Itchy York article

Chip off the old rock

Making music with Game Boys is the new punk rock

'When I first heard about chip music it captured my imagination immediately,’ enthuses David Sugar. 'It seemed so right and so natural to be making music with a Game Boy that there seemed no question that this was going to be the next big thing.'

If he’s right, and making music with Game Boys really is going to be the next big thing, then Sugar will be the architect of the genre. His viscerally catchy, rock-meets-Nintendo programming approach currently has those with their fingers on the pulse of UK music sneaking suspicious peeks into console carry-cases across the land. But let’s not get ahead of ourselves. If we’re going to do this properly, then we should go back and start at level one.

Back in the days of the Amiga, groups of hackers developed ’cracked’ versions of computer games so that gamers didn’t need to buy the game to play it. The demo crews who made these games often used to include graphical intros, which they’d set to music as a way of showing off what they could use their consoles to produce. This spawned chip music, with 8-bit aficionados the world over trying to wrestle as many kinds of noise from their machines as they could.

Cue Sugar. Having moved from his beginnings as an indie guitarist into electronic music, via a mis-spent youth ’raving when I was supposed to be in bed’, an obsessive approach to the internet found him stumbling onto chip music. While the rest of the chippers were still trying to better the Magicland Dizzy soundtrack, the 24-year-old Londoner decided to start using the Game Boy as one of the instruments he was using to ’write things that were songs unto themselves.’ Level up a couple of years and this approach has led to him introducing Rob Da Bank to chip music, receiving a smattering of Radio One and 6Music airplay, and earning a place as one of the finalists for a Diesel U Music award. Not to mention spawning a burgeoning scene of like-minded artists. Pretty impressive. But we still have one question: why the hell would you want to make music on a Game Boy anyway?

‘The thing I’m interested in is that the Game Boy is a huge capitalist icon,’ explains Sugar, ’It’s like the pinnacle of the consumer world as it doesn’t serve any purpose other than entertainment. It’s just about pure consumption. You can take it now, rip its guts out and make it do things it was never supposed to do. I like that idea.’

So there you have it: making chip rock is like raising your index finger and asking capitalism to perform a sonic spin. ’It’s the punk rock of electronic music,’ he continues. ’Even though the people that make chip music are very technologically sophisticated, they’re purposefully going backwards with the technology they use. It’s not just a sound, it’s a methodology behind creating it.’

Punk rock or not, one thing it definitely is is an ingenious way of making tunes. The insanely catchy melody of Sugar’s track We Weren’t Put Together sounds like Goldie assaulting Johnny Marr with a Pac-Man arcade game.

It’s pop Jim, but not as we know it. It’s not just Sugar who’s whispering sweet digital musical nothings into the ears of the nation either. North of the border, Glaswegian duo Firebrand Boy’s mish-mash of Game Boy, Atari, NES and Commodore 64 has recently seen their track Orange being championed by Phil Jupitus on his BBC6 Music show.

So, yes it’s a great concept, and yes it rocks harder than a kid with ADD on a rocking horse, but the thing is, it’s kind of hard to see some people taking it seriously. ’Yeah, we get people shouting out asking for Zelda during gigs,’ sighs Phil, half of Firebrand Boy.

'People my age are so used to the sounds, and the blips are so embedded in their memories, that they can’t associate anything else with it.’ What’s more, Sugar claims to have had people so bemused by the sight of someone onstage messing with a Game Boy that they’ve actually got up, wandered across stage halfway through one of his gigs and started asking him what he’s doing. Surely this doesn’t bode well for the longevity of the genre. If people can’t take the music seriously enough to not stroll through the middle of performances, then isn’t it going to make it difficult for the public to think of it as anything more than a novelty?  ‘I suppose some people will immediately think that you’re doing something novelty’ agrees Sugar. 'But then they’re just stupid people. It depends on the people making the tracks. If the tracks are good, then people will tune into the scene. That’s what’ll bring it into the public consciousness, not just the fact that it’s a Game Boy.’

Considering the current state of the tunes involved, and the fact that more and more people seem to be picking up an 8-bit, there should be no danger to its public acceptance. All that’s left now is for the artists not to get fed up with it all.  ‘One day I probably will put the Game Boy down, but I’m also sure I’ll pick it up again one day. After all, ’ Sugar muses, 'I’ve been doing this for two and a half years, so I’ve got quite a profound relationship with my Game Boy.'

Related York Articles

Recent York Articles

Search York Articles