Retro consoles spawn modern music

With every new generation of über-sexy, high-powered gaming consoles, another wave of outdated machines are inducted into the videogame hardware hall of fame – a graveyard of wires and small cartridges destined to gather dust on the top shelf of countless closets. It’s a grim fate for these once-beloved devices. But some old-school game consoles are being resurrected from the dead by the power of rock.

Above: 8-bit musician Nullsleep (aka Jeremiah Johnson) performs onstage

Not content to let classic gaming gear from decades past go to waste, a tech-savvy array of underground musicians are digging out their retro consoles, dusting them off, and firing them up for a new purpose: to rock the living hell out of them. We’ve rounded up a tasty sampling of bands and artists who work their dark magic on once-deceased gaming hardware to blast your eardrums into a state of blippy bliss.

Anamanaguchi

This quartet of young, 8-bit punk rockers unleashes a guitar-driven assault of turbocharged instrumental pop with the support of a hacked NES console. With a high-octane sound that’s influenced as much by the indie music scene as it is by 80s videogame culture, Anamanaguchi’s melodic punk/chiptune hybrid riffs are super energetic and contagiously catchy.

Above: The art for Anamanaguchi’s first album (download link below)

The band writes its rhythms and 8-bit melodies using the Nerdtracker II program, and arranges layered guitar, bass, and drum parts over them. The basic chiptune tracks are then burned to a ROM chip, plopped into a modded cartridge, and played through the NES onstage while the band members shred along on their various instruments. Having successfully embarked on tours in the U.S. and the U.K. in the few years they’ve been around, the group keeps gigging relentlessly and will return to play the 2009 Penny Arcade Expo this fall.

Above: Anamanaguchi’s fifth member

Above: The video for Helix Nebula, also known as the TalkRadar theme song

Links:

Anamanaguchi’s first album, Power Supply (free download)

Anamanaguchi’s new album, Metropolis (Flash site)

Anamanaguchi’s MySpace 

Above: Anamanaguchi rock onstage at the Penny Arcade Expo

The Guitar Zeros

For a band that doesn’t use any actual guitars, The Guitar Zeros still manage to bring the rock in a big way. Consisting of a drummer, a singer and two guys who play hacked Guitar Hero controllers like they were real instruments, the band delivers an audio assault of fuzzed-out electro rock that’s part novelty and part innovation.

They’ve created their own software that lets them run their repurposed Guitar Hero controllers through a laptop, a distortion pedal and an amplifier, allowing each “guitarist” to produce 32 different note combinations and some far-out noise effects with only five buttons. The resulting musical mayhem is highly original, very peculiar, and oddly captivating.

Links:

Official site

The Guitar Zeros’ MySpace

Tree Wave

This Texas-based electro-pop group creates a lush, almost organic sound with an unlikely collection of antiquated electronic hardware from the late ‘70s and early ‘80s. Using two Commodore 64s, an Atari 2600, a Compaq Portable II, a hacked Epson dot matrix printer and lovely female vocals, Tree Wave’s densely layered tracks are complex, melodic, and highly experimental.

Above: Tree Wave onstage in New York City

Band member and tech guru Paul Slocum writes his own code to drive the music and visuals from the devices. Live performances are accompanied by video feeds created on an Atari 2600 and hacked cartridges. Tweaking knobs, turning dials, and playing the Commodore 64 keyboard like a musical instrument, Slocum coaxes electronic beauty from what might otherwise sound to the casual observer like hypnotic, computerized cacophony.

Above: Video for Tree Wave’s SLEEP

Links:

Official site

Tree Wave’s MySpace

Nullsleep

Though Nullsleep (aka Jeremiah Johnson) also composes music on the NES, his weapon of choice is a Game Boy cranked through a sound system at high volume. He creates intensely dynamic pop tunes using the Little Sound DJ homebrew software.

Above: Nullsleep performs at Blip Festivel ‘07

Shifting between introspective, sad melodies and driving, upbeat Game Boy rock anthems, Johnson gets the dance floor moving and pushes the handheld unit’s four sound channels to the limit with his techno-inspired chiptune rock. Onstage, he wields the Game Boy with a ferocious energy, head banging, pumping his fists in the air, and giving in to the thrall of undulating beats and bytes.

A decade ago, Johnson co-founded 8bitpeoples, a DIY record label and collective of musicians who focus on rocking out with early home computers and retro gaming hardware. Johnson also helped organize and sponsor the annual Blip Festival in NYC, which draws scores of chiptune musicians from all over the world to engage in a four-day revelry of fresh music made with outdated computer and videogame consoles. On his own, he continues his ongoing quest to coax increasingly complex sounds from the small devices.

Above: Nullsleep at Blip Festival ‘06

Links:

Official site

Nullsleep’s MySpace

ALL of Nullsleep’s albums (free download)