Pixeltune - For a While

I am in a chiptune mood these times around, I don't really know why. Maybe a sense of nostalgy for a time apparently gone for good.

Maybe.

I discovered Pixeltune and his music by looking for new things on the Chiptune = WIN Facebook group, a very good place to look if you ask me. And Chipwin, definitely on the top 2 labels for 8-bit music I'm telling you, or even a top 1 if there is such a thing.

This music is a tasty blend of powerful and energetic chiptune music and soothing chillbit sounds, sometimes embroidered with instrumentals and final boss theme songs.

And this guys says "I'm 18 and I play music with a gameboy".

Jeez... Had I known !

Good listening to you.

WJMC - fault

So... so, what to say ? This album is as weird and mysterious as its cover. To really enjoy and appreciate it in its entirety, I just listened to it while laying on the ground staring at the lamp on the ceiling, completely immersed in its eerie atmosphere.

This music really deserves a question mark, and it would deserve others if I had any more... From beginning to end, distorted sounds and samples fight for space and chance to express themselves with ethereal voices coming out of dusty phonographs. Some foggy drums try to come and say hello, making the kind of noise you hear when hammering your fists on a door with all your might while in a dream. Poof, broof, and so on and so forth.

Some tracks reminded me of the strange and vaporous world of Boards of Canada, just weirder.

Enough talk, now go stare at a lamp and then give me your impressions.

And while you're at it and if you want some more weird music, take a listen at Oligopolist Records's catalog.

Tentura - Beyond Illusion

Psy psy psy, here's an exciting and astonishing album. Produced by Tentura at Sentimony Records in 2015, Beyond Illusion contains an original and masterly crafted blend of deep-trance and psybient. The kind of album that takes time colouring the walls and putting up an atmosphere.

To speak more clearly it's been in my 'to write about' folder for months but I only found time today to listen to it in its entirety. I immediately felt as if in a goa festival chillzone. Had there been some chai tea and random smiling people around me, that would have been it...

A well-crafted album without any undertone from beginning to end, a music that makes one want to know more about Sentimony Records' catalog and also about Tentura, who seems to be such a master in the arcanes of electronic music.

Boy do I like free music, could it be the sense of life I was looking for ?

Electric Octopus - This is Our Culture

When I see a saturated picture of a purple octopus I feel compelled to hear what it has to say. And so when I saw this album's cover and the name Electric Octopus for the first time, I had a hunch and before listening, went and searched for a Bandcamp site, 'Maybe they even do free music', I thought.

And, coincidence or not, they do, and it's really good !

In a blurry and smokey atmosphere, the record begins by setting up the tempo, feeling the guitar, tuning the bass, progressively dimming the lights and diffusing the atmosphere of a friendly friday night jam session between friends.

These three guys from Belfast have a beautiful musical chemistry, translating itself in three bluesy, jazzy and rocky pieces for about three times twenty minutes, attuning themselves with one another in a perfect fashion.

And believe it or not, the next day, I met a guy from Belfast, here in Belgium.

See you after that.