Ben Landis
is a pop-rock and chiptune songwriter. If that did not make immediate sense to
you, we were in the same boat.
As I
started listening, it was clear from all the beeps and boops that this was
music inspired by classic 8-bit videogames. Wikipedia defines chiptunes as
"synthesized electronic music produced (or emulated) by the sound chip of
vintage computers, video game consoles, and arcade machines, as well as with
other methods such as emulation.
With that
in mind, it made sense, and it was pretty fun, but I was thinking that was
probably something he was doing more for fun than as a career, and then I saw
the link to buy Adventures in Pixels. This is an album/comic hybrid,
where each track has a comic page embedded as album art, so you can listen and
visually follow the progress of the story, making it, I think, my first
legitimate concept album of the year.
And I still
didn't know if that would be everyone's bag - a long time spent listening to
the high-pitched sounds that you tend to get with 8-bit could be jarring for a
lot of people - but still, what a neat, neat idea.
Going over
the Soundcloud page, there is a lot of variety. There is collaboration with
other artists, and there are different moods and styles, and there is quite a
bit of nostalgia, because we have all played those game.
So this is
something unique and fun, and there is a lot available on Soundcloud.
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