Game on!

The eight-bit world of Teamtendo and other chip-music makers, who recycle yesterday's video games for tomorrow's discos

by RAF KATIGBAK

The beginning of the end of life as we know it didn't start with a bang. It started with a slow, thumping eight-bit pulse. In 1978, Space Invaders, the first classic stand-up arcade console, invaded smoky pool halls, dépanneurs and bowling alleys across North America. The game was an instant phenomenon, causing a coin shortage in Japan and even sparking a few instances of Space Invaders-related crimes throughout the U.S. - mostly kids sneaking coins from their parents' wallets.

The appeal of Space Invaders wasn't just how it looked and played, but how it sounded. Like every classic game console, Space Invaders used a single, limited sound which the designers used to craft the perfect menacing, minimalist audio accompaniment to the descending alien incursion.

Right now, multi-polygon, processor-intensive, photorealistic games with CD-quality soundtracks by original pop artists are de rigueur in the gaming industry, which witnessed sales of over $30-billion last year. But in a nostalgic reaction to the high-tech excess of the new school, retro games like Space Invaders are making a comeback - and so is the sound.

Ask anyone who's ever played Nintendo's original Super Mario Bros. to hum the theme song. Chances are they can, even if they haven't played the game in 15 years. Thanks to the countless hours so many of us have spent in front of a screen with a joystick in our hand, classic video-game tunes - or chip music, named after the sound chips found in old computer and gaming hardware - are part of our pop-culture subconsciousness. And from South America to South Africa, a new breed of musicians are working with Gameboys, hacked Nintendo Entertainment Systems and old Atari computers. The sound of yesterday is becoming the sound of tomorrow.

Crydancing in 2D

Montreal is about to get a maximum-volume, ear-shattering dose of chip pop courtesy of Parisian duo Teamtendo. Gussied up in giant fun-fur mascot uniforms, the twosome - individually known as ATM Cougar and Cute Groundhog - deliver a sonic wallop at Club Soda tonight. They employ four Nintendo Gameboys with specially modified game carts, a cardboard cut-out prop of a Macintosh computer and what seems like an endless supply of on-stage energy.

The hairy pair's sound brings to mind bleary-eyed nights staring at a screen, getting lost in an eight-bit enchanted forest haunted by squeaky, fat-pixel ghosts. "We call it the ‘crydance' style," explains ATM Cougar cryptically. "You can dance to it and cry to it at the same time. We think happy suffering is always the point when you make any type of music."

At 17, after happily suffering in France's indie rock scene, the pair banded together to seek out a new lo-fi pop sound, something raw and fun that would capture their imagination. They found what they were looking for in a pile of discarded computer equipment. Like many chip-music producers-to-be, the two had a long history of late-night gaming sessions and immediately fell in love with the gritty power of vintage computer sound chips. In 1999, they became part of the new wave of eight-bit rockers and started playing out as Teamtendo. "We don't think about nostalgia or the future, we just loved the sound because it's pure and has nothing to do with acting. It expresses the rawness inside of us. We love simple things, stupid stuff, where you push a button and a sound comes out and it's beautiful. The eight-bit sound is also strongly linked with the 2D world - it's flat and shows its entire intentions. Not like humans, all fake and vicious."

Back to BASIC

Montrealers don't have to look far to find dedicated followers of the chip-music sound. Local electronic musician and sound designer David Kristian has been using Nanoloop, a custom Gameboy cartridge that turns the toy into a hand-held synthesizer, since 2002.

Like many chip-music fanatics, his fascination with the sound started over two decades ago. "I witnessed the dawn of arcade games in the late '70s and early '80s," he recalls. "I remember lining up to play Space Invaders and Asteroids - those sounds were an important part of my musical upbringing."

A professed analog gear junkie, Kristian's studio methods have always carried a retro-mechanical, hands-on approach that enforced what he sees as necessary creative limitations. "I think vintage game sound design works on an impressionistic level. Prior to digital sampling, all games had to use sound chips to provide a suitably realistic sonic environment, so you had to say a lot with very little. Working with this limited harmonic vocabulary forces you to be creative, and there are some very pleasant discoveries along the way."

Paul B. Davis, as part of the small crew of programmers, musicians and artists otherwise known as 8-Bit Construction Set, knows all about limitations. He's coaxed fresh sounds from a variety of obsolete technology, from outdated computers like the Atari 800 and Commodore 64 to Nintendo cartridges hacked and reprogrammed with their own code (not to mention creating the first software ever delivered on vinyl).

The 8-Bit Construction Set gets its inspiration not from video-game music but from the spirit of investigation and the re-appropriation of technology. For Davis, the creative possibilities of early computers offer an appeal beyond the warm fuzzies of retro sounds. "The first thing a person ever saw when they booted up their C64 or Atari 800 XL was the BASIC command line. If you take a step back and think that the built-in interface to the machine was an actual programming language, it's so much more conceptually attractive and computationally efficient than today's Windows XP crap.

"The point is this - every bit, every representation, every piece of information in a computer is yours to fuck with, and the potential always exists for you to acknowledge that a computer is completely programmable in every aspect and that its most powerful function is to facilitate tool creation. If you don't, then the computer becomes solely a vehicle for content delivery to a captive audience - like TV. In other words, if you don't learn to use and understand your computer, then some big software company is going to tell you how, and what kind of art is going to come from that."

Low-tech music for high-tech people

Davis, Kristian and Teamtendo aren't alone in their thinking. Right now the chip-music scene is growing at an exponential rate. Twenty years ago, music was swapped by floppy disc or through slow, 2400 bits-per-second modems. Now the Internet has helped consolidate a truly global chip-music community where musicians can meet, collaborate, and swap esoteric programming jargon in countless online forums.

With the slogan "low-tech music for high-tech people," the Swiss-based Micromusic.net is one such community. Celebrating "minimal and reduced-to-the-max computer music with a flair for eight-bit computer game music," Micromusic.net allows registered users to connect with other enthusiasts and even upload their own compositions for possible release on the site's own subsidiary label.

"Micromusic isn't about retro music," explains Micromusic CEO Carl (aka Gino Esposto), "but about combining eight-bit with the new style and going a step further into the future of electronic music." Micromusic boasts 10,000 user accounts and 4,000 regular visitors located everywhere from Europe, the U.S. and Asia (mostly Japan) to South Africa and South America and an average of 300 users delivering around 100 uploads a month - clear evidence that the chip music community continues to grow.

"You can actually find some differences between European, North American and Japanese chip music," reveals Carl. "For example, Japanese musicians tend to compose more industrial and quite complex music, in the U.S. we hear tendencies towards hip hop and/or rock music, and in Europe we have quite a lot of influences from the German new wave bands like Kraftwerk. But in general, we live in a very globalized world, and trends travel around quickly."

Teamtendo join Nouvelle Vague, K.I.M. and I Am Robot And Proud at Club Soda tonight, Thursday, Oct. 21, 8 p.m., $25

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