Blip Festival Review
The Blip Festival astounded beyond my wildest expectations. A spectrum of all of NYC niches: Hipsters, Ravers, Trekkies, Dreadlocked White Dudes–just to name a few–all shared one thing in common and that is the love of the 8-bit sound.
Funny thing is the nation most well represented at the Chiptunes festival were the Swedes. Go Figure. Second comes the Japanese which kinda makes sense.
Anyways some of the highlights:
Random
Random was an 18 year old Swedish Kid who headline the Festival on Friday. Seriously it was just him with a Gameboy and a modified game catridge rockin out a enthusiastic crowd. It was quite a sight to behold a crowd of dancers spazzing out to videgame music like they were at a Warehouse Rave.
Hally
Next is one of the craziest guys I’ve ever seen. His name is Hally and he’s a legend in Japan. All I have to say is his set up consists of one mixer and Two Super Famicons. Yes that’s right he beat-matched Super Famicons.
The Performance Art Space that held the festival was a feature in itself. The Tank is located on a nondescript road in Wall St. The stage featured a Plastic LCD Pixel Panel from Element Lab that blew up 8-bit pixelated images with each 4″ plastic square on the grid representing a pixel. It’s amazing how images from our childhood like the Mario Coin box look so odd but familiar when blown up to such a gigantic size.
photos by alexis ong and matt
December 14th, 2006 at 2:30 pm
[…] Ever since the Blip Festival, I’ve been pretty obsessed with learning of new ways to make music. It seems I have found it in this Genius from Norway. Lasse Gjerstsen can’t play drums, piano, or beatbox for the life him; However, with his talented ability to edit videos of him mucking around on the drums, he can transform himself into a pretty sick drummer. The resulting visual cutfest is pretty amazing to absorb as well. Do yourself a favor and watch this two videos and be blown away. […]