Blip Festival: 8-Bit Musical Heaven

If you’re into checking out something completely different, The Blip Festival is happening all weekend, starting this Thrusday. 8-bit music, or “chip music,” is a small-but-growing underground scene that takes the music stored on the chips of 8 and 16-bit gaming systems, reworking them into something new. The “chipheads” create remixes or even symphonies with the music stored in old Sega, Nintendo and Atari games. It’s a scene that demands a combination of electronics skills and musical ability - a mix of talents that’s been grabbing the attention of the avant-garde. Beck’s Hell Yes EP remixes some of Guero and adds some chip music; Richard D. James of Aphex Twin put out a single that heavily sampled the sounds from the classic original Pac-Man game.

Blip Festival brings together some of the best and most unusual of these 8-bit artists. The futuristic sounds they create with 10- and 20 year-old technology will amaze listeners and remind us of how incredible things get when art and science collide. View a full schedule of the Blip Festival’s events HERE.

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