About
Syphus started playing piano, violin and Commodore Amiga in 1989, at the age of 6. After growing up with the demoscene, trackers and chipmusic (and growing bored of playing bass in angry teenage metal bands), he finally started to release his tracked music in chipdisks and demos with the likes of CoolPhat, BDSE and Swedish megastars Up Rough.
Suddenly, the 21st Century arrived and the kids were down with the chippy bleeps! What to do?!? Saddle up that Amiga and take it to the streets! Syphus has spent the last few years playing regular live sets, in the UK and internationally, and has toured twice with Sabrepulse and the Chiptune Alliance. Recent activities include lecturing on chipmusic-related subjects at Newcastle University, giving public workshops on Amiga tracking, releasing open-source chiptune performance software, performing live at the likes of Blip Festival (NYC), Game City (UK) and the first European Maker Faire and being a drunken fixture at various European demoparties.
Live stuff is indefinitely on the back-burner right now, but Syphus is still occasionally writing Amiga tunes for demos and just for fun. Feel free to get in touch, though.
Live / Events
17th December 2009 – Liverpool, FACT/Cybersonica: Space Invaders: Art and the Computer Game Environment – launch party @ Chameleon Bar
14th November 2009 – Newcastle, Polytechnic Ecologies: Amiga Tracking Workshop @ Star & Shadow Cinema
30th October 2009 – Nottingham Game City @ Muse Bar + tracking workshop (with Sabrepulse)
22nd July 2009 – Newcastle, The End Bar
11th July 2009 – London, Bleep +LDN @ The Courtyard
15th March 2009 – Newcastle, Maker Faire @ The Other Rooms
4th-7th December 2008 – Brooklyn, NY @ Blip Festival
13th September 2008 – Exeter, Sundown demoparty
11th September 2008 – Newcastle, The Telegraph
24th-31st August 2008 – Chiptune Alliance Tour ‘08:
24th August – Glasgow, The Cat House25th August – Edinburgh, The Hive26th August – Newcastle, Carling Academy27th August – Sheffield, Corporation28th August – Bournemouth, iBAR29th August – London, Camden Barfly (The Fly)30th August – Luton, The Hat Factory31st August – Lincoln, The Duke of Wellington
9th November 2007 – Newcastle @ High Jinks
October 2007 – Chiptunes Alliance Tour
23rd September – O’Henrys, Glasgow24th September – The Cooperage, Newcastle25th September – The Cellar, Oxford26th September – Frog & Parrot, Sheffield27th September – Chinnerys, Southend-on-Sea28th September – TJ’s, Newport29th September – The Hat Factory, Luton30th September – (Monto) Water Rats, London
May 2007 – Manhattan/Brooklyn NY with Project Transonic
Earlier – Various places I’ve forgotten, as Syphus, Lightbomb or with other acts…
Productions
Ribbons, Tunnels & Techno [ate bit]
Code by evilpaul of Ate Bit, banging techno soundtrack by syphus. Done in Renoise over two evenings, just in time for Sundown’08!
Planet Hively [IRiS & Up Rough]
A musicdisk of HivelyTracker tunes from the first Hively compo – including my winning entry and a few others by me :) This was coded by HivelyTracker
author Xeron and ported to over twenty different systems from down the ages, including Amiga, Xbox, Wii, PSP, Acorn, GamePark [etc.].
Sundown ‘07 Invite [BDSE]
A nice, quick, no-nonsense invitro done by me and parapete (founder/only members of legendary The Bobby Davro Snooker Experience) for Sundown ‘07.
This was entered at Assembly 07 in Helsinki – it didn’t come close to winning, of course, but got the exposure we wanted ;)
Pandamonium [CoolPHat]
Code by Vampire of TZT, featuring quite a few of my tunes which sat around for years until Coax^CoolPHat roped a coder into actually *doing* it.
Sound of The Untergrund [Ukscene Allstars]
Another great musicdisk interface by Vampire of TZT, with tunes from me and KEiTO of Alcatraz. Mostly
AHX and Hively tunes here, making it a lot of fun in a tiny package. A Ukscene Allstars release!
Scary Dinosaur [BDSE]
This is a 32kb demo we did for Outline 2006 – we won the 64kb PC intro competition, despite our entry being half the filesize of the others ;)
I think those funky Atari kids liked our oldschool stylze.
Flatpack [BDSE]
Done for Breakpoint 2006 – only 64kb! Rather than using a softsynth, I did a d’n'b XM for this one and jammed it in tight.
