Blip Festival – Day One
Posted by virt on December 1st, 2006 filed in General
So, last night was one of the best nights of my life, and absolutely worth the insane finger-bloodying practices and gear-lugging across two subway lines. There’s no way I can even begin to do it justice with words – every single act blew me away - but I will give a quick rundown of each performer (And I’ll try to do it for each subsequent night, too, so keep checking back daily!)
Virt: FX 3.0 is complete, and is a full-length album pending release on 8bitpeoples. I debuted half of the songs last night (not a single other person had heard them prior), and Kristi recorded it using my iPod. Sorry for the clipping, and for the misnotes (my guitar was WAY too low in the mix [my own fault], so I couldn’t hear it to correct my hand positions until it was too late). I made far fewer mistakes than I expected, though, and rocked out very very hard (small clip, there will be tons of video footage later).
Receptors: Awesome mohawked vocoder-heavy chiptunery. I was still so buzzing/shaken at this point that his set was a blur, but I remember enjoying it.
Glomag: Upbeat, very technically accomplished game boy electropop, reminded me of Bit Shifter in his nanoloop timbres, which is definitely a good thing. Sang also. This really set the mood and got us all happy.
Starpause: Insanity – I’m not sure what I enjoyed more, the ripping off of his shirt mid-set, or the fact that at several times I forgot I was listening to chiptunes and thought he was a club DJ. Extremely genre-transcendent material, had everyone moving.
x|k: One of my heroes, without a doubt - the guy who made the MIDINes!! Predictably, he uses it much better than anyone else, and played unbelievably good house tracks that, again, had everyone jumping around. Right now my neck is sore from bobbing my head to his music.
Goto80: DAT BWOY CRAZY!!!!! Got up and started screaming his lungs out about gay snuggling and possibly bunnies on top of awesome, deliriously frenzied c64 tracks. I’ve never seen anything like it, and I want to see it again and again.
Tugboat: Very smart indie rock/punk chiptunes that you can just tell were made by a shy perfectionist, with a live drumset which he literally bashed until it fell apart. He reminded me of Anamanaguchi at times, same kind of happy energy. He started the set by being interrupted by a “phone call” from his parents (represented by high and low pulse waves imitating voices).
Chibi-Tech: Probably my favorite act of the night, from probably my favorite NES musician overall. Did some ABSOLUTELY ASTOUNDING technical covers of j-pop songs and themes. I could go on for hours about all the insanely brilliant tricks he uses to thicken and articulate sounds – his technique is absolutely as good as it gets on the NES. There were several times where I swore he had sampled vocals, but in fact was just using pulse waves with duty cycles to emulate the vowels and consonants in the songs’ lyrics. That might seem gimmicky but it really is AMAZINGLY effective at simulating vocals. Plus he danced his heart out, jumping up on the table and getting way way down.
It was a pretty good turnout for the first night, more folks than I expected. I got to meet Hally, YMCK, and Kplecraft, all of whom came over from Japan, and all of whose music I adore. I also had a blast hanging out with Jeroen “WAVE” Tel, Pete from Anamanaguchi, NightsB, and tons of other friends. One of the awesome dudes from work even came out (he snapped those pictures at the top of my post, and took the video clip too)! Thanks Steve!!
Of course Kristi was awesome throughout, cheering me on and seriously reducing my stress level just by being cute and smiley. I’d have been a wreck without her there. I’d be a wreck in general without her there. Dayum, bitchezzzz.
MORE TO COME AFTER TONIGHT! There are 3 more days of this! HOLY BALLS! I CANNOT WAIT TO SEE HALLY’S SET. MY ENTIRE LIFE DEPENDS ON THIS.
December 1st, 2006 at 2:34 pm
Amazing. I’m so missing out! Keep on rocking I guess :D
December 2nd, 2006 at 1:19 am
god, so good. it breaks my heart that i cannot attend these shows. seriously.
December 2nd, 2006 at 7:11 am
That sounds absolutely ace. That whole thing about using duty cycles to simulate vocals is pretty fascinating, I’ve only heard that done with the FDS channel so far, and that seems far less limited for doing such.
So many familiar names too! I’m dead jealous.
December 2nd, 2006 at 11:22 am
this kicks ass! i\’m also missing out a ton :(
December 2nd, 2006 at 12:55 pm
you put on a baller show, virt. one problem – i forgot my earplugs and when that speaker blew up i lost 90% of my hearing, so my mom says i can’t go to any more of your shows. sorry.
December 3rd, 2006 at 1:54 am
Thanks for signing my Hemingway article.
December 3rd, 2006 at 2:45 am
i so wish i could have been there…i proably would have lost my mind though, so its probably good that im not exposed to even more sine waves at the present time =(
December 3rd, 2006 at 4:05 am
Mr. Virt, congratulations on yet another set that got my cock hard. Now it’s time to listen to it again.
December 4th, 2006 at 11:39 am
Virt, your set rocked so hard. It’s so awesome that we get to see you peforming on a semi-regular basis in new york now.
December 4th, 2006 at 7:57 pm
sorry, I posted the wrong thing!!!
I am the founder of MelodyTrip, http://www.melodytrip.com , a website that is focused on music festivals and fans who are passionate about music. I came across your blog and found it to be very entertaining and well-written and thought you would be interested in becoming a MelodyTrip community member.
MelodyTrip has all the latest news on festival, lineups, bands etc, but there are some specific reasons why you, as a blogger interested in music could benefit from joining MelodyTrip.
1) You can post cross-post your blogs to MelodyTrip to generate awareness, exposure, feedback and links to your blog, even if is not always music related.
2) If you are interested in attending music festivals and blogging about them, MelodyTrip can get you press passes or free tickets to virtually any festival if you agree to preview and review the festival on MelodyTrip.
If this sounds good, sign up as a member and shoot me an email letting me know you did, and if there are any particular events you would like to cover in 2007 or ways MelodyTrip can help you out. Now is a great time to contact me since it is the down season, there is a lull in the action, but we would love to have you as part of MelodyTrip when things heat up and traffic explodes in March.
Matt Casey
matt@melodytrip.com
December 5th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
Hey, I do have one thing for your next act, which I’ve found to be true for most people who performed with live instruments during the shows. Your instruments were pushed way to far into the background of the sound. I could only catch an occasional whiff of the bass and, considering how hard you were rocking it, was a shame. The keyboard was better, but once you entered the same range as the gameboy, you were drowned out again, I probably wouldn’t have known what you were adding to it if I hadn’t been watching your fingers as well. I didn’t see everyone’s act, but Bud was the only one who really had his instrument cued right and even he could have used a slight boost. I’m willing to bet the monitors were set up more sensitively than they should have been, so you were hearing what we weren’t, it would explain the general lapse. It was a fantastic set, though. You should be proud.
-TWD
December 18th, 2006 at 8:46 pm
Just can’t wait FX 3.0 :D~
When do you release?