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WT: How did you originally come
into contact with the chiptune scene?
Comptroller: Back in 2006 I found my faulty old NES in a
cupboard and looked online for a way to fix it. I ended up finding NES Dev
forums and sites like 2a03.org,
discovered people were making new music with these old machines, and got sucked
in. I remember finding a video of Nullsleep playing some European club with a
Game Boy & keyboard, people dancing like maniacs, and being amazed. The NSF
Archive, 8 Bit Peoples catalogue & Nullsleep's MCK/MML tutorial were my
main starting points.
WT: What influences in the
chipscene have channelled the direction of your music?
C: The chipscene in general is responsible for getting me into electronic
music! Before I started doing this I played guitar in punk/rock bands &
mainly listened to that sort of thing. Chip led me to explore more dance-y
areas of music I might not have otherwise, and that in turn influenced the sort
of sounds I wanted to make.
WT: What particular influences went into, ‘Stand
Up! Yukawa!’, and could you tell us a bit about how it was created please?
C: Hearing a lot of live breakcore, mainly, and trying to distill that
through a Sega Dreamcast. I used a Dreamcast game called O-TO-I-RE, which was a
Japan-only sequencer that was released in 1999. It uses a combination of
samples and the Dreamcast's own inbuilt MIDI sounds. There's no way to import
anything, but it has a pretty good selection of kits & instruments (and
some really cheesy vocal samples). It's a bit awkward to use with the Dreamcast
controller though, and the save files are massive - this one song takes up over
half a VMU. I actually finished it a few months back and quietly shared it to a
few people under a false name. Now I am taking responsibility for this
monstrosity.
WT: You’ve had a fair few
releases, including an EP on CDK and a single on Datathrash, could explain a
bit behind what went into creating these and how they came about please?
C: James asked me in 2010 if I wanted to do a release
on CDK, and the 'Baddies EP' was the eventual result. It's all LSDJ, and I
spent a lot of time putting it together. Not that I don't normally make an
effort, but I took this one pretty seriously. I really tried to put a lot of
feeling into it, and to step things up on a technical level too. Whether any of
that comes across to other people, I don't know, but I'm pretty happy with it.
With the Datathrash release I wanted to do something that wasn't an EP
of Game Boy music, so I made a 2-track single of warped C64 & Piggy sounds
using MSSIAH and a GP2X. I'd been listening to a lot of hyperactive Japanese
SHMUP soundtracks, and wanted to get across a feeling of obscure threat with
orchestra hits & slap bass.
I had a really short run of 5" lathe cut records done, since I figured that was the perfect single format. At the time I hoped people would comment on the samples used, or the fact that both tracks are named after fictional Asian street gangs, but the only feedback I got was 10 people asking me 'dude where'd you get the vinyl done'.
I had a really short run of 5" lathe cut records done, since I figured that was the perfect single format. At the time I hoped people would comment on the samples used, or the fact that both tracks are named after fictional Asian street gangs, but the only feedback I got was 10 people asking me 'dude where'd you get the vinyl done'.
WT: You recently organised the Scottish chiptune festival Ultrachip, could
you tell us a bit about how that first came about and any anecdotes about the
actual event?
C: Ultrachip started in 2010 after me & some local
chip acts were complaining to each other about there not being many live chip
events in the area. I got in touch with a guy called Chris Palmer at a venue
called The Forest in Edinburgh, and we ended up jointly organising a 2 day
event with acts from all round the UK and elsewhere playing. It happened again
in 2011, then The Forest closed down and I had 2012 off. This year I joined up
with Glasgow's 8 Bit Nights crew and we relocated to the Banshee Labyrinth.
I think this year was probably the best one we've done - we had a really
good turnout and there was a very positive & excited vibe to the whole
event. Much dancing and whooping. Everyone seemed to have a really good time,
whether they were familiar with chip or not (there were a few confused clusters
staring at the gear between acts). Anecdotes: the venue was basically a haunted
multi-roomed dungeon with many bars, so we had directions stuck up around the
place to prevent people getting lost. One of the acts almost wasn't allowed to
perform because he didn't take any ID with him. Ultrasyd flew in to Edinburgh,
played, then flew straight back out again to go to a wedding because he is
super hardcore. Everyone kicked ass and it was beautiful.
WT: Following on from that, do you play live
often yourself, and if so what set up do you use?
C: I play live fairly often, once every couple of months or
so. I usually have 2 DMGs running LSDJ, a Commodore 64 running a few different
things, LGPT on GP2X plus an arduinoboy and Piggy>MIDI box to get everything
connected, and a tiny b&w TV so I can see what the C64 is doing. At Ultrachip
I brought a Dreamcast onstage for the first time and somehow it looked more
ridiculous than everything else.
WT: What have
you got in store for the future of Comptroller?
