Chiptune Chuesday: Juggernaut - Kubbi

Kubbi is a Chip Viking if his bio is to be believed (AND WHY WOULD HE LIE ABOUT THINGS LIKE THAT I MEAN REALLY). He says he makes Chiptune music, drinks mead, and rides polar bears to his local viking raid. You should already be loving this man, or at least giving him furtive glances from across the room because maybe he'll look up at just the right time, brushing his viking braids or whatever back from his face.

"But wait TSB," you shout in a sweet but grating voice, "What if I don't LIKE vikings?" Ah, well then my dear it's time to convince you with song. A big song. A Juggernaut.

Kubbi's latest piece of work straddles the divide between 8 and 16-bit chiprock. The intro is drenched in JRPG arpeggios as strings swell and the beat drops from the innards of an old boombox. Then just as you're getting comfy he drops some heavy bass on you and you're slammed into the next level of the game. The whole song feels like playing your way through a classic brawler or platformer, the cartridge itself slowly evolving over time from a NES cart to a SNES cart. To our less gaming versed readers-ermm… that line was totally (definitely) clever and I don't know how best to translate. The old becomes new while still sounding old over the course of the song! There. Fixed.

It's a great piece of chiprock and can be downloaded for FREE from Kubbi's Soundcloud, alongside full on albums available from his Bandcamp. Go throw some love and money at this Chipped out Viking this instant.

Chiptune Chuesday: Small Regrets - Tugboat

Tugboat is a New York based drummer and electronica musician who, up until retiring from the genre two years ago, was one of the more prevalent and talented chiptune artists. For those who need a refresher, chiptune is a genre of music based upon using the soundboards of old video game consoles to create new pieces.

Our personal favourite track by Tugboat is Small Regrets, which can be found on his career spanning compilation album Man Of The Year available for free from CalmDownKidder Records.

The mood of Small Regrets undeniably wears its heart on its sleeve, but that's exactly what I find so awesome about it and more broadly what I find awesome about chiptune. It's music which has taken the sound of an entire generations collective childhood memories (specifically I suppose a generation of children who played video games in the eighties and early nineties) and creates new emotionally resonant compositions out of them. It melds and morphs the harsh electric squalls of archaic technology and gives them a new lease on life. It's a genre which is seeped through with nostalgia, both literally and figuratively, in every bleep.

Yet it also manages to be a fresh and attention grabbing sound. The viral popularity of free demake albums such as 8Bit Side of the Moon or Kind of Bloop have shown there is a wider public thirst for the style of music. Even radio friendly hits are getting in on the action! Most likely tied into the long running eighties aesthetic revival pop and rock music have been going through for the past ever, the use of chip sound boards has become more prevalent than ever before.

It's a rapidly growing genre with an enormous amount of diversity contained within it, and we want to help more people hear it. If you enjoyed today's song, check back each Tuesday for another dispatch from the land of chip.