The Music Blog: Blip Festival

Sunday, December 03, 2006

Blip Festival

We decided to blipify our Saturday night by eating dinner at Vertigo and checking out the Blip Festival. Vertigo has nothing to do with the concept of Blip (using low-bit video game consoles to make music), but it deserves a mention because the food was unique AND tasty, and the service was awesome. You'd think with all the restaurants in New York, that would be easy to come by, but it's really not. So after enjoying some butternut squash ravioli and a white-bean-chorizo concoction, we headed to the festival. Here's who we saw:

The Depreciation Guild
This band consisted of two guys, one of which doubled as a notably uncomfortable lead singer. He admitted to have never played for so many people before, but I wouldn't have been able to tell if he hadn't said that. The music was really good and eased the audience into the show. It took them some time to prepare between songs, which the lead singer acknowledged, "Onstage banter. Fuck yeah."

Aonami
This thick Japanese dude played his whole set wearing a panda mask. Awwwww! The music was super-energetic. Some of the live stuff was kinda loose, but he played his best song, Misodisko Ver 1, which you can hear at the link above.

Covox
This seven-foot Swede had tons of energy, but I'm leaning toward the opinion that he's all looks. I enjoyed his set well enough, but nothing really grabbed me. Watching him bounce around playing a Gameboy was okay, but it was a good time for me to get in the giant bathroom line and play my own Gameboy. I cracked open Super Puzzle Fighter and ended up talking to a guy playing Tetris (my number-one favorite game). I told him I can get 199 lines on the Gameboy version. I don't think he believed me. I'm told 200 wins the game, but I don't know anyone who has actually done it. Maybe I will one day... *sigh*

Bud Melvin
This is who I came to see. His song at the link above, "I'm Old Fashioned," is the most brilliant combination of video game sounds (I'm not sure which game), the ukulele (I think... he mentioned that he plays it and it's not a regular guitar), and faint old-timey music (the most obscure I've heard, actually). It is probably also the only combination of those things, but based on its own merit and excluding any thought of associating it with a particular genre, it's a really nice song and I love it. I love it so much, in fact, that I found Bud after his set (which did not include this song, unfortunately) and told him that I love the song and asked him to enable the "Add" feature on his myspace player so I could put it on my profile. He was a genuinely nice guy and was easy to talk to, which was a relief because I don't normally talk to musicians.

I went through a phase when I worked at Feedback Magazine, where I talked to them all the time, either for interviews or general schmoozing. Sometimes I was pleasantly surprised, other times I was sourly disappointed by the pompous rudeness. Now that I don't have to do anything, I'd almost always rather enjoy the show and go home. But I digress.

Bud said he'd look at his settings so I could add the song, and I was happy. Despite its lack of my new favorite song, Bud's set was the best. He had an electric banjo thing happening and he sang. It was a level of effort and "liveness" that many of the other acts seemed to lack, being mostly pre-recorded. (Nothing against pre-recorded music, but if I'm at a show, I want to be at the show when it's being created.)

Nullsleep
I called him an asshole. I was only kidding. He was being overly apologetic that it was taking a minute to get his equipment working and there was all this dead silence that was too awkward to bear. So, Drunkat opted to "help out" by potentially making it the situation even more awkward. Luckily, a bunch of people knew I was kidding and laughed. Once he got up and running, he was pretty good.

Hally
Hally is a pretty elusive guy, but his set was alright. The production on his pre-recorded stuff was the tightest and whatever live samples he threw in blended well. My only complaint was that it seemed to move away from the low-bit video game genre and more into the federal pound-me-in-the-ass trance genre. It wasn't as bad as 2am at Element, but you know what your parents and teachers say about gateway drugs.

We thought about going back, but opted to stay in and play the Classic Gameboy version of Castlevania instead.

posted by platkat @ 9:00 PM