The
Nintendo hand-held gaming unit known as Gameboy was first sold in the
US in 1989. Being a sort of a small computer, people started to think
about different use of the Nintendo Gameboy, not only as a pocket game
device, but as a creative tool. And then comes the music! With the coming
out of Gameboy cartridges with music softwares inside, some electronic
musicians started to get sounds and music out of the internal sound-chip
of the hand-held. The thing got bigger and a community of people started
to grow up; this music genre was called micromusic and now micromusic.net
is the website that gathers all these people that share the passion for
old computer games music with nowadays IDM (intelligent dance music).
Not only the Game Boy is used but also emulators of old sound-chips of
80's home computers like the unforgettable Commodore64. Another important
resource on the net is www.8bitpeoples.com.
.by e.g. ø
http://www.egzero.org_
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Covox real name is Thomas Söderlund, based in Stockholm, Sweden. He defines himself as being "active in the live improvisational electro/hihpop outfit Kikai Battlesystem". To create his music he uses (besides the Gameboy) the Novation BassStation and the Clavia Micromodular.
http://www.covox.net/
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Flashbulb is Benn L. Jordan, a musician from U.S. He grew up with heavy metal and classical music and started to work with computers in the first nineties, but it was when he listend to "...I care because you do" by Aphex Twin that he started to think that his electronic experiment may be liked by other people. His most recent release is "These Open Fields (Second Edition Re-press)" for the German label Bohnerwachs. He also performs live.
http://theflashbulb.net/
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Emma Davidson (Lektrogirl) is a 30 years old woman born in Tasmania. Commodore 64 music is her biggest musical influence and she is one of the heads of Micromusic.net community.
http://www.lektrogirl.com/
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Lo-Bat is a guy from Belgium and he is very active in the micromusic scene, organizing festivals. Lo-Bat uses a software called LSDJ (Little Sound DJ) to compose his music. It is a game cartridge for the Game Boy that provides an interface to the internal 4-bit sound engine.
http://www.lo-bat.be
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Mollusk is a guy experimenting with the limits of audio compression. Now the Mollusk project seems to be over and it's very hard to find his music.
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Nullsleep ia a very young guy from U.S. and he is the biggest gameboy musician. Very active in the live scene, his music is the best example of Game Boy sound aesthetic.
http://www.nullsleep.com
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Role Model, a.k.a. Johan Kotlinski, has a very important role in the game boy music scene, because he is the creator of the software LSDJ, a complete software to create music with gameboys. He is also the founder of Bleep Street record label, through which he releases his special kind of synthetic house grooves and jazz-infected melodies.
http://www.rebelpetset.com
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Psilodump is a 21 years old techno/IDM producer and micromusic star. He started to compose music in 1991 with his first home computer and he doesn't want people to know his real identity.
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Another boy from Sweden is Sbindon. His music is a particular example of experimenting with new sounds.
http://sbindon.rymd.org
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Very young composer from the US (Chicago based) is Yuppster (real name: Matt).His "handheld" music is all made using Gameboy with the LSDJ software, but he also creates music with his personal computer.
http://yuppster.8bitpeoples.com/
Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, USA_april 2004
MIART, Milano, Italy_may 2004
Flash Art fair, Milano, Italy_march 2004
MIART, Milano, Italy_may 2003
Centro Culturale Candiani, Mestre Venezia, Italy_november 2003
On the Web and in Print:
Mention in Arte "Quanta Arte c'è in un pixel" 06/2007
Featured on NextExit cover+flyer 01/2005
Featured on Losingtoday "Mauro Ceolin" 06/2005
Mention in Arte "Six" 10/2004
Featured on Musicgel "Quelli che utilizzano i software dei Game Boy" 10/2004
Mention in Glamour "web'n'music" 09/2004
Mention in Videogiochi "Game tr@cks, dal beat al bit" 02/2004
Mention on antimodal.com "Collision Detection – [musings]" 02/2004
Featured on randommagazine.net "Bang the Machine" 01/2004
Mention in Exibart on paper "piccolo è bello" 12/2003
Featured on Gulliver "E io compongo una sinfonia con il GameBoy" 11/2003
Mention on nintendoworldreport.com "Games and Art Exhibition in San Francisco" 11/2003
Mention on netartreview.net 05/2003
