Archive for November, 2018

The Unicorn Princess Royally Reviews ‘October (2018)’ by Spaceman Fantastiques

Posted by The Unicorn Princess

[Editor’s note: this album was moved elsewhere on Bandcamp well after the article published, so none of the embeds work. ƪ(‾ε‾“)ʃ ]

Happy November, folks!

This month, Spaceman Fantastiques is back with yet another gorgeously articulated record, scoring his life from the previous month, entitled ‘October (2018)’.  Combining a mixture of well mixed sound textures with smartly composed arrangements, this record took me on an adventure that was left waiting to be continued from his last release.

One thing I deeply admire about Spaceman Fantastiques, and a couple reasons I review his work so much, is because I not only love it, but there is also a never ending stream of real creativity that spews out of every variety of instruments used for each album.  A multi-instrumentalist, Spaceman Fantastiques uses each acoustic texture or synthesizer to new brinks of limitations, combining that art with both storytelling and beautiful, listenable music.  This record, and his previous, have been so easy for me to write about because they’ve been so relatable.

Spaceman Fantastiques, courtesy of Bandcamp.
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Clover Chain Reacts to: Impulses – ‘L | \/ E’

Posted by Clover

Impulses’ Bandcamp description is simply “Emotional Underground Chiptune.” Started by Trevor Stafford at least a few years ago, their music is consistently calming, pretty, melodic, natural, and always makes me feel things. I haven’t stopped listening since I discovered them last month through the ChipWIN discord. Impulses’ sound is filled with the sincerity of 8-bit synths, and the occasional boppy modernity of edm, and I’ve enjoyed going through their full discography quite a bit. That being said, the latest release ‘L | \/ E EP’ easily stands out, with a polished cohesion, tightness, and clarity.

Album Artwork by Manuchi.
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❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️❄️

Posted by President Hoodie

‘ChipWINter Wilderness’ is LIVE! Both digitally and via cassette (!!!) here: https://chiptuneswin.bandcamp.com/album/chipwinter-wilderness

Heya ChipWINners! ( ´ ▽ ` )ﾉ ʷᵃᵛᵉˢ

2018 is quickly drawing to a close, and this, of course, means that it’s time once again for the winter holidays! A big part of that for many of us includes holiday music.

Although now that I think about it, the last time that we released a ‘ChipWINter‘ compilation was in 2014. What say we fix that this December? (^_−)−❄️

Spellbinding ‘ChipWINter Wilderness’ album artwork by Nate Horsfall. Totes channeling a lil’ Bob Ross this round methinks! ♥

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Rhyphte’s Remarks: Why Collabs Are Pretty Cool

Posted by rhyphte

A lot of people make the bassline (huehue) assumption that multiple musicians working together is automatically a band. While the vast majority of multi-man musical acts do come in the tried-and-true form of live-performance groups, the picture is much blurrier in the realm of electronic music characterized by digital production and playback. Due to the relative ease of collaborating piecewise with an individual thousands of miles away via the internet, you see things like features, remixes, and group handles all over the place. While this article is mostly aimed at getting into the “collab” side of things, most of what’s covered can be applied to anything similar enough.

So let’s dive into what a collab actually is, how it can help you grow, and how to manage the development of one!

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Hoodie Highlights… Lars Shurilla of SLC Chip!

Posted by President Hoodie

Happy November, folks! For this month’s interview, I talked to a multi-instrument & multi-alias chipmusican & event curator friend of mine. This cat’s done quite a bit over the last handful of years (even more than I realized!), and shows no signs of stopping any time soon!

Welcome Lars Shurilla aka The Laohu/Immortan of SLC Chip!

Lars Shurilla aka The Laohu; photo by Neil Jarvie.

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Chip Bit Sid Takes On: Boaconstructor – ‘Winds Of Null’

Posted by RicH

This year has been an excellent year for chipmusic using nanoloop. We’ve had a huge amount of releases ranging from the astounding ‘Geothermal’ by Classic Mistake, to the chilled as hell ‘Vanilla Dome’ by Glooms. This time we have Boaconstructor’s ‘Winds Of Null’. For context into ‘Boaconstructor’, he is a Seattle based musician who also runs ‘The Base bit’, one of the go-to net labels of chiptune. ‘The Base Bit’ have released a variety of accomplished albums such as ‘Refresh’ from Trey Frey, to ‘Steel City Zone’ by ‘HarleyLikesMusic’. It has been three years since ‘Boaconstructor’ has produced an album, with ‘Loop Dreams’ being released in 2015.

Whilst ‘Loop Dreams’ and ‘Winds Of Null’ were produced using Nanoloop, they are vastly different albums. ‘Loop Dreams’ focuses on using modulation to create weird and wonderful noises on a high BPM. ‘Winds Of Null’ on the other hand, focuses more on the bass, as well as detuning the melody and slowing down the music. For me I prefer Boaconstructor’s latest album, as I found it more accessible to listen to. The recording and mastering are also, in my opinion, much higher quality. Everything seems to pop better, with the levels balanced much better than ‘Loop Dreams’.

Album artwork by Dr!p.

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