Modern composition is finding itself a new home in the world of video games. With events like Video Games Live and franchises like Final Fantasy making heavy use of orchestral music, classically composed music has found a niche where it can continue to thrive and be appreciated by a mass audience.
However, Anamanaguchi has very little to do with that. Their chiptune-based brand of punk rock hearkens back to a time when music in video games had to be well-composed and catchy by necessity. An NES cartridge could only hold so many megabytes of information, thus music had to be composed using a finite number of tones. In addition, short pieces were created with the intention to be looped, so as to save system memory. This created a challenge for early video game composers, to create pieces of music that would never get trite or annoying, even after countless repeated listenings. This challenge produced some of the most iconic pieces of music of our technologic generation; themes from Super Mario Bros, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, and Mega Man are all easily recognizable by the children of the 80s and 90s. If you've ever heard The Advantage, sideproject of Spencer Seim of Hella, you already know how well many of these stage level tunes translate to a math rock set-up because of their sheer complexity. Tunes like these were very ahead of their time.
While not strictly math rock, Anamanaguchi's Power Supply is a highly-addicting, 20-minute EP written in the style of those pioneering video game composers. It's fast, upbeat, and delightfully well written. Chiptune is living proof that creativity thrives through limitation.
Download - Legally free!
Support this artist by purchasing their new release, Dawn Metropolis, on CD or Vinyl.
Bonus! Check out their cover of Wavves' So Bored!
I am glad I found such an useful blog. Great information here, thanks.
ReplyDeleteNational Power Supply Generators