review: chiptune - Thrilla @ Pink Gorilla

First, what is chiptune? It's techno inspired by early 8-bit video games.

I was perusing nwtekno for the first time in a while, thinking that I hadn't gone to anything all-ages in, well, ages. I found a chiptune night put on by, I presume, UW kids at Pink Gorilla, which appropriately enough is a video game store on the Ave. $3? Sold. I can put off drinking for a few hours.

The venue: the small back room had a projector for playing games. One of the producers, if I may use that word loosely, wired up a manually-operated light wall. The one speaker cabinet contained a potent subwoofer.

The breakdown:

• Infra Dead played a box o' circuits using patch cords. He was, he readily admitted, "just fucking around". Random and not really my thing, but kind of fascinating to watch.
• Buried for a Day is a pretty good guitarist with emo hair who had his own chiptune backing tracks. He gradually won me over by the time he covered Megadeth. Yeah, 80's flashback city, and I was the only person in the place anywhere near capable of experiencing an 80's flashback.
• Firedrill can't quite sing, but he covered "Dare to be Stupid", so I can't hate him. And in fact, his bleepy bits were quite nice.
• The guy who really brought the grove was Oven Rake. He was using a controller that looked for all the world like a Game Boy. One of my housemates told me when I got home that you can actually hack a Game Boy to make it act as a synthesizer. (!)

Well worth the money. The evil marketroid in me wants to tell those boys they can charge more, but the tight-fisted bitch in me kicks the evil marketroid in the shin.

A tip o' the hat to E (Shaddup. You know I don't use names without permission here.) for being cool and giving me a bit of background on chiptune and the local scene thereof.