Album Reviews

Archive for the ‘Album Reviews’ Category

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

Posted November 13, 2018 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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Aydan Appreciates: ‘Dizzy Knight Original Soundtrack’ by Norrin Radd

Posted November 6, 2018 by Aydan Scott

Hey, all you chipfans out there! It’s been a hot minute because a lot of HUGE things have been happening in my life [Editor’s note: congrats to Aydan on getting married! ♥], but I’m back with an OST review hot off the press! Dizzy Knight is a mobile game released in October 2018, and is highly reminiscent of SNES adventure games, both in graphical aesthetic and in its music. When Norrin Radd released the soundtrack a little longer than two weeks ago on Bandcamp, I knew I’d heard his name somewhere, and upon further sleuthing discovered that he’d written a track for one of the greatest chipmusic compilations ever released, ‘Noisechan and Nugget: Adventures in Chiptunes’. As evidenced by his SoundCloud and Bandcamp portfolio, he specializes in writing highly polished OST music; however, in his own liner notes, he reveals that the tracks on the ‘Dizzy Knight OST’ are more raw in nature. Let’s see what’s in store for us on this OST!

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ChipWIN-tern Presents: Timespinner

Posted November 1, 2018 by The ChipWIN-tern

I turn 28 this month, in fact a week from today. At this age, I find myself wishing I had the ability to go back in time and change a number of things that led my life to be the way it is today. And honestly, not only that, but there are certain parts of my life I wish I could live over again, like the parts of my childhood I spent playing my Super Nintendo and my friend’s Playstation 1 after school, jamming out to the Castlevania: Symphony of the Night OST.

This will never happen, of course. I don’t have some kind of time machine to go back, and I’ll never be able to experience Michiru Yamane and Koji Igarashi’s masterpiece again for the first time. What I do have, however, is the next best thing: Timespinner, the first game by Lunar Ray games with an amazing soundtrack by Jeff Ball of Tiny Barbarian DX and Steven Universe fame (among many others), which follows the story of Lunais – a woman who must travel between the ancient past and ruined present of her world to put an end to the tyranny her people face from an intergalactic empire. Funded on Kickstarter back in 2014, this was one of those games I backed and hoped and prayed it would actually come to completion, having been burned by a number of other very promising retro-inspired campaigns in the past – and lo and behold, at the end of September of this year I got my hands on my pledge and devoured the game immediately. Instead of my normal “music only” review column this month, I’d like to actually talk about the game as well – and as with my occasional event coverage, I’ll give you the handy #MUSIC and #GAME tags to Ctrl+F back and forth to if you only want to read one of those reviews.

Let’s get spinning!

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The Unicorn Princess Royally Reviews ‘2011’ by WMD

Posted October 30, 2018 by The Unicorn Princess

Happy October, folks!

Just as the month comes to an end, I bring to you a cool little surprise. Released on September 29, WMD is combining their ability to create atmospheric sound textures and presenting a record paired with straight up chiptune. It’s been quite a while since something like this has been released, and judging by the comments on their Bandcamp, I’m not the only one excited about it.

Album cover for WMD’s ‘2011’. Credit: Bandcamp

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Chip Bit Sid Takes On: Paladin Shield – ‘Many Blessings’

Posted October 25, 2018 by RicH

It is funny how plans can be altered within a second. Originally, I was going to review something else. However, just as I was about to put fingers to keyboard, I got an email: ‘Paladin Shield’ had just released a new album; ‘Many Blessings’! ‘Hot damn’, I said as I spent more money on yet another album. Below are three tracks that I loved off ‘Many Blessings’ and why I think it’s top notch.

Photo by jmswts.

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Clover Chain Reacts To: ‘Nascens’ by meganeko

Posted October 16, 2018 by Clover

My friend was on TV recently. He was shopping at a bookstore, and the local news was doing a segment on reading, interviewing customers there. When asked to “talk about your favorite book”, he panicked, grabbing the first book that came to his mind: ‘The Crying of Lot 49’, a mere 160 page novella. Now, the interview went fine; he talked about its good writing and such. Upon relaying this story to me, however, my friend expressed regret. He told me it really is one of his favorites, and it’s surprising to find so much value in a pretty short book, and he wishes he could have pointed that out. He’d say something like, “It’s a really small book that says a lot of big ideas.”

meganeko’s ‘Nascens’ is one of my favorite music releases. It’s full of originality. It surprises me. Yes it’s short, but it’s a small EP that shows a lot of big ideas.