Being of the 8-bit generation I really love the retro chip music sound. I used to make chip tunes when I was still making music on trackers, but my tracks were nothing like the craziness they’re coming up with today. A few years ago I went to a club in Stockholm where they had a guy playing live on gameboys and some other retro 8-bit looking systems. Had a blast just sitting down and watching computer nerds dance next to trendy pop chicks, finding some common ground in the low-fi 8-bit music coming from the speakers. I have to go back next time I’m over there..

Bubblyfish creates her music mainly using gameboys with the nanoloop software, although in some of her tracks she’s adding effects and using a “real” sampler. I have no idea what the track at 08:30 in the video is called but I like it. And check out her sweet dreams remix at 05:15, or on her myspace.

Here’s a short video interview with her. And another interview for Wired from 2007. Get her latest album from retinascan.

[via synthtopia.com]

The only problem with trying to find chip music online without really knowing what to look for is that there’s so much of it! But this is some quality 8-bit madness from Atari-ST music collective dropdabomb. These two are from stu and you really should listen to more of his stuff on his site, his myspace or on the buy page for  his Atari Solo album on retinascan. I especially love the those low bitrate samples and the small glitchy bits in chiprape.

stu – chiprape [get this!]

stu – Disco Ver Atari [preview only but a must listen nonetheless]

stu – mYMelody

Check out the buy page on retinascan.de for more stu.

Tomorrow I’m off to Eastbourne to celebrate Christmas with my housemate and his family. Them being English, and me being Swedish, my present to them will be some Swedish music and dvds. Unfortunately I couldn’t find much Swedish music besides Robyn and Basshunter in the shop, so of course I went for Basshunter.

But right now I’m definitely not in the mood for either Basshunter or Christmas music but I am in the mood for some good funk however, courtesy of Sharon Jones and her crew.

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings – 100 Days, 100 Nights

Sharon Jones & The Dap-Kings – Keep On Looking (Kenny Dope Remix)

And here’s a bit of that Hot Chip sound to calm things down again.

Grovesnor – Drive Your Car (Hot Chip remix)

With the debate about whether copying is actually theft still running hot, new startup Bopaboo, currently in private beta, dives right into it. Bopaboo provides a marketplace for its users to buy and sell used mp3’s.
They’re clearly aware of the challenges lying ahead of them and it’ll be interesting to see what the law the record labels has to say about this.

I love this version of Drop the Lime’s Hear Me by Portuguese Buraka som Sistema. I like their use of the ride and snare heavy drum loop from the original, taking it out and bringing it back every 2 bars. A simple and small part of the track, but that alone makes it the best remix of the bunch for me.

Drop the Lime – Hear Me (Buraka som Sistema Remix) [zippyshare 128kbps]

Drop the Lime – Hear Me [juno]

Drop the Lime – Hear Me [beatport]

Here’s a quite bizarre research paper by Philip Maymin on how the beat variance (not the average beats per minute) of US Billboard top 100 songs for any given year relates to the US stock market. Even though he doesn’t establish if the mood of the public affects the type of songs they purchase or if the mood of the public comes from the music, I can make an estimated guess that people buy the music they feel like listening to.

I compare the annual average beat variance of the songs in the US Billboard Top 100 since its inception in 1958 through 2007 to the standard deviation of returns of the S&P 500 for the same year and find that they are significantly negatively correlated. With the recent high stock volatility, people should now prefer less volatile music. Furthermore, the beat variance appears able to predict future market volatility, producing 2.5 volatility points of profit per year on average.

Philip predicts the songs on the US charts for 2008 and 2009:

With the current high volatility environment, we should expect the 2008
year-end popular songs to be less musically volatile than prior years. Given the
average beat variance of the year-end chart-toppers to be released soon, we will
also be able to predict the market volatility for 2009.

I’d be more interested in a research paper on the emergence of new musical genres and how the sound of those genres are linked to the financial climate of that period. Surely someone must have writtensomething about that already?

Music and the Market: Song and Stock Volatility