OK so seeing as some people are still just discovering dubstep, I'll start with the basics.

Chiptune is a genre of music that is written to be performed by video game consoles or oldschool computers from the sweetest era of video game playing ever devised by man: 1980 to the late mid 1990s. We all lived through this period and we all remember the bleeps and bloops that computers and consoles used to be limited to. But for all that, man they came out with some damn catchy songs. Obviously chiptune is a nostalgia-tripper's scene, but as a person gets older and realizes that life sucks worse and worse, a little nostalgia tripping does the soul good.

So the basic 8-bit or 16-bit songs that were included with the games are pretty widely available online, but there's also a group of diehard nerds that are busy still creating new chiptunes for use in modern 8/16-bit games or just to listen to and remember being a kid. I feel like if you've been online in the last 10 years you would have noticed this genre emerging so I apologize for the intro lecture, but like I said my faith has been shaken.

Anyway I've basically only limited my chiptune fandom to the NES' 5-wave sound and beyond, so really I've only been listening to 1983-era chiptunery, but recently I discovered that they've been playing games with the considerably more primitive VIC 20 chips as well. Thus I feel compelled to share the awesomeness that is VIC 20 chiptunes. This is the sludgiest chiptunery I've ever heard and I am completely obsessed by its coolness right now.

Fucking. Amazing.

Enjoy:

Future 1999 by PWP

Robotic Liberation by PWP (VIC-20)

I love all that SID chip stuff, the C64 has quite amazing sound capabilities. VIC20's sound came from the VIC chip, and its quite amazing what could be done with 3.5 kilobytes of RAM.

Unfortunately, my favourite machine, the C16, was not so well endowed. To save money, the TED chip was created. Much better graphics, but poorer sound.

Lot of northern Euro's big into that scene. Great stuff.

Yeah I think PWP (the group who did the Future 1999 clip I posted earlier) is Finnish.

I'm kind of pissed. I just found out that Animalstyle, one of the foremost NES chiptune gurus will be performing in Redding PA tomorrow at a game expo for $5 cover. (EDIT: With no-carrier producing background FX no less) Sounds ideal. Except for the fact that I'm a small island of nerdiness embedded in a Jersey Shore world. My 3 gamer friends who would possibly appreciate such a thing are all busy this weekend and so it's quite unlikely I'll be able to see the show unless I rent a car.