KynyNasty

Back in 2003 a demoscene producer viznut from a group PWP managed to create a couple of very nice Commodore VIC-20 demos for our pleasure. They are called Robotic Warrior and Robotic Liberation.

Fucking great!

Just try them out totally drunk! The second one is like a sequel to the first okay?

“Robotic Warrior is a single-loading VIC-20 demo featuring a voice synthesizer and an apocalyptic story about robots turning against their creators. The technical catch, of course, was the voice synthesizer, which was used to sing out the text of the story. The sound-related code and data became quite bloated, eating up more than a kilobyte of RAM, but it still left space for some text, pictures and flashy effects which were used to illustrate the story.

The demo uses a psychological trick causing the listener hear details that are not there. There are only fifteen distinct sounds in the voice synthesizer – far from enough – but since the viewers also read the lyrics while listening, they get the illusion of hearing the words properly.” -viznut/PWP

“Robotic Liberation, released at Assembly 2003, is still my finest show-off regarding what can be made with an unexpanded VIC-20 (and a standard disk drive). The demo is designed around an apocalyptic concept similar to that in Robotic Warrior and contains refined versions of many of the ideas introduced in my earlier work.

Unlike its prequel, however, Robotic Liberation is not an illustrated story but rather like a music video inviting robots into a battle against humanity. You are free to interpret it as having an anti-fascist and/or techno-sceptical message. Also the graphics and effects are much more abundant than in the prequel.” -viznut/PWP

Not the most fresh 8bitpeoples, but just great!

Trash80′s second album Icarus from the last May is just disco and more disco (with clicks and bleeps included).

“Dive onto the dance floor with a hybrid heart of NES bleeps and heavy beats. Trash80 has made his way back from exile with his long over due second EP Icarus- A modern chip-rock-techno-electro dance excursion. Push, climb, bite, crawl your way though the super galactic interstellar network of consciousness to rediscover one of next years hottest releases to date.” -Trash80.net

• Trash80.net

Source: arab-music.com

June Chiki Chikuma or Jun Chikuma has created original music for Bomberman games since the first one came out in 1985. The one that holds special place in my heart is Japan-only release of Super Bomberman 5 released in 1997 for SNES. It has many memorable melodies and cheerful tunes. All in all, fabulous stuff.

Whole soundtrack is available e.g. at Zophar’s Domain in .spc format. I’m using SNESamp input plug-in for Winamp. Any other player will do as well.

KynyNasty Super Bomberman 5 top picks (160kbit):
Zone 2
Zone 3
Zone 5A-Electro
Zone 5D-Magnets

SPC Players & SNES music

There’s lot of new electronic music terms/genres/themes over the past few years. Dubstep is quite self-evident and justified, Skweee is ultimately just distinguishable style of electro, Baltimore is solely partymusic and “blog house” just futile term (imo New House would be better). This summer we have yet another theme for music that have existed pretty long time.

Martin Clark calls it “Wonky”, Sasha Frere-Jones “lazer bass”, Megasoid calls the music “psychedelic robo crunk remix action” , Ghislain Poirier uses the phrase “bastard bass”, edIT offered the phrase “digital crunk shit.” and the list goes on. This music has been going on since EL-P  and Def Jux (which strangely no one mentions when talking about this new generation of futuristic hip hop shit), Dabrye and Prefuse 73.

I’ve been referring this music just “off-beat” hip hop or lately “Electronic Beats” (which refers closely to Eliot Lipp’s blog of the same name). All I know that I’ve liked it all the time never mind the term. If it’s good. So this is loosely the theme for this months KynyNasty party. Off-beats, Skweee, New House and yes, some Chiptunes too. The Return of the Boom Bap? Perhaps.

More about “Wonky”:
Martin Clark’s Pitchfork article
“Lazer-guided” article at The New Yorker
“Wonk Fonk”, free mix for download
Hudson Mohawke – Hudson’s Heeters, beat tape (HIGHLY RECOMMENDED)

Off-topic:
What is Wonky techno? Phew, you could spend hours and hours researching all the genres and styles.

I just discovered a very interesting event from the last January called C64.sk Cover Music Compo #1. While some of the tracks are pretty lame, most are worth listening and many of them are in fact, very interesting.

Here is the original website to download all the tracks of the competition in MP3, SID and PRG format.

I chose to waste some of my precious time and picked my own top five listing:

1. Dane: The Great Destroyer

• MP3 link | original song: Nine Inch Nails: The Great Destroyer

So different from the others. The most striking are the rhythm-patterns. The sounds are great! Nuts!

2. Jammer: Galaxy Bounce (Tomb Raider Mix)

• MP3 link | original song: various melodies from Tomb Raider or what?

Some weird stuff. I have no idea! Nice and repetitive though… I think the original song is not much present nor rich in aspect? I like this one a lot also…

3. Mitch, MSK & Fanta: Everybody Everybody (Crest Avantgarde Mix)

• MP3 link | original song: Black Box: Everybody Everybody

Plainly simple and very pleasant to listen. Funky stuff…

4. The Blue Ninja: Queen of Rain

• MP3 link | original song: Roxette: Queen of Rain

Nice and slow. The cover has the same melancholic feeling as the original…

5. A-Man: Elysion

• MP3 link | original song: Zardax: Elysion (tune 2)

Very basic but still a great SID track…