I’ve been enjoying the work of “Cicada” this morning, specifically his two albums “Technology Crisis” and “Technology Crisis II,” both done with heavy 8- and 16-bit flavors, to give the impression of a videogame soundtrack. Both albums are online for free, but donations are of course appreciated. (I threw him some cash.)
Sample “Earth’s Assault on the Central A.I.,” the standout track on the first album, to see if you might enjoy the feel.
In an interview with Destructoid, Cicada said:
You mentioned it was 16-bit style, I’d like to clarify that I wanted kind of a fusion of 16-bit, 8-bit and modern synthesis sounds to create a weird, unique hybrid that stands apart from other game music. Technology Crisis II is also a bit cleaner sounding, as if it’s on the “next gen” system from the first.
Artist Page [CicadaCom.com via MeFi]
/me Downloading the albums before the site goes down…
My personal favorites are the a cappella renditions of popular songs (the Chorakseotic album). Also a big fan of the metroid project.
Thanks for the article. I really appreciated this.
There’s a whole bunch of other artists working in the chiptunes idiom. One of the better collectives thereof are the 8-Bit Peoples, though some of their offerings can be a bit too either ambient or cacophonic for casual listening. Another wonderful one is Paul Slocum’s Treewave, which is comprised primarily of an old Commodore 64, a Compaq 286, an Atari 2600 with a custom-programmed cartride that he sells, a dot matrix printer and his girlfriend Lauren singing. The visuals the 2600 outputs are pure digital LSD.
Thanks so much to everyone that’s checked out my stuff in the past day or so. Sorry if the site’s not working when you try – the server’s getting a lot more stress that it’s used to.
Definitely check out 8bitpeoples, too, Bitshifter is one of my idols.
Judson (cicada)
If you like this guy, then you should check out lektrogirl’s great album on Rephlex Records.
Last.fm page:
http://www.last.fm/music/Lektrogirl/I+Love+My+Computer
Alot more simplistic, but a whole heap of fun, and definately an earlier foray (1999, I think it was released) into the entire chiptunes genre.