Week #39| ChasingBleeps - Incredible

Only a quarter of the year left, but we're not slowing down. Week 39, brought to you by rising Scottish star ChasingBleeps! Grab the track here and get jiggy. 

WT: What was your first introduction to the scene?

ChasingBleEPs: The first time I had ever heard the term chiptune was during my 2nd year of Secondary school. At the time I listened to allot of artists like Nick Drake, Radicalface, Jose Gonzalez, stuff like that. I did not listen to any form of electronic music.

It was my friend Jack who brought up chiptune and introduced me to the genre. Jack had been introduced to it by his brother (SkyPope), and after that day all I listened to was Sabrepulse, Shirobon and Henry Homesweet. After a year I grew tired of the same old songs so I went back to listening to other music. My "chiptune phase" was over.....Or so I thought.

A few years later I was watching the trailer for Two Player Production's Minecraft Documentary. In this trailer there was a song "Tones Tones Tones" by Falling For A Square. I instantly fell in love with that song and all of Falling For A Square’s music. This led me to 8bc (Rest in peace beautiful prince) and I found a whole load of artists, such as Kubbi, Smiletron and Space Town Savior. Ever since then I've been in love with chiptune. 

I didn't start making chiptune until summer 2010 or 2011 (I can't remember) I got alot of advice and help from Falling For A Square so without him I probably wouldn't be making music haha! 

WT: Musically, which acts or artists influence, from both the scene and from outside it?

CB: In the scene I think that the artists who influenced me the most would be Bubu, Kubbi, Trey Frey, Falling For A Square, Electric Children and Infiniprism to name a few. People like Bubu and Kubbi who I've become friends with have helped me alot with my music. It was hard finding my place in the chip scene since I jumped right into it with no previous musical experience, but with the help of all my chiptune friends I'm doing pretty good (: I think I tried to be like Trey Frey the most in my music. I've always been a huge fan of his music and style. 

Influences from non-chip artists? Melodically speaking I've been influenced heavily by the Legend of Zelda sound tracks, Bands like Biffy Clyro and Fall Out Boy.

WT: Your style is slowly shifting away from more ambient music towards more dance oriented work, what prompted this shift?

CB: Well when I first started to make chiptune (on famitracker) I wanted to make music similar to Shirobon and Sabrepulse but I could never get my songs sounding right. I started to in the way of ambient and slower songs because I was listening to nothing but Falling For A Square at the time. When I started to make my release ‘Space Music’ I was really into smiletron's music and it was pretty much all I would listen to. I always tried to make similar stuff to his. I had owned LSDJ for about a year when Space Music was released, I would only pick it up and use it every few months or so. it wasn't until December 2012 I started getting pretty into LSDJ: This was due to King Keytan creating a growl bass on my LSDJ. That doesn't sound like much but that really did get me started in using LSDJ. So really, I had always intended to make dance music I just didn't know how until recently. 

Don't get me wrong, I’m still going to make ambient fakebit tunes. My most recent track, 'But I Could Be Wrong', takes heavy inspiration from smiletron.

WT: Could you tell us a bit about ‘The Owl’ EP and how you created it?

CB: The Owl EP was never planned. I met this guy Jim on the internet somewhere and he told me about this music project he was working on called  12in12x12. Using 12in12x12 as a motivator I started working on some stuff. This was just going to be a side project to my ChasingBleeps stuff (At the time I was working on a split EP). The first song I wrote for 12in12x12 was 'Cold Dark Air' In that song I used a vocal sample that I had cut up and then I used some other synths and a sample of my glockenspiel I had recorded a while back. The vocal sample I used is also in Breakbeat Heartbeat's song 'Hold On'.

Once I had finished all the songs for that months 12in12x12 I was just going to release them to my second soundcloud, but at the last moment I decided to release it as an EP. I had no idea what to call it, I also had a song that was un-named. I decided to call the song Owls which then gave me the idea for The Owl EP. Not very creative I know, But I still love it (:

WT: What went into your WeeklyTreat?

CB: The song I'm using, 'Incredible', is in my opinion my best LSDJ song. It is made using one prosound gameboy and one LSDJ cart. I added alot of techniques and subtleties to this song. I spent about 6 hours in total spread over the end of August and the beginning of September.
I spent alot more time on this song than I usually would with my past work and I am very, very proud with the overall and hope people enjoy it (:

WT: Do you play live often?

CB: I have played live three times now, twice at a gig local electronic artists put on and once at 8bit nights in Glasgow. My first experience playing live was terrifying haha. At the time I was just starting to use LSDJ so I didn't have a full sets worth of stuff. I made half the set on fl studio on my laptop and the rest on LSDJ. I must say the laptop section of my set was terrible! My laptop would clip if it was too loud and it was just a mess. Once I whipped out the LSDJ everything was fine.

My second gig was at 8bit nights in Glasgow. For this gig I had made two ten minute long sets on my LSDJ: I only had one LSDJ at the time. It was very enjoyable (: good vibes all around at that gig.

My third gig, which was pretty recent, went great! It was in the first place as my first gig. I love it! I was finally able to play properly using two LSDJ's Nothing went wrong....apart from when I tried to open a bottle of coke on stage and spilled it on my Gameboy. But I'm sure nobody noticed that! haha.

WT: Hailing from Scotland, in your opinion how vibrant is its scene?

CB: The scene here in Scotland is great. We have such wonderful people like Bubu, Therimin Hero, King Keytan etc. I don't know alot of small chip gigs in Scotland but I know of the yearly Ultrachip festival and up in Glasgow there is 8bit Nights which is on during most months.
Also, where I live (Ayr) there is a nice little bunch of chiptune artists. I hope to spread the word of chiptune and expand the scene here in the future!

WT: What are your future plans for ChasingBleeps?

CB: My future plans with ChasingBleeps hmmm? Well I'm going to release an album soon (Hollow) after that I plan to do two split EP's then maybe a few years from now I will create my final blow which will be a full 15 song LSDJ album. With that I will  incorporate orchestral sounds with 2x LSDJ. And after that I guess I will start working on different genres. I will always make chiptune but I plan to take it to its very edge!