Peelander-Z at The Studio in January (more by Leia Jospe)

Welcome home Peelander-Z! The NYC band is finally home after an extended tour with Anamanaguchi that kicked off at SXSW and ended on April 30th. And though the tour is over, the band is ALREADY back out on the road, playing Newark, Delaware tonight and a hometown show back at The Studio at Webster Hall Saturday (5/7) with Hard Nips and Friends. Tickets for that one are still available (and, update: we're giving away a pair on Facebook).

Anamanaguchi has a new NYC show on their calendar too, which they say "is gonna be AWESOME. we're gonna have: JAMS // VISUALS // STROBES // UNICORNBROS DOING SECURITY // FURBIES // RAINBOWS // W33D420 // OK." Bowery Presents may have to give some of their staff a night off to make way for those UNICORNBROS, because Anamanaguchi are talking about a show at Music Hall of Williamsburg on 7/22. Tickets are on sale.

You don't need to wait that link to see Anamanaguchi though. The band will play day one of this year's Blip Festival, the annual three day festival in celebration of "low-bit video games and home computers". This year's fest takes place at Manhattan's Eyebeam (540 West 21st Street) from May 19-21. Tickets are on sale with 3-day and 1-day options available. The full lineup is listed below. It includes Tristan Perich, Bit Shifter, Nullsleep, Starscream and many more.

Anamanaguchi, Starscream and Peelander-Z played a show together at the Studio at Webster Hall back in January. Check out the pics.

Hard Nips, who play with Peelander on Saturday, are also scheduled to support Quintron & Miss Pussycat with Super Nice Bros and X-ray Eyeballs on May 28th at 285 Kent. Friends, who also play with Peelander Saturday, play 285 Kent soon too, with Dan Deacon.

All tour dates, the Blip lineup and some videos below.

Continue reading "Blip Festival coming, Anamanguchi announce shows, Peelander-Z play one this weekend (dates)"

REFORMAT THE PLANET is a feature length documentary which delves into the movement known as chip tunes, a vibrant underground scene based around creating new, original music using old video game hardware. Familiar devices such as the Nintendo Game Boy and Nintendo Entertainment System are pushed in new directions with startling results.

Using New York as a microcosm for a larger global movement, "Reformat the Planet" maps out the genesis of the first annual Blip Festival, a four day celebration of over 30 international artists exploring the untapped potential of low-bit video game consoles. With floor-stomping rhythms and fist-waving melodies, trailblazers of the chip tune idiom descend upon Manhattan to pen a new chapter in the history of electronic music.

That's the description of a documentary about the Blip Festival which is taking place again this year at The Bell House in Brooklyn. There are nightly concerts Thursday, December 17 - Saturday December 19th, as well as workshops, art installations, and film screenings. Advanced tickets are on sale. One of the film screenings is in fact "Reformat the Planet". That movie's trailer and the full Blip Fest schedule, below...

Continue reading "2009 Blip Fest lineup & schedule -- music, films & workshops "

DOWNLOAD: Nullsleep - Fearless Flight (MP3)

Archaic game and home computer hardware is recast into the unlikely role of musical instrument and motion graphics workstation in the BLIP FESTIVAL 2008, a four-day event showcasing nearly 40 musicians and visual artists occupying the international low-res cutting edge. The Blip Festival takes place DECEMBER 4--7, 2008 at The Bell House, and is presented by Manhattan art organization THE TANK and NYC artist collective 8BITPEOPLES.

Highlighting the chipmusic phenomenon and its related disciplines, the festival aims to showcase emerging creative niches involving the use of legacy video game & home computer hardware as modern artistic instrumentation. Devices such as the Nintendo Entertainment System, Commodore 64, Atari ST, Nintendo Game Boy and others are repurposed into the service of original, low-res, high-impact electronic music and visuals -- sidestepping game culture and instead exploring the technology's untapped potential and distinctive intrinsic character.

The Blip Festival assembles nearly 40 practitioners selected from the chipmusic movement's expansive global underground, taking care to represent as many as possible of the genre's surprisingly diverse styles, geographical and technical scenes, communities, and traditions. The festival's concert program will be supplemented by daytime events to be announced, including workshops, presentations, and screenings. The Blip Festival's intended result is to provide a cross-section of a movement currently in explosive flux, teeming with artistic exploration, and poised at the cusp of global awareness.

Performers include the notorious Bit Shifter and Nullsleep who also appears on my 2007 Christmas mix and who just released a new free EP. The full schedule and lineup, along with ticket info., is listed at Blip's site. A promo video and list of all artists (who do you recommend?) is below...

Continue reading "Blip Festival 2008 - Dec 4-7 @ the Bell House in Brooklyn "

by BrooklynVegan Mike

DOWNLOAD: Adventure - Battle Cat (MP3)

Like FirestARTer before them, Crystal Castles and Adventure are 8-bit artists that don't rely on kitsch and nostalgia to buoy the songs. They are reframing the perception of the sounds used and putting emotion in, whether that be anarchism or affection. Adventure's music is certainly the latter, with pulsing dance beats wrapped up in NES and Genesis sounds.

Adventure is Benny Boeldt, a North Carolina native who relocated to Baltimore and hooked up with the Wham City crew including Dan Deacon who he'll be playing in round robin style with on a tour that includes Pop Montreal on October 5th and a show at (le) poisson rouge in NYC on October 18th. Adventure crafts pops songs on a grand scale. There is an epic quality that consistently builds through every song. To use an obvious video game analogy, every song sounds like a boss stage.

Adventure's self-titled album was released this week on Carpark and Benny is on a tour that his him playing four NYC-area shows this week including one tonight (Sept 25) at Crash Mansion. Album cover and tracklist, and all tour dates below...

Continue reading "Adventure - new album, 2008 Tour Dates (NYC now & later)"