It is a great time to be a geek. As the geeky culture has exploded into the mainstream throughout all of our mature media outlets – Video, Gaming, and I would be remiss if I didn’t take the time to talk about Music there as well.
I want to take this Far Back Friday to talk about the increasing popularity of chip-tune music. This style of music is based on a combination of popular music styles (pop, rock, rap, and R&B) with the sounds of chip tunes that came from the NES/Gameboy era. Often these sounds are created from the devices themselves or are commonly sampled and then via a computer are modified into all manner of effects.
Today I want to talk about two separate artist who are doing some really cool things with this medium: Professor Shyguy and I Fight Dragons.
Professor Shyguy was recently on a podcast that I listen to entitled The Indoor Kids and was interviewed by the hosts. He doesn’t actually had much of a public bio, however he does have quite the body of work with two full CDs of original work as well as several covers. Here is one of his cover in which he covers “Black Sheep” from Scott Pilgrim.
What impressed me right off the bat is that he is a very talented singer in his own right. This only helps to propel his music as he doesn’t have to rely on others (even though he does collaborate with other artists often). He is a talent composer and performer, a combination that is certainly helpful in this particular genre, and very impressive.
In contrast, I Fight Dragons is a band that uses both your traditional rock band instruments as well as chip tune to created a fusion that works to great effect. Also IFD is recognized for their own music and not for covers. Here is one of there more popular songs entitled “The Geeks Will Inherit The Earth”.
If chip tune rock/pop were to go mainstream at this point and time, this would be the band to do it. They seem to have all the pieces at the moment necessary to make it happen: strong following, geek credibility, and music business savvy. If they were to go mainstream it would certainly make me a happy listener and would bring a lot more exposure to this type of music beyond consideration of a simple novelty sound.
Trackbacks/Pingbacks