Friday, May 04, 2007
Roanoke musician game for chiptunes
Jeremy Kolosine was instrumental in the compilation of the CD "8-Bit Operators -- An 8-Bit Tribute to Kraftwerk."
8-bit Operators "A Tribute to The Music of Kraftwerk"
IO Jukebox
From 8-bit Operators 'The Music of Kraftwerk
Podcast
With Receptors' Jeremy Kolosine, from August 2005.
Kolosine performs live
From the podcast
The electronic microgenre of chiptunes has always stood with one foot in the future and one firmly in the past.
Chiptune musicians use the hardware found in old video game systems such as Atari and Nintendo Gameboys to produce edgy electronic music. Jeremy Kolosine, a Roanoke practitioner of the genre, has roots in the music work that stretch past his days in the local indie band Shakespace to the electro-pop outfit Futurisk, which he fronted during the late '70s in Florida.
With that background, it's somehow not surprising that Kolosine has managed to collect a number of leading chiptunes artists for "8-Bit Operators -- An 8-Bit Tribute to Kraftwerk." The CD, distributed on the international Astralwerks label, was released in the United States in February, and there are plans to release it in several European countries this month.
Kraftwerk's music of the '70s and '80s never caught on in mainstream America, but it heavily influenced at least three branches of music:
* Hip-hop, as evidenced by early DJ Afrika Bambaata's use of the band's work in his song "Planet Rock."
* Dance music, which morphed from disco into today's techno and rave music.
* Electropop bands like Depeche Mode, who relied extensively on synthesizers.
It's the latter category with which Kolosine is most concerned. His former band Futurisk, organized in Florida during the late '70s, mixed electronic music with a post-punk sensibility.
"I was already kind of bored with punk by the time I got a band together, so I had synths in bands," Kolosine said.
His recent work with handheld electronics also owes a debt to Kraftwerk, particularly the song "Pocket Calculator."
"If you really break it down, they took a rock approach to [electronic music] by making it a four-member band all playing synthesizers and gadgetry," Kolosine said. "Their main thing was they were a departure from rock 'n' roll into total geekery."
When Kolosine first started making chiptunes music, he used the Internet to promote his work and reach out to other artists. Once he decided to collect an album's worth of Kraftwerk covers, he already had the connections. Artists were offered the song of their choice on a first-come basis.
After a few weeks Kolosine found himself in New York at a Kraftwerk show. Because his brother works for Astralwerks and the label has handled Kraftwerk's albums in America, he managed to find his way to the show's afterparty, where he introduced himself to Kraftwerk founding member Ralf Hütter and left him with a couple of sample tracks from the compilation.
Hütter took another listen and gave his approval a few months later when the compilation was ready for release.
In addition to the CD, the label released a single on a 12-inch vinyl record.
Reaction has been mixed but generally positive. One reviewer at retrothing.com said the album is a "great mix for any party, dance, or at work at those times when you need to embrace your inner drone."
The album has also received eight different reviews at amazon.com, most of which are complimentary but which single out the vocals as a weak link.
Kolosine continues to promote the compilation but is already thinking about his next project. One idea he's tossed about is a two-disc compilation of original chip music featuring "Gameboys" versus "Gamegirls."
On the Net: 8bitoperators.com
