Everything Under The Sun Is In Tune

Much like most “innovative” forms of electronic music, I like chiptunes more as a concept than an actual sound. Honestly, my nostalgia for the 8-bit systems isn't particularly vivid as compared to, for instance, my nostalgia for the old Apogee shareware games. I find most compositions to fail at pushing the medium into genuine recognition outside of, say, PAX and the backing track to Ke$ha songs.

Brad Smith's MOON8 project is a complete success, however. Covering Dark Side Of The Moon - Pink Floyd's best album and one of the greatest rock and roll albums of all time -Smith holds an electronic mirror up to the original instead of attempting to adapt it to some video-game nostalgia-ethos. He treats the source material with meticulous respect and the NES chiptune medium as independent of its context inside old Japanese hardware. Although some references - the use of the standard Mario coin blip in “Money” for instance - are a welcome sound (thanks to the crew over at Metafilter for that heads-up.)

You can find the entire album available to download (as two MP3s, one for each side of the LP) here

Related posts:

1. It’s The Hardware That Got Small
2. On the As and Bs
3. Nancy on Corwood