PrintIn 1985, Japanese company Nintendo released its Entertainment System in the United States. The 8-bit console launched alongside now-classic games, including Duck Hunt, Donkey Kong Junior, and, of course, Super Mario Bros., and revolutionized the way a generation of Americans wasted their time. Until recently, though, no one would have said that it would change the future of pop music.
Still, anyone who’s ever played Super Mario Bros. can recognize the theme song. What would these early video games have been without the blips and the perky, never-ending tunes that didn’t change no matter how many levels you passed, or how far right you scrolled? As video game technology has matured, so has the music. Nowadays, video-game aficionados can buy video game soundtracks on CD, and even hear the music performed by symphonies. Despite ever-more lifelike visual effects and music that is more symphonic than electronic, a flourishing and complex subculture has emerged dedicated to making music inspired by, and created with, the 8-bit technology of old-school video games.
Peter Berkman, a New York University senior taking a semester off, was born several years after the Nintendo Entertainment System first reached gamers in the United States. Growing up, he didn’t own a NES of his own. “My brother had one, but I didn’t really play it that much,” he says. Yet now, Berkman plays Nintendo—and guitar—for New York-based band Anamanaguchi.
The band opened for Dan Deacon at Wesleyan University’s spring concert last week, and will set the stage for power-pop group OK Go at the Music Hall of Williamsburg on Thursday, April 29. In the past year, Anamanaguchi has received considerable hype in the blogosphere, and performed at New York’s CMJ Music Marathon in October and Austin’s South by Southwest this past March. Clearly, they’re on to something.
As their website proudly claims, Anamanaguchi “makes hard, fast music using a hacked Nintendo NES from 1985.” Three of the band’s four members are in NYU’s music technology program, and they use their technological know-how, and special software, to program songs into the consoles. The group also includes guitar, bass, and drums along with their two gaming systems. “We look like a totally normal band [live],” Berkman says. “It [the NES set up] is basically like a robotic keyboard player that we have to keep up with.”
Berkman and company aren’t the first to see musical potential in the old Nintendo sound. Dedicated gamers have been remixing video game music more or less since the beginning of video games. The rise of the Internet facilitated the formation of communities where gamers could share samples and ideas. “The Internet is so essential to making these communities,” says Sabine Schulz, a sophomore in CC and video game enthusiast. “A lot of people feel like they’re too big of nerds to talk about this in real life,” Schulz continues, “unless they have like, a nerd circle.” Sites such as OverClocked ReMix provide just that—a forum where gamers can share samples and ideas about video game music, and how to mix, modify, and mash it.
Breaking from this insular, online scene is a relatively new wave of creators who manipulate video games to make music aimed at a broader audience. Jeremiah Johnson, also known as Nullsleep, graduated from SEAS in 2003. In his freshman year he founded 8bitpeopoles, a collective and website that serves as gathering place, record label, and information bank for the burgeoning New York-based 8-bit scene. Along with co-manager Joshua Davis, aka “Bit Shifter,” Nullsleep promotes the 8-bit aesthetic in both the virtual and real worlds. They stream releases on their website, curate a monthly show in Manhattan, and contribute to the annual Blip Festival, celebrating the 8-bit sound, which has been held in New York and Denmark, and will soon be held in Tokyo.
Whereas OverClocked is unabashedly a nerdy site for gamers, 8bitpeoples’ site presents a more chic geekiness, with an aesthetic that evokes the ’80s, or Urban Outfitters, or both. “It used to be that it was mostly kind of nerdy people who were just into it [8-bit music] because of the novelty of video games and stuff,” Berkman says, of the scene’s changing demographic. “The audiences just get younger and younger.”
Working with such a bare-bones medium calls for artists to mix their personality with the limited technology. “It all just kind of relies on engaging yourself with the hardware,” says Berkman. The defining characteristic is less the genre than it is the aesthetic ... just that deliberate aesthetic choice,” Berkman explains. “If you don’t do much to customize it and make it your own, it sounds like garbage, so a lot of time is spent trying to get the sound to be super expressive and to get the most out of that.” While Anamanaguchi’s zany music evokes Weezer (with Nintendos), Nullsleep makes intense dance music. Mark DeNardo, another 8-bit artist, has even put out an album of folksy Nintendo-acoustic guitar duets in the singer-songwriter tradition.
But why does an artist seeking to reach broad audiences choose a technology and tradition that seem so restrictive? For musicians who work with 8-bit, the medium inherent constraints pose a challenge to be met. “It’s super limited working with a Nintendo,” Berkman admits, “but in a very very good way. Since you only have five channels [types of sounds you can make] it really pushes you to make them all count. Basically you’re building your sound from the ground up.”