[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K5lnMpq4ns4?feature=oembed&enablejsapi=1&origin=http://safe.txmblr.com&wmode=opaque&w=500&h=281]

Five years in the making, and yet hastily thrown together over the past couple of days, it’s a fresh Horsenburger teletext portrait of the late George Michael given some proud rainbow colour-cycling in the background and paired with a 2011 chiptune cover of “Last Christmas” by bryface. Together, they’re better! All that plus a parting blow from Melodia, an unused b-side from MIST0416, interpreting an early ‘80s cultural phenomenon as it might have been experienced on an early '80s home microcomputer. Everyone out there, take care of each other – if we can just make it a few days further, we can escape the curse of 2016! (And meet: the curse of 2017.)

(Source: https://www.youtube.com/)

[audio https://api.soundcloud.com/tracks/280534877/stream?client_id=3cQaPshpEeLqMsNFAUw1Q?plead=please-dont-download-this-or-our-lawyers-wont-let-us-host-audio]

We don’t come by this song fairly; though composed by Cthulu (well, arranged by Cthulu – it’s a cover of a song, “Now or Never”, by flyingfish’s band, Perpetual Dream Theory), the founder of Mistigris, it was released in an ACiD artpack – ACiD-100, their final Acquisition, in 2004. Cthulu always aspired to be a computer musician, from the very earliest days even prior to Mist’s founding (hence all of the early music affiliation aspirations for The Screaming Tomato), and after a decade of chipping away at it, he was … really getting somewhere! But in the meantime Mistigris had both arisen and collapsed (it’s hard to believe that there wasn’t always a Mistigris, but anytime before August 1994 and anytime between August 1998 and October 2014 and you were out of luck!) and he was fortunate just to have any old place in which to vent this.

Finding the chiptune aesthetic fascinating from the start, The Pope’s experiments in that direction (A Night With Musidia, DODEL, ETO) compelled him to begin working in that direction also, which informed an early draft of this piece. Still, it was lacking a certain je ne sais quoi. Enter the High Voltage SID collection, the canonical pile of Commodore 64 music. Mining it for outrageous samples from memories of long-forgotten games, he used them to ice the cake and transform the song completely into something almost unrecognizable. Then it disappeared in part of the vast depths of ACiD-100’s multitudes of multitudes, forever to be forgotten until now.

For like Aphex Twin’s 1992 “We Are The Music Makers”, this arrangement also began with a sample of Gene Wilder as Willy Wonka in the 1971 movie, quoting Arthur O'Shaughnessy’s 1873 poem “Ode”. So due to the circumstances of yesterday, it was dusted off and put back on the shelf. We’ve only just made the acquaintance of Steve “Horsenburger” Horsely, but already we were able to capitalize on his extremely punctual minting of teletext gold to find some appropriately suitable visuals to accompany the track with. Thanks to everyone giving this old tune a second lease on life!

bryface workshops at freqfest5(LA)

OK, you’ve heard us talking about his work more than once, but… he’s an active individual, so there is much to report. Computer music native bryface is not only taking on the 2016 #weeklybeats songwriting challenge again (new works already out (week 1: experimenting with the Korg Gadget app on iPad), plus more upcoming at the rate of … one per week!), but he’s participating in 8bitLA’s Freq Fest 5 this upcoming weekend (Jan 15-17), so any of our fans in or around Los Angeles (Bueller? Bueller?) can have a chance to not only take in his seemingly effortless chiptune stylings, but also to participate in two chiptune workshops he’s leading on related subjects:

Saturday, January 16th - LSDJ Workshop 1: Chipmusic Sound Design Essentials (45 min)
Having trouble wrapping your head around creating sounds? We’ll explore some methodologies for crafting various types of individual sounds, as well as more holistic approaches with respect to a song’s overall sound design.

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Sunday, January 17th - LSDJ Workshop 2: Tracking Between The Rows (45 min)
Ever wonder how to write music that’s more than the sum of its parts? In this advanced workshop, we’ll take a deeper look into composition overall – drawing wisdom from demoscene legends and other notable composers, plus leveraging the psychoacoustic quirks of the human ear – to make the most out of the precious limited number of channels you have at your disposal.

We’ve got no lack of ancient history (and even some further current events!) to cover, so stay tuned for further interviews, promotions, behind-the-scenes peeks, archaeological digs and blooper outtakes. Excelsior!

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I have so much yet to discuss: I have MIST2000 puzzles to spoil; I have MIST1015 artworks to discuss… I have a holiday multimedia extravaganza to hype! But in keeping with my mandate to not let timely matters get away from me… I have a concert to plug by a Mistigris alumnus. Oldschool Misters might remember him as Handiboy or Haquisaq; you last saw him in MIST1014 under his modern sobriquet of “bryface”, which not only hints at his real name, but lets you know that yes, he has a face. (He is also represented in MIST2000, so I’d better get around to cracking that nut for the benefit of all of you lazy gadabouts who refused to do so for themselves.) Though he had a deft handle on sample use back in the ‘90s, he has since refined his masterful art down the manupulation of pure square, sine and triangle waves, and you can hear him leading the way to some retrofuturistic palace of wisdom in a chiptune idiom. I praised his musical achievements before, and I guess his turn has just come around again.

Here, it’s nearly Christmas, enjoy a seasonal video of his handiwork. (Er, I mean haquiwork. Uhh… workface.)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iQPCr95vkJM&w=560&h=315]

And now, the concert details:

Thursday Dec 17, 8 PM
Rickshaw Theatre (254 E. Hastings)

Music and Gaming Festival’s GAME OVER event series is coming to the northwest at the Rickshaw theater. $15, 19+

Performances by:

bryface
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bryface composes and performs chipmusic using real game hardware: his most recent project, “VARIOUS TOPICS”, is a full-length album written solely using, of all things, a 1980’s Nintendo Game Boy. But this music is a far cry from the nostalgic, simplistic video game stereotypes of yesteryear – watch bry demonstrate prowess in a multitude of modern genres such as House, Electro, and Drum and Bass, all using nothing more than the sound coming from the Game Boy’s antiquated 4-channel sound chip. bry’s music has gained notoriety throughout the worldwide community of chip musicians for being highly sophisticated and forward-looking, yet deeply rooted in oldschool demoscene aesthetics.

The Runaway Four
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The Super Smash Bros. of video game music! The Runaway Four performs video game music in the form of themed medleys, tying songs together from all different games. A regular at local conventions including the Vancouver Retro Gaming Expo and Nerd Fest, this band is known for performing high-energy sets and long, expository audial journeys. They can also be be seen frequently around Vancouver collaborating with other geek-themed performers like Geeks vs Nerds, and they always keep a healthy stock of medleys uploaded on their YouTube channel.

missingNo.
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Founded in 2011, missingNo. has played venues from house parties, to clubs and local conventions, to some of the largest video game music gatherings in North America. missingNo. boasts a full horn section that injects a heavy soul-fusion influence into their arrangements of classic and modern tunes and they’re consistently blowing away the crowd with their big sound and ability to draw out the inner child in their listeners. Their first album, Warp Zone, dropped in 2013. Epoch, the band’s next studio recording is slated for digital release in Fall 2015. Their music is available for sale on Loudr, Bandcamp, iTunes, among others and is also available for streaming on all major internet radio sites. Be sure to track them down on YouTube and Facebook to track down their latest videos and music releases.

Freaky DNA
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Freaky DNA plays his own NES-style chiptunes from the Retro City Rampage album which currently has 200,000+ plays on Bandcamp. Previous live shows include Osaka, O’Porto, Brooklyn, Banff, Zürich, Seattle, Toronto, Norwich, Newcastle, Berlin, San Francisco, Amsterdam and other locations around the globe.

Late-breaking update: Bryface tells us that he will have merch at the concert! We never did end up making the Mistigris CD sampler, but this … is probably quite a bit better.

also, at the venue i’ll be selling a collection of most of my existing / unreleased works on SD card! not only will there be .MP3’s but also a handful of tracker files and other music source file equivalents.

[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.