Month of June , 2006

Bit Shifter
Life's a Bit Shifter
(c) 2003, 555 Recordings

Warren Ellis writes:
"It is the sound of Game Boys breaking into your house, killing you, and having violent and prolonged sex over your corpse."

I have trouble describing this music - which is indicative of some good things, because this is not no-wave or ambience, nor is it merely techno, nor is it merely "gameboy music". And yet, my frame of reference here is often my old and favorite Nintendo games, Aphex Twin, various rave DJs, and various rather ambient and "noise" groups.

I ordered my copy directly from Bit Shifter via paypal for the $10 bucks. Well worth the cost and shipping, this record, and I've even recommended it to friends who had to try it and buy it. Stock is running low on this release, but you can still get it at the link above.

According to the 555 mailorder page, "Life's A Bit Shifter was recorded entirely on a Nintendo Game Boy using DIY musicmaking cartridges Nanoloop and Little Sound DJ." It certainly sounds like it, and attending a live performance confirms the truth. The man does "play" Nintendo Gameboys, and it would seem he is actually mixing tracks and instruments in and out of the mix in realtime and able to write others on the spot. Instant DJ of Doom.

But to discuss this record - I have to say that it is quite a fascinating trip. Where a band like The Advantage does a great job worshipping the old Nintendo themes, Josh Davis is willing to embark on his own dramatic compositions, learning from the Nintendo composers, drawing from his own earlier influences, and really creating some startling music. In addition, he seems to run with a crowd of other intelligent gameboy composers and producers (nullaby, glomag, and bubblyfish) who are all approaching this 8-bit medium in entirely different ways and still influencing each other.

I think the only complaint I had about this record, an entirely subjective complaint, is that I wish that a few of the tunes were a hair dancier. A hair more of the OOMPH that makes the walls sweat and a room full of people loose their shit. A boost in frequency around 80 or 200 Hz. Yeah baby.

Before I go into the track-by-track I will say that this record is another great example of a really truly different artist believing in his vision and going for it, not matter how "absurd" of a notion it might seem at first. Let me tell you, I still feel a tad weird getting on stage with my band and our drum machine / laptops with the shit head loser still-lives-with-mom soundguy giving me a hard time about how we should "get a fucking drummer." I can't imagine the resistance Josh must get here and there, although perhaps as a solo performer who seems to frequent artistic spaces more than clubs and bars he exposes himself to a more open minded crowd. So much for "punk rock", right?

Track-by-track notes

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The Connector Conspiracy
A hell of an opener.

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March of the Nucleotides

that dramatic melody kicks in around 0:48, then turns into something that might get played after you just beat the everloving crap out of dr. wiley and megaman is walking home

then right back into the marching bouncing dancing beat and melody that is regular game play screen funtimes.

--
The No Enemy Code

dreamy melody that seems to run over a kind of doo-wop line at first until jumping into the kind of counterpoint and fluttery stuff you expect in the "cloud" board, where it's all coins and easy enemies to kill (if any at all, or perhaps you have thirty extra mans). Very pretty tune. The break down at 1:20 is quite evocative, especially as it progresses into something quite pensive.

Cursor War
--
a quick and compelling intro track to Magma Diver that sounds like a dj's record scratching.

--
MagmaDiver

Descending zappy melody figures jump immediately into a "hardcore" techno beat with whacky zappy things, then pulling up quick for a break down of zappy zappy craziness. from there it descends into competing sounds. It indeed sounds like a cursor war. The daemons of your computer have been awakened by the cruel Cron for the Battle of the Final Judgement, and they will not stop until there is a winner and Cron has gone back to sleep!

--
Inversion of the Goober Reboots

Begins with what sounds like a carefully orchestrated, lilting, dancing melody of foreboding that drops the techno beat first, and then brings in the high hat for the rave-battle-dancer in you. This tune does not let up. I'd love to hear/see this at a rave or serious party, in the back room. You know that little room off the main dance floor of the rave where the lights are out? In it the DJ is spinning sick, fast drum and bass and the strobe light is running at about the same bpm as the music. Insane. I haven't been into raves in a while because at many you can't get music this intense anymore. In fact, I would love to get down to this song in my living room Right Fucking Now; I might just do that.

--
The Utopia Proclamation

Aptly named. One of my favorite tunes on the record. One of those tunes done so well and also much in the style of some of the better scored Nintendo games of yore, that one has to wonder if Josh Davis did in fact study video game compositions while honing his skill with the gameboy as a performance and composition instrument.

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Permutation Cipher

Crash! Bang! chaka chaka, cue the super-fun melody and he hi-hat, hold the beat ... hold it... okay drop it now! Build that melody! Not too crazy about this one, as I feel it rehashes some tricks used elsewhere on the record, but it is pretty smashing nonetheless.

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Charm, Beauty, Truth and Strangeness

This is the gameboy melody maker dance king at his best.

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Renegade Subroutine

This is Bit Shifter pushing his instrument and his compositional skills to see where he can go with it. Around 0:40 a true gem of melody emerges in all the insanity. A great track.

--
The Uncertainty Principle

A hot tune, the incredible melodies over the moving chordal roots, the relentless and pulsing drum beat (which is skillyfully cut in and out), and the instrumentation/mixing are fantastic. One of the more compelling tunes on this record.

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Parallax Barrier

Some dark video game involving space, lazers, mine fields, dungeons, good stuff! Musically it seems somewhat married to some more four-to-the-floor techno at times. The beat is quite to the tune's credit.

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Inversion Redux

You get half a second to breath after the slower beat of Parallax ends when you are blasted in the face by the insistent and driving Inversion Redux, the album's closing track.

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Where to listen:

For some free Bit Shifter, so you know that I'm not blowing smoke, check out his new tune Transmode Virus, off of the download-available Modsquare compilation.

Think About Life
Think About Life
2006 | Alien 8

[mp3] Think About Life - Paul Cries ( from Think About Life )

Remember that Nintendo game from Konami? Life Force! I think it was the sequel to Gradius, another great game. I don't know why they didn't just call it Gradius II, because Gradius III came out maybe a year later. They were all the same thing essentially, you are a lone guy in the universe in your little ship. You fly left to right on your screen and shoot down everything your path. Like all Konami games (including the stylish basketball romp Double Dribble) the soundtracks were awesome. Fast tempos, high energy basslines, laser synths. The perfect music to slam dunk to or shoot shit out of hyperspace. When Think About Life were thirteen, they probably had frequent sessions of Gradius and Double Dribble, consumed a half dozen Ho-Hos, and ran around a suburban block until they passed out in the front yard dizzy and nauseous.

Think About Life could have decided to just grab a couple of guitars and sound like any other band that didn't know what they were doing, but they had higher aspirations. They wanted to sonically relive their Konami glory days (check the dunk-heavy artwork), recapture that sugar buzzed drunk adulation mixed with green grass softness. The songs leak drama and meticulous planning, and are clearly not the result of just a few jam sessions. However, the whole of the album sags under weak ideas or really good ideas executed poorly - which sometimes manifest themselves as genre experiments ("Serious Chords" = disco, "What the Future Might Be" = hip-hop). It's really too bad the whole thing sounds like it was produced for five dollars by an alcoholic with a Sony jambox. I might be able to appreciate the songs better if I could understand a single word, and I may be able to tolerate more than twenty minutes of it at a time if every instrument and voice wasn't so horribly clipped and distorted. The end result is that Think About Life have given me half of that exhausted experience, but laying down on astroturf after a sugar high is no fun at all.

The Bouncing Souls
The Gold Record
2006 | Epitaph

A band that’s been together over 15 years almost always hits some sort of plateau or, more likely, starts to suck. The amazing thing about the Bouncing Souls is that they just keep getting better, and you’re going to be reading a lot of reviews raving that The Gold Record may just be their best full-length ever. Everything about this disc – Ted Hutt’s bright, loud, razor-sharp production, Greg Attonito’s vocals, Brian Kienlen’s melodic basslines, the soulful, heartfelt lyrics, and the addition of backup instruments like trumpet, accordion, and harmonica – bumps the Souls’ game up a notch. There are two covers here that most fans probably won’t even recognize as such – the Kinks’ “Better Things,” and “Lean On Sheena” by the Boston band Avoid One Thing (whom I’m guessing the Souls discovered through their friends and frequent tourmates, Flogging Molly.) Not only do both tracks sound totally like Bouncing Souls songs, but both incorporate themes that the Souls have been stressing for years – optimism in the face of a cold, cruel world, and the life-affirming support of friends.

Indeed, that spirit and strength of punk-rock community runs throughout this disc, from the euphoric fist-pumping “The Gold Song” through tracks like “Sound Of The City” (celebrating their love of NYC’s Lower East Side, their longtime home,) “So Jersey” (a shoutout to Asbury Park, where the band recently relocated,) the reflective acoustic reverie of “The Pizza Song” (only the Souls could find true poetry in a slice and a Coke,) and the joyous, super-catchy singalong “Sarah Saturday.” The album’s one political song, “Letter From Iraq” – I remember the Souls performing this three years ago on the Anchors Aweigh tour – looks at the war from the viewpoint of the soldiers over there fighting it and its effects on their families, and it’s as sobering an anti-war statement as anything you’ll hear this year. The Gold Record shows that nearly 20 years into an unparalleled career, the Bouncing Souls remain not only a beacon of punk rock integrity and talent, but a band that’s still on an upward trajectory. – Jim Testa