About Blip Australia



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February 17th and 18th marks the first time that the world's premiere chipmusic festival makes in to the Southern Hemisphere with Blip Festival Australia.



New York's 8bitpeoples have presented Blip Festivals in the US, Europe and Japan since 2006 and now it's Melbourne's turn to experience two days of hard hitting low-tech chip mastery from some of the world's foremost names in the chipmusic scene. The line up will feature a selection of artists from across Australia and around the world to present an arresting display of Audio-Visual performances that will rock one of Melbourne's best known live music venues - The Evelyn Hotel.



Blip Festival showcases artists from as far afield as the UK, Germany and US - many of whom are performing in Australia for the first time - as well as superstars of the local scene. There will be launches of new material, a variety of genres and styles to suit everyone's taste and a whole lot of high energy, lo-fi audiovisual magic, the likes of which Australia has never seen before.



Featuring performances from:



• 7bit Hero (BNE)

• 10k (SYD)

• Abortifacient (SYD)

• Batsly Adams (US)

• Bit Shifter (US)

• Derris-Kharlan (MEL)

• Dot.AY (MEL)

• _ensnare_ (UK)

• Gentle Hurst (SYD)

• Hally (JP)

• iLKke (SYD)

• Jayson Haebich (MEL)

• Lazerbeat (UK)

• little-scale (ADE)

• Monodeer (NL)

• Nullsleep (US)

• Old Grey Wolf (NZ)

• Patric Catani (DE)

• Saitone (JP)

• Trash80 (US)







[ AV ] 7bit Hero (BNE)

7bit Hero is music and video games working together like you've never seen before. Sound and technology, perfectly intertwined. And it's all for you.



It's a bit-tronic soundtrack to an epic tale. A love story where Boy attempts to find Girl a slightly better retail job.



In the near future, 7bit Hero will be a video game, an album, and a series of music videos. It will be all of these things very soon, and it will be awesome.



7bit Hero: where music and game meet... and high-five.



http://7bithero.com/







[ AV ] Abortifacient (SYD)

Abortifacient is the voodoo god of Gameboy bass, reanimating the corpses of redundant consoles to bring darker, twisted dance floor murder to the innocent chip kids.



Drawing on experience in hardcore, jungle, and dubstep, Abortifacient picked up a Gameboy in 2009, and became dedicated to bringing massive bass wobbles, hammering gabber kicks, and intricately chaotic breaks to a genre characterised by innocence and playfulness.



In addition to creating his own anarchic rhythms, he is an avid supporter of the Sydney music scene. After 2 years of helping organise parties in Sydney's underground electronic music scene, he decided to go it alone, creating 'Death Rave', a series of warehouse parties dedicated to bringing beats and performance to punters craving a dancefloor. 'Death Rave' has flown in countless acts from interstate and overseas, and given exposure to new artists.



Since 2006, Abortifacient has toured internationally and within Australia. In 2011, he's played four dates in Spain, the Blip Tokyo afterparty, and over a dozen shows around Australia.



For Blip Australia, he'll be performing not only for your ears, but for your eyes for a full audio-visual assault on your senses. The 'Death Rave' VJ rig consists of circuit bent Sega Megadrive and circuit bent analogue video devices.



http://www.abortifacient.net







[ V ] Batsly Adams (US)

Andrew Reitano [Batsly Adams] is an electrical engineer / programmer / visualist based in NY. He creates visuals using a combination of two Sega Genesis consoles and a hand-built video synth circuit. His style involves pushing the limits of the Sega video processor (VDP), utilizing hardware tricks to produce images beyond the expected capability of the system.



http://www.batslyadams.com







[ A ] Bit Shifter (US)

New York City's Bit Shifter weighs in with a blitzkrieg strike of semiautomatic pulse wave fire, delivered from a twin Nintendo Game Boy assault rig. Exemplifying a bracing distillation of the less-is-more philosophy, Bit Shifter embraces limitations and eschews overstated indulgences in favor of the streamlined environments of the Nanoloop and Little Sound DJ home-brew Game Boy musicmaking programs. Armed only with two 20-year-old handhelds, Bit Shifter leaves high-endcomputer music choking on his exhaust, bringing twice the rock with 0.002% of the processing power.



Bit Shifter is the co-founder and co-curator of the international Blip Festival event series, has released music on Hymen, 555 Recordings, Mirex, Ketacore, and Astralwerks, and has logged over 200 performances worldwide.



http://bit.shifter.net/







Nathan Antony, a.k.a "Derris-Kharlan", has been writing chip music since 2008. Now studying music composition at university, he complements his texturally complex pieces with live guitar performance.



Nathan has played in major Australian cities including Melbourne and Sydney, as well as shows in New York and Chicago.



He has tracks on the acclaimed netlabels Pause and Ubiktune as well as an upcoming release for Sounds Legit.



https://8bc.org/members/Derris-Kharlan





Photo by Declan Kuch

Alex Yabsley (Dot.AY) has long been an advocate and supporter of Chip Music within Australia, Co-Founding the Blog 'Game Boy Australia' and running regular shows in Brisbane under the name Pocket Music. His music is a massive, bass heavy explosion of robotic sound design and off kilter rhythms backed up by an energetic stage presence which he has showcased around Australia (sometimes supporting legends such as Girl Talk, Dan Deacon and Daedalus) as well as at after parties for both Blip Tokyo and Blip NYC.



http://dot-ay.com





Photo by Chiptography

_ensnare_ is the lo-fi alias of Paul "nervous_testpilot" Taylor, a man who proves you can never have too many silly names.



Best known for his soundtrack to the award-winning indie computer game Frozen Synapse, Paul has also been a long-term member of the micromusic / chiptune / fakebit / whatever movement; performing at events as diverse as Microdisko Oslo and Marseilles' MAIN#2 demoparty.



Expect warm housey bleeps and scorching melodies thundering out of an under-powered laptop.



Check out his albums at http://ensnare8bit.blogspot.com







[ V ] Gentle Hurst (SYD)

Hailing from the likes of 'The Shire', Gentle Hurst brings you grainy, distorted visuals using nothing more than the likes of obsolete 80's and 90's video game consoles. With bent hardware and home made patches, the visuals have been witnessed around Australia from crummy living room bass parties through to some of Australia's top running chip nights such as Pocket Music and Death Rave.







[ A ] Hally (JP)

In 2001 Hally founded the near legendary website vorc.com and has been a pillar of the international chip music scene ever since. Be it an underground club in Tokyo or the biggest stages chipmusic has to offer, Hally will dominate your crowd and for you to dance.



The original Saturday night cyber punk.



http://www.last.fm/music/Hally





Photo by Chiptography

[ V ] iLKke (SYD)

Ilija Melentijevic aka iLKke has been called the "inventor of music", "god of art" and "crowned king of biographies" by fans and critics alike.



He accidentally invented the pixel and pulse wave in 1993 while looking for a way to shrink his gigantic genitalia. His style can best be described as post-awesome.



Using his nervous system he moves his muscles to mechanically manipulate input interfaces of electronic devices with the purpose of illegally hacking into their memory contents. He then energetically wrestles thusly created binary data and banishes it from the digital realm into real-life vibrations that can be experienced as sights, sounds and orgasms.



http://ilkke.blogspot.com







[ V ] Jayson Haebich (MEL)

Jayson Haebich is a Melbourne based programmer, VJ and new media artist who uses his skills as a computer programmer to create diverse and innovative works ranging from club visuals, site specific installations, data visualisations, film clips and much more. Constantly evolving, Jaysons work takes the latest innovations in technology and uses these within an artistic context. For Blip Festival Australia, Jayson's visual sets will incorporate a wide variety of equipment including an xbox kinect, eeeg neuroheadset and virtual reality goggles!



http://www.brokenpixelproductions.com







[ A ] Lazerbeat (UK)

Lazerbeat writes slow crunchy music that you can dance to. Assuming he survives the lethal and terrifying Australian fauna his mother will probably be watching his performance on the live stream so please clap and make lots of noise, don't make him bring shame on his family...



http://lazerbeat.bandcamp.com







little-scale (Sebastian Tomczak) has a PhD in chiptune. He has: released more than 20 EPs / albums; written a song per day for a year alongside Lazerbeat; developed music interfaces for numerous consoles as well as other hardware projects; and has presented papers and posters at conferences around the globe. Having played at Blip Festival 2009 in NYC and Blip Festival Tokyo in 2010, little-scale is looking forward to performing at Blip Festival Australia with his unique flavour of glitch, noise, dance, ambient and progressive chipmusic.



http://little-scale.com







[ A ] Monodeer (NL)

"Monodeer is the alter ego of Dutch electronic musician Mark van den Heuvel, who combines his eternal love for 8-bit, noise and basslines into inimitable live sets. Using two classic Nintendo Gameboys, he energetically explores, challenges and breaks through the pixelated boundaries of the micromusic scene. Monodeer's own brand of dark, noisy, lo-fi mastery will get you moving to the sounds of deep chip-bass and melodic hooks. Minimal means. Maximum sound."



http://www.monodeer.com

http://www.facebook.com/monodeer







[ A ] Nullsleep (US)

Nullsleep is the alias of Jeremiah Johnson, an electronic musician whose style could best be described as post-cyberpunk: a combination of distorted synthpop, electro, and industrial produced with repurposed low-bit electronics. His approach embraces the politics of appropriation, leveraged limitations, destructive process and data corruption. The result is a wall of digital noise driven by a heavy beat, expanding and collapsing in a series of glitches and drones emanating from cheap plastic devices.



In 1999 Nullsleep co-founded 8bitpeoples, a collective of artists interested in the audio-visual aesthetics of early home computers and video game consoles. He has since released a number of recordings through 8bitpeoples, Astralwerks, Aniplex and others. Based in New York City, Nullsleep has performed over 150 shows throughout North America, Europe and Asia, including successful world tours in 2006 and 2009.



http://www.nullsleep.com





Photo by Chiptography

[ A ] Old Grey Wolf (NZ)

Old Grey Wolf (Chris McCullough) is one of the growing number of New Zealand chip artists. Writing and performing chip music since 2008, Chris has covered a range of styles, incorporating vocals, keyboard, guitar, and ukulele in his songs.



Live performances are always energetic, usually fun, and often shirtless. Expect a good time!



http://www.myspace.com/oldgreywolfmusic







[ AV ] Patric Catani (AKA Candie Hank) (DE)

In 1996, Patric C rediscovered the old box with C64 discs and got inspired by playing the old arcade games again. He took the time to complete the videogame soundtrack album "The horrible plans of Flex Busterman" with full manual, character pages and other fictive game instructions. Gina V.D'Orio, Phillip Virus, Henni Hell and all his friends helped him to realize the artwork and video. Until now Patric gets back on Track(er) from time to time and is updating his thrilling 8Bit Scifi Adventure. Being called a Pioneer of the 8bit scene, he's supporting some of the Creative Commons sites like the very active 8Bit collective and presented his Amiga Work on the Blip Fest 2009 in NYC where a sold out Mosh Pit of dedicated people gave him a virtual electrified flower bouquet of madness as a tribute for his "veteran tracking service".



http://patric-catani.com







[ A ] Saitone (JP)

Saitone was one of the first Japanese artists to create a gameboy chiptune release.



Influenced by, but not constrained by the 8 bit vibe, Saitone created a new sound. Saitone's tunes have been release on many compilations and remixes. Building on the awesome debut album "Overlapping Spiral" he continues to forge awesome new sounds.



http://www.saitone.com







[ A ] Ten Thousand Free Men and Their Families (SYD)

Sydney, Australia is home to the one-man 8bit-punk band known as Ten Thousand Free Men & Their Families. However, the lazier members of the chip community affectionately refer to him as 10k. Armed with nothing more than one Nintendo Game Boy and a microphone, 10k delivers devastating blows of low-bit, low-brow, low-cost chipstyle punk music that people pretend to enjoy because it makes them cooler.



http://10kfreemen.com

http://twitter.com/10kfreemen

http://myspace.com/10kfreemen





Photo by Chiptography

[ A ] Trash80 (US)

Trash80, or as some call him just plain trash, initiated his addiction to computer music in the summer of 1990 - about the same time his interest was sparked for the opposite sex. Coincidence? Probably not. The beauty of it was that he recognized this obvious connection early on and decided to use his love of composition to gain the interest of an unsuspecting female audience. In response to someone who once brought up this connection, Trash80 replied, "It's not about getting girls man, it's about my love of music and getting dumped for it."



Somewhere in between now and the old bbs days, Trash80's failure to acquire companionship led him to work with such fellows as Native Instruments, releasing oki computer and interface designs for their reaktor 4 library, as well as other popular reaktor ensembles such as caterpillar and the gameboy sound emulator, play my gameboy. And while on the topic of gameboys, it should be noted that some people in the gameboy music community feel he should be held responsible for masterminding the deaths of numerous gameboy colors with his hardware hack for it, the prosound mod.



From Amigas to Latinas, to Native Instruments and naked ... ahem, sounds. His passion for one can sometimes be confused for another. But make no mistake, he loves you baby ... you and his machine.



http://trash80.net













Plus more artists to be announced!