Time flies while you’re attending to other matters… but for another couple of hours at least, this piece of holiday-themed ANSI art still applies, if not necessarily in time zones where it applies.We can’t legitimately lay claim to this one on hardly any basis: it was released by Coluche, who was never a Mistigris member, in the July 1994 in the penultimate artpack release of our predecessor group iMPERiAL, itself a temporary merger between the area code 604-based “New Wave Artists” and the Québec-based “GRIP/AD” (Graphic Revolution In Progress / Art Division).  (You can probably guess which camp this work’s artist, SysOp of Rash Reflections BBS, belonged to.) 

What role he played in GRIP was unclear; he was the programmer of the group’s “IMPview” application, and doesn’t appear to have returned in GRIP’s subsequent return to the scene in 1995.There was really no reason for groups in Vancouver and Québec to find common ground and work together; long distance charges being what they were, we could have sought sister cities anywhere there were phone lines attached to computers.  Nonetheless, as with iMPERiAL, Mistigris echoed its predecessor and also maintained a virtual office dans la belle province for most of its existence, drawing on the labours of a small cadre of artists sending in submissions through The Extremist’s board City iZ Burning.  It sure endows one with a cosmopolitan feeling!

Cthulu finally made it out east in 2002, and wouldn’t you know it, he landed in Montréal on St. Jean-Baptiste day, a holiday unknown outside the province… during the World Cup, concurrently with the Fringe Festival and the Jazz Festival and a blistering heat wave.  There he concluded that there was so much going on in that city, it must have been no coincidence that the big BBS scene in Québec had been around Québec City rather than Montréal for the same reason that the artscene had never been dominated by New York City crews: there was so much going on there that people were too busy living their lives in thriving cultural hubs to waste the pricey opportunity to play intangible games with invisible strangers on the other side of the planet.  They don’t draw logocollies in Montréal, they paint graffiti murals.

In conclusion: bonne saint-jean!

[audio https://popplers5.bandcamp.com/download/track?enc=mp3-128&fsig=f63280667af1a3eb0d6a4bc33a73a99a&id=1472204663&nl=1&stream=1&ts=1484032585.0?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio]
http://bandcamp.com/EmbeddedPlayer/size=medium/bgcol=ffffff/linkcol=0687f5/notracklist=true/transparent=true/album=1226652941/

We are in the awkward position of having a great deal to discuss (the May Music Madness spree?  It resulted in the discharge from solitary confinement of hundreds of music tracks.  Also: the “lost” unreleased Mist artpack/website M-9808 was finally released) but circumstances have caught up with us, our mouthpiece on the verge of adding a second child to his household.

So we’ll just hit on a timely current event: when discussing the activities of Mistigris alumni still active and making art out in the world, Melodia has soaked up all of the sun – but another one of our musicians, bryface, has also quietly been racking up accolades for his acclaimed chiptune work on Game Boys and the like.

In November of last year, he won kfaraday’s S3XMODIT Mania! compo on battleofthebits.org, consistently advancing to progressive rounds with his tracks making use of samplepacks provided, until after six rounds he was the last man standing.  So there’s one news item.

2014 also saw him complete the WeeklyBeats challenge, producing a new song every week for an entire year, leading to a body of work consisting of over 50 songs for that year.  You can hear them over here.  So, that’s something.

bryface isn’t just a studio creation, however, but he travels the world in pursuit of his chip brethren and seeks out opportunities to coax sawtooth waves from primitive hardware in front of live audiences.  This Saturday night, June 20 2015, for those privileged enough to have a chance to catch him in New York City… he’ll be performing on a bill with Mega Ran + K-Murdock, Danimal Cannon and brentalfloss, an I/O Chip Music presentation.  8 pm at The Studio at Webster Hall.  Further details here, ticket pre-sales over here.  Mistfunk 2015 represent!

Three news items for a single Mister!  Sorry it took so long – in a just world, we would have covered these stories much sooner.