After six days of back-to-back events, concerts and workshops, Blip Festival 2009 has officially ended. Even though the final night of the festival was met with one of the worst snowstorms in Brooklyn’s recent memory, hordes of eager fans and musicians braved the inclement weather to witness Blip’s grand finale. Game Boys sang, feet stomped, socks were rocked and an innumerable quantity of mind-altering beverages were consumed.
In addition to Blip Day 3, the next two days contained not one, not two, but three Post-Blip shows, featuring both local and visiting talent. Anamanaguchi, IAYD, Sievert, L-Tron, StarPause, Greenleaf and The Short Sleeves were just a few of the acts that kept Blip going long after its final night at the Bell House. And If you count the two VIP afterparty shows that occurred during Blip, that gives Blip Festival 2009 a grand total of nine concerts.
Needless to say, there’s a lot to recap, so for now let’s stick with a few of my personal highlights:
- I enjoyed all of the performances I saw on the last night of the Blip Fest concerts, but my stand-outs definitely include Trash Can Man and The J. Arthur Keenes Band — The former is a wonderful fellow named Martin from Malmo, Sweden who wrote the very first chiptune I’ve ever knowingly heard …and played that very track at his set on Saturday. The latter is a 17 year-old prodigy from Toronto who uses guitars, melodicas and Game Boys to create the most spectacular punk/folk/ska fusion you’ve ever heard. His EP already has my vote for Album of the Year. Download it.
- On Sunday afternoon, attendees witnessed a high-powered set from Kaz, who is apparently Aonami’s cousin! This dude is serious business, DJing with nothing but two hacked Famicoms, a PowerGlove and a badass LED visor.
- IAYD is a trooper. Not only did he fly all the way out from Corpus-Christi, Texas to be here, he also rocked Brooklyn two nights in a row and took a nasty fall on stage at DeathByAudio without missing a beat. What a kid!
- The matinee show was a bit crunched for time, but fortunately we got to see some short sets from a whole mess of visiting chip artists, including cTrix, Low-Gain, Cryptosystem, CDK, Unicorn Dream Attack, Sievert and L-Tron.
- I also checked out the Mushpot Records Post-Post-Blip show at Death By Audio on Monday. Alex Kiefer (exileFaker) brought out stylish solo Game Boy jams, The Short Sleeves played some insanely catchy Casio/Game Boy duets and Greenleaf performed a set that sounded like a soundtrack to Franz Kafka’s Metamorphosis. Unfortunately, I had to miss the last set (sylcmyk), as my body was practically falling apart at that point.
In the end, I managed to not only survive Blip Fest ‘09, but have a really swell time as well. I hope you’ve enjoyed following my coverage of the week’s events. Feel free to share your exciting/embarrassing Blip Fest stories in the comments below. See you at Blip ‘10!
