While the taxonomy that divides house music from trance from IDM and other electronic sub-genres can get confusing, chiptune (or chip music) is pretty straightforward: It's music made with sound chips from old video game consoles — or at least music that's made to sound that way. Crystal Castles are probably the best-known dabblers, but the trans-Atlantic 8-Bit Alliance pit their noisy modified Game Boys, Nintendo Entertainment Systems and Commodore 64s against the Castles' dancier devices.
Of the four projects comprising this alliance, the U.K.'s Sabrepulse sounds the most like a video game, piecing together textures that could easily have been sampled directly from a Mega Man or Mario Bros. game. Fellow Brit Henry Homesweet pushes the style closest to the dance club, while New Yorkers Anamanuguchi place their hacked NES console alongside traditional rock band instrumentation. Starscream (also from New York) stretch their limited bits the farthest, informed as much by spacey post-rock as by Metroid.
While the 8-Bit Alliance is intriguing enough to recommend on its own, their bill's local draw — a double album release, no less — makes the event a happening.
First, there's Makeup and Vanity Set, whose self-titled full-length is mastermind Matthew Pusti's first proper release under that moniker in nearly four years. While Pusti has ventured into 8-bit territory in the past, and his 2003 release Aesthetically Speaking shares many similarities with that style, the most recent MAVS output features pulsating tracks that revolve largely around central arpeggiated melodic lines that swell and fade. The songs are trancey like Kraftwerk but more concise and dynamic. (Full disclosure: Pusti once remixed songs by The Protomen, a band I was in at the time.)
Late last year, Pusti released an album under the name DAAS, an IDM-leaning and abstract project that's far and away more challenging than MAVS. Where Aesthetically Speaking and his 8-bit remixes had been playful and carefree affairs, Pusti's work took on a decidedly serious tone with DAAS. On Makeup and Vanity Set, he jumps back and forth between cheeky bastard and angry motherfucker. As the album's disco ball art hints, there are more straight-ahead dance jams, and tracks like "Paradiso" and "The Crystal Planet (Love Theme From Blood Sport)" retain some of that old playfulness. But songs like "Vision Quest" and "Putay's Back" wear a scowl and carry a switchblade.
The other album seeing release contains a MAVS remix, but the comparisons end there. For one, Pusti prioritizes subtlety; the new record by Magic Hammer is called Most Extreme Ultimate Thunder.
Primary songwriter and producer Eric W. Brown served lengthy stints as drummer for Destroy Destroy Destroy and melodic death metal outfit Inferi. With Magic Hammer, Brown surrounds himself with a slew of collaborators to combine epic power metal with Euro-dance saccharine in a mix that's every bit as disorienting as that sounds. Opener "Dance on Fire: Retribution" introduces a standard metal riff with some harmonized guitar lines and over-the-top keyboards, then shifts on a dime into an unabashed bubblegum dance anthem with huge, arena-ready choruses that at some point give way to a shredding guitar solo. This mostly repeats in several variations across nine tracks.
Are these guys fucking with us? The Magic Hammer bio contains sentences like this one: "Mysterious creatures writhe about, black and nebulous at the foot of the Mountain where the poison water creeps silently towards the Door," and a song called "Blooddrunk" is followed by another one called "Love Is on the Way (Divine Thunder Mix)," both of which would be perfectly at home on an anime soundtrack. The next song is called "Pills I Took," which takes a standard tear-in-my-beer country song and runs it through the same Euro-dance blender. Another song marches out plenty of other metal tropes — "Trident ov Power," "the mystical gate," etc. — but the bouncy, major-key hand-clap fest stands in stark contrast. Maybe.
Truth is, we don't know what we know anymore. If Eric W. Brown himself were to put this record on, we'd have to search his face for a smirk. And even if we couldn't find one, we might still think his expression was part of some bigger, more elaborate hoax. Maybe this is another one of those Andrew WK kind of things? The only thing we are sure of is this: If it is some sort of sophisticated joke, it's on us. Regardless, go listen to Most Extreme Ultimate Thunder, if only because it's the most confounding record ever made. Maybe.
Email music@nashvillescene.com.
