DCT’s original netlabel Urbanizm Music has just come out with a new look courtesy of Joshua Morse. Urbanizm’s got some great hip-hop and R&B acts from around OC ReMix, VGMix and OneUp Studios, so check it out.
8bitpeoples is an artist collective and netlabel centered on chiptunes. Their eighty-two releases, almost all of which are freely available to download from their website, span tunes written for recorded from an NES, chiptune rock, and even a release by virt (with a contribution by Shnabubula).
On March 15, they unleashed a brand new site design onto the world, designed by minusbaby and coded by openBack, two of the official 8bp posse. The site is not yet operating at 100%; several sections, such as the retro artpacks and hardware and software sections, are currently under construction for expansion, but all the music is available for consumption. Additionally, there’s now an 8bitpeoples shop, featuring a professionally produced copy of their two-CD fiftieth album, Blip Festival shirts and a DVD of the 2006 event, and a Little Sound Dj cartridge.
I’ve noticed occasional slow load times and generic errors while loading pages, hopefully both of which will be fixed once the new site is broken in. Check it out, and long live the chiptune.
Shnabubula was kind enough to let me check out the album on the sly back in January, but now that it’s finally out, I’m glad to post about it. Released via II (read: Pause), Controller 1 finally saw the light last week. That’s some pretty awesome concept art from Francis Coulombe, am I right?
Produced by chiptune scene fanatic Shawn Phase, this original chiptune-style album is inspired by the buttons of the classic NES controller, featuring titles all derived from the various controls. Quoth Somnambula:
Take a journey across the face of an old NES controller. Each button has a story to tell if you’re willing to listen. Some of them have been forsaken by their fellow buttons while others are living the good life. Come listen and find out what goes on inside your controller when you’re not around.
I’d recommend something specific, but you’re really not gonna go wrong checking any of this out. At just over 35 minutes and not costing you a dime, you’ve gotta swing over to II and grab this quickly. Tell your friends about it. This album is wild per Sam’s usual craziness.
Under alter-ego Saffron Slumber, Kevin Stephens recently announced the release of his newest album on DeviantArt.
I have just released my first “album” (it’s really a single/EP) on Skrow!Media (a friend’s netlabel). It is totally free to download, so if you’re interested, go to http://skrowmedia.com/skrow004.html and you will be able to download it. It’s short at just about ten minutes total length, so it won’t take you much time. Be warned, though - the two pieces are ambient/drone music that rely heavily on piano, so if that’s not your thing… well, it still won’t be your thing. =)
Featuring album art cropped from an acrylic and pastel piece of Stephens, this original ambient offering, Meditations on Autumn, is definitely an engaging listen, also described by Stephens as “two songs written as meditations on the season of transformation.” Considering there’s very little time investment, you should have no regrets taking a moment to check the EP out in full, some smooth stuff from Saffron Slumber. You may have to keep an eye out on Skrow!Media for potential future releases from Kevin.
The ultimate new resource on video game music albums is growing like a weed. On November 3rd, VGMdb creator (and music curator of Slightly Dark) Ken “Secret Squirrel” Moore announced what he dubbed a milestone for the database. It’s hard to disagree:
I’m pleased to announce that, as of this morning, we’ve surpassed the 5000 album milestone. While not every one of those albums is a perfect entry, with fully researched tracklist/artist information, I think we’ve made some great progress towards that goal, and we’re now offering a significant amount of information that was previously not available anywhere.
In addition, earlier this week we exceeded 100,000 total album page views. I’ve been particularly pleased to notice that many of our pages have top billing in the Google search results for their catalog number.
So anyway, I’d like to thank all of you for everything that we’ve been able to achieve here. It’s made me very happy to see a lot of new names on the active members list, many of whom have already made significant contribution; keep up the great work.
I’ve personally added a number of albums onto VGMdb, and fellow VG Frequency writer ‘Ili “CHz” Butterfield is on staff there as well, so I’m definitely glad to see the concept take off and do a great job working with all of the VGM catalog sites out there to not only aggregate the information, but provide an even more comprehensive, interactive, more easily expandable destination to learn more about video game music. Any site with me in the database has to be good!
I loves me some netlabels. As a big proponent of free music (not ideologically, don’t worry), some of the most creative music you’ll find doesn’t cost you more than the time it takes to download.
Obviously, I spend a lot of time involved in the video game music rearrangement community, but netlabels feature great collectives of talent doing original music as well.
Like any hobbyist initiative, productivity can sometimes be intermittent. My favorite netlabel Hellven, run by Xavier “mv” Dang, has stopped and started on several occasions. This makes it difficult to find a really steady source of content to satisfy your fix.
On the chiptune side, Audun “AkumuHau” Sørlie, keeper of the most comprehensive NSF collection out there (and the only other guy I know who’s listed his hobbies as “VG, Wrestling, Comics” in that order), has been pimping the latest chiptune netlabel, II (i.e. Pause). Norrin Radd and Shawn Phase are there. I’ll be checking out their other material in the near future, but check out this cover art hotness for Radd’s album, Melodia di Infinità.
That art’s good enough to hang on your wall.
One of the other latest netlabels with strong ties toward the game music arrangement community that I’ve been made aware of has been Jonas “Platonist” Loman’s effort, Reunion, which announced last month that its site had gone out of beta stage into a final release. They have a lot of good artists I’m aware of from OC ReMix including FFmusic Dj, GaMeBoX, Saiko, SGX, Siamey, The Joker, and even guest releases by Binster and OverCoat. They’ve hit a pretty good stride, just announcing their 45th single release (courtesy of GaMeBoX), so give ‘em a look and bask in the free.
2005 has been another eventful year in the video game music arrangement community. Now that we’ve reached 2006, join us for an informal retrospective at some of the important goings-on in the scene last year.
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Royal Sefton III, frequently known as rs3 and a member of Hellven since its second incarnation, released Hellven’s first solo album since the netlabel’s return earlier this month. Featuring artwork by Kenji Bliss, st rotfest and the death monastic is a 10-track, nearly 25-minute techstep album whose darker mood reflects a departure from much of Sefton’s previous work.
Originally released as a part of Ubik’s Auld Lang Syne 2 album “competition,” Sefton fully remastered his entry before officially releasing the completed album at Hellven. The album’s ever-present harmonies and no-pause/continuous format are described by Sefton as one’s experience during the last half-hour before the impending end of days.
Popular netlabel Hellven relaunched yesterday, providing the first new material from the music collective in 2 years. With artwork and design handled by fellow artist Hans “hunz” van Vliet, label creator Xavier “mv” Dang announced Hellven’s return with the release of a group album entitled Debut.
The full-length album includes most of the artists comprising Hellven’s fifth incarnation, featuring virt, hunz, epoq, rs3, funkymuskrat, xerxes & mv.
Comments and feedback can be left at the site’s forums. Keep an eye on Hellven in the coming days for a full statement from mv on the return of Hellven, as well as what’s in store for the site and its artists in the near-future.