Sievert - Black Hole Cannon

Daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaang~~!

This song is intense! It might scare you into turning the volume down like I did because the kick is so raw. It sounds like it's going to punch out your subwoofer! Anyway, go ahead and download this whole release, it's definitely worth your while. Sievert's a great artist, I enjoyed following his musical rapport between the anonymous Dr. Szliszka on 8bc.org, but it would seem that saga has ended and Space Captain Sievert is the victor!



Sievert's website

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DEER - It Must Have Been My Happy Robot Dog!

Something about this track sounds like it would be played during a grandiose demo, something about its chord progression early on. If I knew theory I'd tell you particularly what was going on, but hey, I don't! Anyway, here's another late-night 8BD post for you owls/vampires out there. I realized that I have no time in the middle of the day like I used to (I'm back in school), and so it looks like I'll have to just squeeze 8BD picks in whenever I can, lest this site fade forever into obscurity!



DEER's website

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Cathode Rays - Evil Cartridge

I just found out about this guy today, it looks like most of his music was uploaded in the recent period of time during which I've had little opportunity to feature 8bc.org tracks. You guys might not all realize it, but in the span of a few days I can find myself 200+ tracks behind the latest upload, making staying "up to date" an incredible task. In recent months, I've been hitting the "mark all read" button just to get through some of the stack and back up to current music.

Ya see, if you have a collection of 1,000 tracks that are for all intents and purposes completely random in terms of who made them and how "good" (defined by my subjective taste which determines whether a song is placed on this site or not) they are, and you eliminate 800 of them, you are left with 200 tracks that are of practically identical distribution in terms of the quality of the songs. So I have no problem eliminating a couple hundred tracks from ever being considered for this site. Thing is, I'd be a few thousand tracks deep by now if I weren't clearing them out once in a while.

But what ends up happening here in the REAL WORLD, where I'm not just eliminating completely randomized samples of songs but possibly the entire existence of some artists or truly outstanding songs greater than any 8BD pick hence is that people like Cathode Rays get completely overlooked.

There is a solution to this, however! You can email me a link to your music! This blasts your music from some generic RSS entry that has a somewhat troublingly high chance of never being heard up to a track that I will not only listen to, but pay attention to! I am human, and listening to a lot (a LOT) of tracks can get to be a bit much. It is refreshing to get linked directly to music! It makes it interesting.

Sorry for the thesis! I just want you to know that it's cool if you email me with songs.

Cathode Rays works at Harmonix, the company that first made Guitar Hero, then was somehow made to compete against Guitar Hero 3 with Rock Band (there's more to that story if you want to read for a little while, but it's kind of funny/crazy). I think that is about the raddest job of anyone I've ever talked to. I don't really know what a person would have to do for a living to have a cooler job in my book, though! Work for NASA? Be a professional Building Exploder? I just don't know!



Cathode Rays' website

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Animalstyle - Superrr Forrrrm

Off of the latest Pause release - Animalstyle's "Teletime" - is this purely NES song. You might notice on the release's page that alongside the option to download MP3 or FLAC versions of the tracks there is an option to buy an NES cartridge or download an NES ROM! Similar to Alex Mauer's Vegavox II, you can get all these tracks on an NES cartridge that will play on your old system (given it still works)! If you are unfortunate enough to not have an NES of your own, or if you'd rather not buy the cartridge version (but let's be real, I'm just talking to the people without an NES here), you can get the ROM which, by utilizing state-of-the-art technologies, allows you to experience many sensations similar to what you would on the original Nintendo! Oh how lucky you are to live in such a day and age!



Animalstyle's website

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ORBiT-8* - Stickerbrush Symphony

This track is a cover of a song from Donkey Kong Country 2! If, like me, you aren't familiar with the original, check it out! There's some very interesting noises in that original; it really shows what can be accomplished with the SNES's powerful soundchip. In relation to the original, though, this cover has some rad, buzzy bass going on which I like a lot, and faithfully reproduces the sedate mood of the song. Good night-time music, which seems applicable since it's almost 11PM here, haha. Latest post ever! (Just wait a few minutes and this record will be broken, though!)



ORBiT-8*'s website

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Lamb - Setting Sun

The original is an .xm, meaning it's not EXACTLY chiptune, but .xm files are typically made with trackers, and are the most direct descendents of the music formats used on old computers like the Atari ST, Amiga, Commodore, CPC etc. which are the foundation of the demo/chiptune scene.

Anyway, this track, like all the others that I have listened to by Lamb, is just gorgeous. Very rich chords, the cleanest instruments you can imagine, and solid but not overbearing percussion, with some great breaks in there just to keep you guessing. I highly recommend checking out the other tracks uploaded by this user.



Lamb's website

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Joshua Morse - Funk Bump

Frequency Modulation Synthesis is just great. In class today there was an old physics demo we watched on LASER DISC, and it had this awesome FM Synth intro complete with spacey synth drums and gobs of delay/reverb. No such luck here, this is a bit of the FM noise that successfully transitioned into the modern era without dating itself too badly. And it's by an 8bc.org newcomer! He's clearly no noobie to writing music, but this is the only track of his on there. Maybe google will turn up some more!



Joshua Morse's website

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Wigfred - Nosey

Is it an organ or is it chiptunes? Either way, this song is probably the most chilled out track I've ever featured, in a great way! The 6-bar phrases give it a pretty unique feel, also. If you're not listening for them it can sound like the track is one extended phrase, meandering as it pleases, but try and listen for where the patterns begin and end! It makes the song more enjoyable. Also, and I don't know exactly why, it reminds me of foggy mornings.



Wigfred's website

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Daft Bits - Around Da Chip!

Daft Punk's "Around the World" (one of my least favorite songs by them, if I can be honest) remixed quite heavily and recreated using FM Synthesis, the technique of sound generation that gave Sega consoles (most memorably the Genesis/Master System era ones) a sound very different from that of other consoles (SNES which came earlier and PS1 which came after were both pretty much sample-based, though I believe SNES had basic waveform generators, but I'm not completely certain).

In short, music that I can't help but love.

And just like that, I'm caught up!! Well, for the days I missed over New Year's, anyway. Still have a few to make up from the Blip Trip, but I'll get around to it.



Daft Bits' website

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Nick Maynard - Lightning is Badass

Oh no! A profane word on 8-Bit Daily! I like to keep this site "family-friendly", even though I'm fairly certain my audience is nothing but a bunch of crass, vulgar hooligans ;)

But to the point, this track has a very deceptive little intro that you ought to be getting through at this point in the paragraph (you folks DO listen to the song while reading my writeup, don't you?), and there's this break... (wait for it) That's just so huge, isn't it? Lots of contrast in this song. The thrashy section has some great NES-sounding instrumentation, and it reminds me a bit of Anamanaguchi but with... Dare I even say it? More distortion!!

Oh and you're not going crazy, this is the second update today. I'll probably do more. Depends on if I find anything good or not, but I've got a pretty wide-open afternoon for the first time in days so I'm doing a bit of "catch-up" today!



Nick Maynard's website

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KiddyBit - Racer Kid

It's all about the kids with this kid, apparently. I have to say that I wasn't very hopeful for this track when I saw the track title. It's also by an artist I've heard nothing by before (despite the fact that he's been occasionally uploading tracks to 8BC.org since Feb '09!), so when I heard this well-produced dancey-but-not-just-a-loop track, I was, I'll admit, a bit surprised! I love finding secret gems like this and sharing them. It feels like what 8BD is most useful for!



KiddyBit's website

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