Zen Albatross

Some sonic prophecy for your doomsday listening pleasure ~*

Fri, 21 Dec 2012 23:41:00 -0500

Some sonic prophecy for your doomsday listening pleasure ~*

♬ ✈ Helping kick off the monobomb records ROUTE XIX tour this...

Mon, 20 Aug 2012 19:08:00 -0400

♬ ✈ Helping kick off the monobomb records ROUTE XIX tour this weekend in San Francisco with minusbaby, crashfaster, Trash80, + more. They’ll also be making stops in Cupertino, San Jose, Portland, and Seattle.

8bitSF and monobomb records are proud to present the Route XIX West Coast Tour, a collection of the finest artists in chip music. Our San Francisco stop is ground zero, with an absolutely massive lineup to keep you dancing and rocking all night long!

ALL AGES!

Tickets available NOW: http://www.dnalounge.com/calendar/2012/08-26.html

Trash80 (los angeles) [http://trash80.com/]

Trash80 captivates and entrances with his blend of soaring dance anthems and flawlessly executed club beats.

minusbaby (new york) [http://minusbaby.com/]

minusbaby smashes his love for type, patterns and limited palettes into a unique visual and musical language that pushes the boundaries of the art of bass (and how it moves asses).

crashfaster (san francisco) [http://crashfaster.com/]

crashfaster combines the gritty chip sounds of the Gameboy and NES with hard-hitting rock and synthetic and human vocals to form a completely original hybrid synth-pop-rock experience.

Zen Albatross (new york) [http://zenalbatross.net/]

Brooklyn’s Zen Albatross has explored & exploited the waveform synthesis capabilities of antiquated computer systems. His fearful obsession with technology as an ideological weapon is equaled only by his love of American craft beer.

Slime Girls (san jose) [http://slimegirls.bandcamp.com/]

Slime Girls are a distorted pulsewave assault of gameboys, guitars and energetic drums. Sometimes fast, lush and loud punk rock, other times melancholy surf jams, sometimes ever danceable ska, yet always tied together with an electronic wash of melodic chip music.

Matthew Joseph Payne (oakland) [http://matthewjosephpayne.bandcamp.com/]

One half of the unstoppable chiptune act The Glowing Stars, Matthew Joseph Payne creates a sound all his own with his chamber-chip-doom-folk solo project.

DJ sets by

TRΛCER (san francisco) [http://tracervision.com/]
&
Mr. Smith (san jose) [http://www.facebook.com/thedjmrsmith]

≈≈Thx for the ROMemories≈≈ (GIF by @Radstronomical)

Tue, 29 May 2012 12:20:00 -0400

≈*≈Thx for the ROMemories≈*≈

(GIF by @Radstronomical)

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Tue, 22 May 2012 18:32:00 -0400

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Next week I’ll be playing two shows during the 2012 Game...

Fri, 02 Mar 2012 14:26:00 -0500

Next week I’ll be playing two shows during the 2012 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. These lineups are absolutely stacked with amazing performers, thanks in large part to friend and monobomb compatriot crashfaster, so if you’re in town for the conference, be sure to check them out:

8bitSF presents POW: Indie Music & Developers Collide
Tuesday, March 6th @ 8:00pm
Tickets: http://www.dnalounge.com/ calendar/2012/03-06.html
$8 advance/$12 door/$5 with GDC Badge
21+

RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/151961534920931/

In honor of the 2012 Game Developer’s Conference, 8bitSF [http://8bitsf.com/] is proud to present POW, a celebration of the indie spirit. POW is a colossal night of sound + vision, and features performances by some of the best acts in both gaming and chip music as well as demo tables and presentations by indie developers Polytron [http://polytroncorporation.com] (FEZ), Muteki Corporation [http://mutekicorp.com/] (Dragon Fantasy), Open Emotion Studios [http:// www.openemotionstudios.com/] (Revoltin’ Youth), Yobble
[http://yobble.me/] (Air Guitar) and more!

Live Performances by:

VIRT aka Jake Kaufman [http://virt.bandcamp.com/] (Retro City Rampage, Bloodrayne: Betrayal)

Freaky DNA aka Leonard J. Paul [http://videogameaudio.com/] (Retro City Rampage, NBA Jam 2010)

Disasterpeace [http://disasterpeace.com/] (FEZ)

minusbaby [http://minusbaby.com/] (BIT.TRIP FATE, Phone Story)

crashfaster [http:// crashfaster.bandcamp.com/] (Dragon Fantasy)

The Glowing Stars [http:// theglowingstars.bandcamp.co m/]

Zen Albatross [http://zenalbatross.net/]

A Rival [http:// blog.planetskill.com/]

8-BIT DOPE: GDC Edition
Friday, March 9th @ 9PM
MIST Ultra Club
316 11th Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

$12 At the door $9 w/ GDC pass

RSVP: https://www.facebook.com/events/349686438394918/

The return of our big GDC underground party. Some the hottest 8-BIT acts from SF and around the world, mixed with thick, aggressive electro, enhanced by eye melting light & pop visuals. Hosted by DOPE, crashfaster and 8bitSF.

featuring performances by…

Trash80 (8bitpeoples, LA) - Dreamy melodies & driving dance anthems

minusbaby (monobomb, NYC) - Equatorial beats, ass-rattling bass and progressive grooves

crashfaster (monobomb, SF) - High-energy electro pop layered with moody robotic vocals

dj medic (DOPE, SF) - Nu-disco to electro to giant robots, a tight mix of pop, flow and education

Zen Albatross (monobomb, NYC) - Infectious beats and marching, apocalyptic sonic destruction

E.N. Cowell (monobomb, SF) - Dirty, teeth-rattling electro house filtered to crunchy perfection

Space Town Savior (SD) - Massive, trance-inspired, dance floor smashers

Starpause (hexawe, SF) - Manical IDM beats meet lo-fi electro sleaze in a robot porno

Lighting and Visuals by FUTURE WEAPONS and VJ duplesiX

For a taste of what these kids are bringing to your ears, check out our rundown:
http://dope415.com/8-bit-dope-the-revenge-of-chipscene

[NYC] 2.3.12 // BinAural Visual @ Vaudeville Park - n0izmkr +...

Tue, 31 Jan 2012 12:30:05 -0500

[NYC] 2.3.12 // BinAural Visual @ Vaudeville Park - n0izmkr + Invaderbacca, paris + outpt, Zen Albatross + Chromacle

I’ll be doing an audiovisual drone/noise performance this Friday at Vaudeville Park in Brooklyn. This will be all-new, mostly improvised material in collaboration with SaraBee on cello and Chromacle on visuals. Details below:

##
I/O Chip Music
presents

BinAural Visual
@ Vaudeville Park
February 3 2011
730pm
$7

n0izmkr + invaderbacca
http://nicolecarrollmusic.com/
http://invaderbacca.tumblr.com/

n0izmkr performs structured improvisational noise sets, incorporating circuit bent instruments, handmade synthesizers, custom midi controllers, environmental samples, and a contact mic orchestra. invaderbacca sees the colors that nobody sees. his approach to visualizing the sounds surrounding him is almost sonic itself in nature, whether he’s creating frenetic glitchnes sets or his own spasmodic video blasts.

outpt + paris
http://outptandparis.com/

outpt+paris present drum & space: an audio/visual performance telling the story of a future space traveller as she looks to trade the safety of her home world for the furthest regions of the universe. the set is a high energy mix of analog beats, digitized vocals, and coordinated visuals.

zen albatross + chromacle
http://zenalbatross.net/

zen albatross creates colossal obelisks of sound using antiquated computer consoles. for this performance, tape loops and improvised electronics expand and disintegrate the usual rhythmic constructs into a surreal stream of carefully sustained drones and noise. the set will be accompanied by sarabee on cello and chromacle on visuals.

Vaudeville Park
26 Bushwick Ave
(corner of Bushwick and Devoe St)
Brooklyn, NY 11211

L train to Graham Ave
Google Map: http://brk.to/o9a
RSVP
vaudevillepark.org
##

http://zenalbatross.net/ ██ ███ ███████ ██ ███████ ██ #SOPA ███...

Wed, 18 Jan 2012 13:42:00 -0500

http://zenalbatross.net/ ██ ███ ███████ ██ ███████ ██ #SOPA ███ #PIPA ████████ ██████████ █████ ██████ ███████ ███ ███████████████

██████████████████████████████████

#SOPABlackout

Post-MAGFest Recap + Taking Game Boy Orders

Wed, 11 Jan 2012 19:27:00 -0500

We’re all still coming down from MAGFest last weekend and as expected, this year was the best it’s ever been. All the chip concerts exceeded expectations, and I was especially pleased to see the legendary Jake “Virt” Kaufman — pink hair, glowsticks and all — back on stage after a few years of MIA. Seeing Nobuo Uematsu and his band Earthbound Papas was also a life-altering experience. Original Sound Version did a nice recap of all this and more with photos, and Chip Music Chronicle caught pretty much everything on video.

Also great was the surprising amount of interest in modded Game Boys. Stock is nearly wiped clean for the moment, but due to the demand I’ve decided to begin accepting orders via email until I can get some sort of online shop set up. If you’re not the soldering type and are interested in backlit/prosounded DMG’s, don’t hesitate to contact me with requests.

See you at MAGFest X+1.

MAGFest Time Is Here

Wed, 04 Jan 2012 15:41:00 -0500

MAGFest Time Is Here:

MAGFest is an event I’ve had the pleasure of attending annually for the better part of the past 5 years. For those unfamiliar, here’s the dark of it: 4 days of non-stop, round-the-clock concerts, games, panels and partying inside of a giant hotel / convention center in the D.C. area. Accent on the partying.

While I usually steer clear of videogame cover bands and “fan” events in general, there’s some key differences that continue to make MAGFest worthy of my time, and yours. Now in its 10th year, it is one of the few long-running events of its type that is built from the ground up with a shoestring budget and zero corporate sponsorship. As a result MAGFest is diverse and open-minded — more of a community-oriented DIY music meetup / game space / rowdy hotel party than a “convention” — and has built its reputation on being exactly what it was intended to be.

Recently, the formula has helped bring about a number of big changes: Namely, moving to a much larger space (by necessity, as last year’s attendance went beyond max capacity) and attracting big-time videogame industry composers and developers. In the past they’ve had folks like Secret of Mana composer Hiroki Kikuta and simulation games pioneer Sid Meier. This year, they’ve managed to bag Final Fantasy series composer Nobuo Uematsu and his new band, Earthbound Papas.

My involvement this year includes a 2-day showcase of chip musicians and visual artists featuring Jake “Virt” Kaufman, Danimal Cannon, Knife City, Disasterpeace & more. I’ll also have a few of these guys for sale in vendor area:

Come by and say hello if you’re making your way down to D.C. this weekend, or follow Original Sound Version for live updates.

I’ve been added as a last-minute special guest to this...

Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:33:00 -0500

I’ve been added as a last-minute special guest to this already insane Black Friday lineup in Rochester, NY w/ revengineers, Noisewaves & knife city. WNY/Rochester: Do not miss this.

///////////////////////////

RSVP

[11.25.11] ROCHESTER CHIP 1 YR ANNIVERSARY
@ The Bug Jar
219 Monroe Ave, Rochester NY
9 PM - 12 AM
18+

$7 (21+) / $9 (20-)

Rochester Chip’s ONE YEAR ANNIVERSARY SHOW! 12 shows under our belt, and plenty more to come. Celebrate a year of bringing some of the best chip acts around to Rochester with us.

KNIFE CITY (NY)
Luke Silas, known by many as the drummer for ANAMANAGUCHI, is bringing us his unique brand of catchy Game Boy jams. Impossible to not dance to. For fans of dubstep/electro!

https://8bc.org/members/likeluke/

NOISEWAVES (MI)
This Michigan-based duo creates atmospheric and sprawling post-rock jams with the help of their trusty NES.

http://noisewaves.bandcamp.com/

REVENGINEERS (NY)
Hometown heroes. They’ve been described as mid-90’s with Game Boys. We’ll let you decide.

http://revengineers.tumblr.com/

MNT DST (NY)
Rochester’s most popular new electronic act, and brainchild of stand-up dude Christopher Heath. Features former members of Science vs. Witchcraft.

ZEN ALBATROSS (JUST ADDED!!!!)
Truly epic. Electronic audio destruction via dual Gameboys.

http://music.zenalbatross.net/

UPDATE: Free bonus show in San Jose on Wednesday, 9/21 with...

Tue, 06 Sep 2011 15:58:00 -0400

UPDATE: Free bonus show in San Jose on Wednesday, 9/21 with crashfaster and Wizwars • More info here

Returning to San Francisco this month to devastate more West Coast ear drums at Pulsewave SF. Lineup is absolutely killer, not to be missed.

▁▟ ♫▐▀▀█▄▄▌♫ ▙▁
##################

RSVP on Facebook

Thursday, September 22nd

DNA Lounge
375 Eleventh Street, San Francisco, CA 94103

Doors at 7:00PM
Show at 8:00PM

ALL AGES

Advance: $12
Door: $16

PulsewaveSF returns with one of our biggest lineups yet! Chip Music will rain down upon DNA Lounge!
ALL AGES!

$12 advance tickets
$15 at the door

Covox (Stockholm)

Bud Melvin (New Mexico)

Zen Albatross (Brooklyn)

Wizwars (Los Angeles)

DJ Doctor Popular

Visuals by

George & Starpause

A new music series is starting up in Brooklyn this Thursday...

Tue, 02 Aug 2011 13:00:05 -0400

A new music series is starting up in Brooklyn this Thursday courtesy of our friends at Cheese ‘n Beer. CNB: Spectrum will use chip music as a base for an expanded exploration of NYC’s electronic music fringe.

To commemorate I’ll be premiering some new material, accompanied by visuals from No Carrier and sets from rhinostrich, DaPantz and Chipocrite.

And it’s free. Save your money and buy back some of that medical coverage the government is taking away from you.

Or just buy a beer. Whatever.

######################
Thursday, August 4th 2011

Brooklyn Fireproof East
119 Ingraham Street (L to Morgan Ave)
Brooklyn NY

9 PM
FREE (21+)
RSVP

Blip Festival 2011: Full Set Now Available On Free Music Archive

Tue, 14 Jun 2011 12:12:00 -0400

Blip Festival 2011: Full Set Now Available On Free Music Archive:

The full Zen Albatross set from Blip Festival 2011 is now available for streaming and download at Free Music Archive. Board recordings of all the acts will be posted over the next week so keep checking back. There’s also a fair amount available right now.

Many, many thanks to our friends at WFMU and FMA for recording and hosting these.

Blip Festival 2011: THANK YOU

Mon, 23 May 2011 15:26:00 -0400

Six years ago, I had never been to a chip music show in my life. I had no clue how to use a tracker and I didn’t know what a “hexadecimal genome” was (I still don’t, but I’m known to stagedive when 10K asks loudly into a microphone). Nevertheless, I reached out from my academic prison in upstate New York to channel what I could of the radiant energy that seemed to pour from a tiny subculture in my neighboring childhood urban sprawl of New York City.

Tirelessly pursuing my soon-to-be-worthless B.A. in Digital Media Art, I began to uncover what I could about this vibrant music scene that repurposed outdated computer hardware to make music. I hosted a radio show, which was really quite terrible, and let the sounds of artists like Bit Shifter, Glomag and Nullsleep inspire my early art projects, which were also really quite terrible.

Finally I secured my useless degree and fled to New York City. But my daring escape came with a price: 9 months of unemployment, extreme poverty and all manner of disheartening misfortunes lay in wait for me.

Somehow I survived, thanks mostly to the moral support of a number of individuals, many of whom were the very artists I had once admired from afar, and all of whom I now consider some of my closest friends.

As expected, saying it’s been a surreal pleasure to perform at the Blip Festival this past weekend alongside so many absurdly talented and generally amazing people rings harshly in my head as an obscene understatement. Even if I were to play dozens more music festivals in my lifetime, I simply can’t imagine they’d include the sense of unfettered camaraderie that Blip so effortlessly provides.

Consider this letter my giant THANK YOU to everyone that made this happen. Stand by for massive GREETZ:

To Jenn, Ricardo, Dustin, Adam & Kris K - I couldn’t have found a nicer and more supportive set of core bros if I had combed every street of all 5 of these boroughs (even the Bronx, lol)

To Josh Davis, aka Bit Shifter & Chris Burke, aka Glomag - Your friendship, support and enthusiasm has proven to be just as inspiring as your music

To all the organizers, artists & volunteers at 8bitpeoples and The Tank - Thanks for keeping this shit going long enough to make this part of the story possible.

To Emi - You don’t deserve half of the shit I make you put up with. The other half is fair game so DEAL WITH IT.

To all the visualists who have given sight to my sound: NO CARRIER, Invaderbacca, vade, Batsly Adams, et al - Don’t let anyone ever tell you that your shit is less than half the reason these things are so incredible. (in fact, sometimes it’s probably more)

To all musician-friends from near and far: cTrix, minusbaby, Animal Style, Nullsleep, little-scale, Starscream, TOO MANY TO MENTION - Being able to see all of you perform (some more times than I can count) throughout the years has provided an unparalleled creative energy that’s as exciting as it is inspiring.

To the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Tim Wu and DIY’ers everywhere - You are an inspiration for creativity and freedom in a world where our technologies are otherwise owned & enslaved by an unfeeling corporate hand. Never give up the fight.

All supporters on the journalism front: Peter Swimm, Matt Hawkins, Samit Sarkar, Topher Cantler, Leigh Alexander and everyone else who has helped spread the word out of genuine love for the scene.

Everyone who has ever come to a show and did not ask me if I’m playing videogame music - Your informed appreciation makes me feel better about making music with shitty electronics.

See you all at BLIP FESTIVAL 2012: MAYAN LONG-COUNT APOCALYPSE EDITION™

It’s time. Blip Festival begins TONIGHT at 8:00PM....

Thu, 19 May 2011 14:29:00 -0400

It’s time. Blip Festival begins TONIGHT at 8:00PM. I’ll be performing 2nd at around 8:40PM, following by Talk to Animals, minusbaby, Anamanaguchi and others.

Then afterwards, I’m curating this late night arcade afterparty with KILL SCREEN and Motherboard.tv. Come to the new Babycastles in Williamsburg (285 Kent Ave) for free show with music by Animal Style (Philadelphia), Derris Kharlan (Australia) and NOTE! (NYC) + visuals by Batsly Adams (NYC) and games by Zach Gage, Ivan Safrin and more.

RSVP

BLIP FESTIVAL IS HAPPENING: May 19--21 @ Eyebeam NYC

Wed, 20 Apr 2011 12:00:00 -0400

I attended my first Blip Festival in 2008, after completing my undergrad work in upstate New York. Despite being the focus of my studies for the past 2 years, I had used a tracker maybe once, and had been to exactly two chip shows. The fest was vibrant and exhilarating, and I was perfectly content with watching from the sidelines.

Now, by some strange twist of fate, I’m slated to perform at that very same festival as it celebrates its 5th anniversary as the largest chip music event on earth.

The schedule is absolutely massive — I’ll be followed by a swarm of international demoscene legends like Ultrasyd, cTrix and 4mat, plus a whole mess of insanely talented New York area locals: Anamanaguchi, Bit Shifter, exileFaker et al. To top it off, some incredible visual artists from all over will paint the walls with pixels during all three nights of performances: Racquel Myers, NO CARRIER and m7kenji, to name a few.

Get your tickets now at http://blipfestival.org/2011/tickets/

Full schedule, below:

Those guys up in Rochester NY are killing it lately. Here is...

Sun, 17 Apr 2011 12:07:00 -0400

Those guys up in Rochester NY are killing it lately. Here is Revengineers guitarist Nick Maynard’s Game Boy music how-to ‘zine, which he’s selling for $5 and is way cooler to look at than the official LSDJ manual. (Sorry, Johan :( )

Also: Their Rochester Chip compilation (which I have a track on) sold out completely at yesterday’s Record Store Day show at Record Archive. I’m hearing there’s more on the way though.

You’re coming to hang with all of us at Blip Festival, right?

The Sound of #Sworcery: Q+A With Indie Rocker-Turned-Videogame Composer Jim Guthrie

Sat, 16 Apr 2011 10:11:00 -0400

The Sound of #Sworcery: Q+A With Indie Rocker-Turned-Videogame Composer Jim Guthrie:

Amidst a desolate landscape of barely-stimulating apps made with boring train rides in mind, Superbrothers: Sword & Sworcery EP (read my review here) stands as a testament to the potential for seriously expressive videogaming on Apple’s iOS platform. Unlike the fruit-slicing, bird-catapulting monotony of its peers, this Canadian indie collaboration is designed to hijack your senses, assembling visuals, audio and gameplay with synaesthetic cohesion.

At the helm of the game’s hypnotizing sound is singer-songwriter Jim Guthrie. A Juno award-winning indie rock hero who has had a hand in the rising of Canadian artists like Feist, Broken Social Scene and Owen Pallett (née ‘Final Fantasy’), Guthrie isn’t normally a game composer by trade. But for S&SEP, his alternate take on the videogame soundtrack — which I still hesitate to call a “score” — offers what many examples of game music have been unwilling to dish out: Full-on audiovisual immersion via a collection of arresting interactive soundscapes. And if that wasn’t enough, his LP release for the game, S&SEP: The Ballad of the Space Babies, presents us with the other side of the coin: music from the game assembled into a collection of awe-inspiring standalone arrangements.

We chatted with Jim over email earlier this month to see what it’s like putting on the videogame composer hat for the first time, and what the future might hold as the worlds of pop music and videogame soundtracks collide.

Read More at Motherboard

Interviewed On WNYC's Soundcheck (Audio)

Tue, 15 Mar 2011 12:00:08 -0400

Interviewed On WNYC's Soundcheck (Audio):

Yesterday I was a guest of John Schaefer on WNYC’s Soundcheck along with Grammy award-winning videogame composer Christopher Tin. We didn’t discuss anything earth-shatteringly new if you follow this blog regularly, but I was able to draw a couple points from an article I had written previously on the future of videogame music. I also briefly skimmed the surface on contemporary chip music and how it differs drastically in approach and function.

Listen below:

See Ya, GDC. Hello, PAX East

Thu, 10 Mar 2011 12:30:00 -0500

I’m still not fully recovered from all of the rad stuff that went on last week at GDC in San Francisco (see some of my coverage here, here and here), but nevertheless, I’m headed to Boston this weekend for PAX East.

The chip showcase we had there last year was pretty legit, but this year it’s going into overdrive: Local allies Boston8bit have teamed up with MAGFest to organize a 3-part chip showcase featuring 15 performers and 3 visual artists at the PAX East Jamspace on Friday, Saturday and Sunday.

I’ll be giving a presentation on the history of chip music Saturday morning at 10 AM in the Jamspace, then performing alongside AdamGetsAwesome, Danimal Cannon, Bright Primate and Smiletron from 11 - 2 PM.

I’ll be bringing some merch with me too: Micro-CD’s (the same ones I premiered at PAX Prime - only a couple left) and 1” Zen Albatross buttons, brought to you thanks to the ~~slave labor~~ hard work of Jenn DLV:

Other must-see acts like NY chiptune forebears Bit Shifter and Glomag will also be performing throughout the weekend. And if you’re still around on Sunday, definitely don’t miss casio/gameboy duo The Shortsleeves, who are on tour this month.

Here’s the full lineup:

=== FRIDAY ===
Cathode Rays
Oxygenstar
Active Knowledge
Animal Style
Bit Shifter

=== SATURDAY ===
AdamGetsAwesome
Zen Albatross
Danimal Cannon
Br1ght Pr1mate
Smiletron

=== SUNDAY ===
7th Gear
Facundo
Shortsleeves
Disasterpeace
glomag and Corset lore

=== VISUAL ARTISTS ===
InvaderBacca
HN_i_C
Batsly Adams

More info + RSVP here.