syphus

It’s that time of year again: spreading myself wide across the UK (well, just England this year) with a BRAND NEW SET comprising 80% BRAND NEW MATERIAL for your rocking-it-up/jumping-around/spazzing-out pleasure.

First up is this summer’s hottest mini-fest, organised by gwEm and I and featuring some fucking blistering acts (including us :P) – BLEEP +LDN, on Saturday 11th of July: see the flyer here.

Next, it’s Newcastle at The End Bar with The Turing Test on Wednesday 22nd of July.

Then Blackpoool on the 1st of August for 8bitBall.

Get yourselves along to one of them; it’ll be fun!

Not sure how all the US-based Nintendo chipsters missed this interesting looking Blockparty release, but it doesn’t seem like anyone’s been talking about it in all the usual circles. Anyway, this is the first release of a new NDS tracker – NitroTracker means well, but sadly doesn’t seem to be coming up with the goods. If this guy’s gone for his own custom format, then maybe it’ll be able to carve out its own comfy niche…
Looking forward to giving it a shot, when I can find my DS. It took second place in the Wild compo at Blockparty, and the pouet thread is here.

The Chip Tune Marching Band, which I helped organise in Newcastle and Helsinki, has gone to New York for Bent Fest without me (while I’ve been living it up at Breakpoint :). Jamie Allen (lecturer in the department I work for) and Kazuhiro Jo put this idea together and are doing the workshop wherever they can.

Yes, I hear you cry, there are no actual ‘chiptunes’ involved, per se. The phrase is attention-grabbing, though, and reflects the fact that people are making crazy chip-style noises with squarewave generators, and it’s all terribly good fun.

Having said that, if you look closely at the video on the Make article, you’ll notice a surprisingly high ratio of chip-musicians to regular people: Cerebral Scars, Goto80 and, of course, myself :D

http://blog.makezine.com/archive/2009/04/handmade_music_bent_edition_-_tonig.html?CMP=OTC-0D6B48984890