We just released episode 43 of the Gamewave Podcast, and we tried something a little different this time - we recorded it using a Talkboy; I’m pretty sure that’s the first time it’s ever been done before.

The audio quality isn’t actually that bad, but don’t worry, we only recorded the speech using the Talkboy, not the music - that would have been silly! And we did play some rad music this week: Je deviens dj en 3 jours, temp sound solutions, alex mauer, Pixelh8, Spheres of Chaos, Spamtron, NESMETAL, Starship Amazing, Dudymas, Skip and Virt. There’s also a return of the ‘Website of the Week’ feature! Don’t miss this show!

Head on over to gamewavepodcast.com or subscribe to the feed at gamewavepodcast.com/rss.xml.

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Although Matthew Applegate is a classically trained musician, he is perhaps best known as Pixelh8, the groundbreaking chiptune artist. Bringing many technical innovations to the VGIM community, Pixelh8 has also made efforts to bring chiptunes to a wider audience, touring with popular British singer Imogen Heap and performing for Huw Stevens on Radio 1.

Describing how it all began: “When PCs came into the home I didn’t like their samples and I just wanted to go back” Pixelh8 explains. “I loved the old tracker programs like Octamed and ProTracker, and eventually with things like emulation and homebrew development, people were able to program for these old machines like the Game Boy, and make music on them.”

Pixelh8 utilises various old games consoles and childrens’ toys to create his music both live and in the studio, including the Game Boy, NES, Sega Game Gear, ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Acorn Electron. “It varies from show to show, depending on whether or not I think I will be able to get my modified computers through that country’s security” says Pixelh8. “Most of my computers have wires sticking out of them here and there, so they look quite dangerous. I had to set up my equipment in an airport in Germany [and] do a mini gig to show them what everything did before they would let me return to England.”

Whereas many chiptune artists write music with more user-friendly software and interfaces, Pixelh8 is well known for his raw programming skills.

“My last album took about a year to program, lots of study” he says. “I wanted to control every sound and thats something you just couldnt do unless you programmed it.”

Pixelh8 has even written his own music software for the Game Boy and Nintendo DS, with a similar program currently in production for the ZX Spectrum.

Pixelh8 admits that such an approach to music can be hard work and time-consuming, but it does have its benefits: “If you can find an old computer like the Russian made computer, the Electronika 60 or BI-201, chances are not many other people have used it for making music on, or at least not recently, so you’ll have a individual sound”.

But Pixelh8’s musical inspirations are not limited to the world of computers. “I want my music to sound human” he says. “Musically I am inspired by people like Sly & The Family Stone and Curtis Mayfield, so the rhythms aren’t perfect, they are brilliant and human.”

Talking about the recent surge in popularity of chiptune and VGIM, Pixelh8 reckons: “In England there is a lot of nostalgia about the 80s so that might be one reason for it”. He adds, “For me chiptune music is quite [a] cathartic process, it helps me deal with a wasted youth in front of a computer screen.”

Pixelh8’s homepage
Pixelh8’s MySpace page

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So last year, I had a slight obsession with arcade game ‘Love and Berry’ and wrote a review which was later published in Cake magazine.

The other day I went to play the game again at my semi-local arcade (it only took two buses and a short walk to get to, talk about casual) with a couple of friends who I was introducing to the game.

We all became hugely addicted to the game and the acquisition of new dresses and hairdos for our pretty avatars. Turns out it wasn’t just me that found it hugely thrilling to receive these cardboard apparel.

Among new items I got included the Jasmin Dress, Rainbow Sneakers and Marine Hair - wow!

I’m glad it takes so long to get there and I can’t enjoy this at home, or I wouldn’t have any money left.

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Today in Europe, Okami has finally been unleashed to the masses on the Wii console, sans IGN cover branding.

Mixing Japanese folklore and a Japanese art style, players must use the new innovative controls to restore the land back to its former glory. Okami tells the story of a mythical sun god who sets out to restore his destroyed world back to how it was.

You can find out more at the official website.

Okami for the Wii is out now and retails for the price of £29.99 

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Having already made his name releasing full blown albums on reworked NES cartridges, as well as working previously with world renowned label 8bitpeoples and performing live at the Blip Festival in New York late last year, it was about time for Alex Mauer to release his first major, largely anticipated compact disc album, which sadly doesn’t require blowing to play properly.

The chip music scene is really seeing an extraordinary growth right now, with many artists finding listeners through social networking sites like MySpace. Alex Mauer is seen as one of the more innovative artists from a niche genre at bursting point. Although it is nigh on impossible to give a definitive list of chip tune artists worthy of the most praise, Mauer’s latest album certainly does help to define the many different inspirations for artists quite commonly labelled together out of convenience.

With his work, I get the sense that Mauer is more interested in breaking apart the technologies of old and using them for exploration, bringing back a warm fussy feeling of nostalgia. Many popular chip artists purely seek to create a certain sound from these old machines combining them with newer production methods without attaching the significance of their original intention - video games. Mauer’s ‘9999′ works much like a video game soundtrack, produced with many different consoles, each song is very short in it’s execution and would seem at home looped in one of your favourite video games. Right down to the exaggerated track names, it wouldn’t be wrong to close your eyes and imagine a controller lodged between your palms as you listen.

The album is made up of 42 different tracks, created using the powers of reversed engineered games consoles including the NES, Commodore 64, Gameboy, Atari XL computer, MSX computer, IBM PC/DOS, Commodore Amiga, Game Gear, and Sega Genesis. Each song is usually around the one minute mark, which works quite well as a homage to older video game soundtracks where the songs would usually loop hundreds of times before you moved onto the next level, and the next song. It is however, very difficult to appreciate each song under its own merit. Older video game soundtracks worked by looping the same small sample hundreds of times until you finished the level and moved on. It is overwhelming to listen to the album as a whole without pausing or repeating certain tracks that deserve more attention than they are given. Placing his music into a different context, in this example, MySpace, changes everything. The songs become separated and singular and so you are able to appreciate each song for its own merit. I find myself actually looping a lot of the tracks myself out of sheer enjoyment, wishing they were longer. Tracks like ‘OJ Finds the Real Killers’, ‘Red Leg, Blue Leg’ and ‘Bowman’s Tower’ could really stand up as full length songs by themselves, it’s just a shame we are limited to the one minute mark.

I get the overwhelming feeling that ‘9999’ was more of an experiment to Mauer than anything, a chance to push the boundaries of his ability with the technology and expectations of his audience by producing a full length CD that many fans of the genre would never have experience before. It’s a huge achievement to see that Mauer has created so many different styles of music and created what feels like such a homage to the video game soundtracks of old.

Alex Mauer’s album 9999 is available now to order on CD for $15 from record label II (Pause) located here. (http://www.iimusic.net/catalog/2008/06/9999)

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There we were, all set to rock Berlin at the Weisbrot club (White Bread?), we went on stage and played our hardest. It didn’t matter about the extremities of our neighbors complaints, we were on top of the world. All we needed now was Malcolm McLaren…

Rock Band is essentially the next big step in the rhythm gaming genre. Rather than creating a game which focuses on learning to play one instrument or part of a whole, Harmonix have created a game which has you playing one of four parts to a fully fledged rock group. Its when you rip open your ‘band-in-a-box’ pack and uncover the plastic instruments within you realize how much effort this product will require of you; Guitar, bass, drums and vocals, the choice is yours.

As with most music games, the biggest selling point is the track listing, and Rock Band certainly doesn’t disappoint here. The project is backed by MTV games and so has a lot of triple A artists involved with many songs being full originals rather than cover versions. To name but a few the game features groups like the Foo Fighters, Nine Inch Nails, The Who, Red Hot Chili peppers, Nirvana, The Rolling Stones, The Clash, Metalica as well as some exclusive tracks to European gamers by bands such as Blur, Oasis, Die Toten Hosen and Tokio Hotel. You are also not limited to the songs included on the disc. Rock Band is intended to be a gaming platform rather than a single product, so you can also download extra songs just like iTunes. With new songs added every week you will always be able to find new content for the game if you become bored with the songs included.

The game itself has many different play modes adding to the overall experience. Although the pack comes with three instruments (with an optional fourth) you can still choose to play by yourself and embark on a solo career focusing on the instrument of your choice. You work your way through every one of the forty five main set list songs, with the songs you unlock getting more difficult as you progress. There are also competitive multiplayer modes but the bulk of your time with Rock Band will no doubt be spent with the co-operative Band World tour mode.

The experience of four people playing together and contributing to a whole, rather than just continuously killing each other, is something you just don’t get in other video games. Never before has a music game been so ambitious to include three plastic peripherals and bring such an exciting new product to a rapidly growing market.

‘Rock Band’ software sells for the RRP of £49.99. The full instrument pack retails for £129.99 and includes a guitar, drum set and a microphone. The Xbox 360 video game system is priced from £159.99.

[This piece also posted on Rhythm Gamer]

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Tony Hawk, as well as several members of the audience of the Wall Street Journals D6 event had a chance to try out this years continuation of the Guitar Hero franchise. The ‘All Things Digital’ show featured many creators and innovators in the digital world, recently playing host to Activision and revealing first game footage from the latest Guitar Hero game.The terribly awkward video is summed up in the first few moments as the interviewer points out to Robert Kotick of Activision that their vision for a full group experience is “called Rock Band I think?”. Kotick then laughs off the truth and the video cuts to a showing of four people (including Tony Hawk) looking sombre while playing along.

[This piece also posted on Rhythm Gamer]

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Although I don’t really want to rain on Penny Arcade’s parade, through their figures it became known to the public the top four fastest selling titles on the Xbox Live Arcade service since its inception.

Selling 25,000 copies in its first three days on the service, Rez HD is the quickest selling Xbox Live Arcade game (Penny Arcade’s game sold 16.5 thousand). Being a re-release of a cult Dreamcast and PS2 game, Rez HD is Tetsuya Miziguchis first major title which has you flying through the innards of a computer system, creating your own symphony of destructible data and viruses.

If you’ve yet to check out the game, now would be the perfect time to at least download the demo and see what your missing out on. 25 thousand people can’t be wrong can they?

Source: Penny Arcade
[This piece also posted on Rhythm Gamer]

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Chiptune producer and innovator Alex Mauer (who created this, the homemade NES cartridge LP) is set to release yet another album later on this week.’9999′ consists of forty two tracks which does sound a lot for one CD. However when I heard that Mauer has used nine different sound chips to produce it, I was quite impressed. Utilizing the power of the NES, Commodore 64, Gameboy, Atari XL computer, MSX computer, IBM PC/DOS, Commodore Amiga, Game Gear, and Sega Genesis to create his latest work sounds like a lot of hard work, something Crystal Castles would be proud to steal.

You can hear a few samples from the album on Mauer’s website. The album ‘9999′ will be released on June the first through the II (Pause) record label.

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Arriving today to complement last Fridays release of ‘Rock Band’ for the Xbox360. Harmonix have released the second full length album for the game, The Cars self titled debut album ‘The Cars’ for 1,200 Microsoft Points. Alternatively each song from the album is available for the usual price of 160 points, a lot more reasonable if you only like one or two of the songs.

With so much content for the game available, I’m finding it hard to find the time and money to grab all of this brilliant interactive music.

[This piece also posted on Rhythm Gamer]

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