Flavorpill’s Ali Gitlow caught up with the guys during sound check for a recent gig at Death By Audio in Williamsburg to find out.
VIEW THE SLIDESHOW OF HER ADVENTURES HERE>>
All photos by Chuck Jones
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7 Responses
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[...] Back in May I accompanied my good friend and music journalist Ali Gitlow as a photographer to cover the underground ‘Chiptune’ scene. There is a current subculture of musicians all over the world that are hacking old video game consoles and using them to compose music. Ali and I went to a local do-it-yourself venue in Brooklyn and interviewed Anamanaguchi, a chiptune band that has hacked an original Nintendo and an original Gameboy console to create musical compositions. They then take those compositions and play along to them with guitar and drums. Ali’s full story and my photos are posted over at the Flavorpill blog. [...]
Thats wicked stuff. Love this band!
from New Zealand
[...] Anamanaguchi is a Brooklyn based band that has garnered significant buzz over the last couple of years by appropriating the sound of early video game soundtracks. I ran across a cool article on Flavorwire where Anamanaguchi demonstrates how to hack into a Gameboy in order to transform it from a gaming system into a make shift musical instrument. Check it out here. [...]
Thank you. I love it!
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[...] here watch videos for the Dawn Metropolis LP ►►► here Gameboy hacking lesson ►►► here download mp3s ►►► [...]