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Electronic music is often accused of sameness, of reducing national differences. Here's an exception. The sounds of Russian 8-bit or chiptune recordings, taken from old Dendy or Sega computer games, underscore the cultural differences between East and West during the Soviet Union's slow demise. Those differences are now audibly repeated and reworked in Russian electronic music today.
The art work produced by Slavic bitpop and chiptune artists also recalls a very different childhood, full of robots, outer space, or - at the very least - mechanical marvels on the left-leaning side of Planet Earth.
One fan-site describes the Russian affection for these first-grade consoles and their crude graphic styles, fashioned with obscenely large pixels. "After many years, our nostalgia for the forgotten motifs of childhood games has taken on a new importance. Who would have thought that kids' fun and toys, all that schoolkid entertainment, would one day grow into a huge movement of Russian avant-garde art?!"
Russian enthusiasts are keen to keep stressing the differences between nostalgic computer art in Russia and the US. Given that the charm of 8-bit music lies in its simplicity, the economic retardation of the Soviet Union is easily turned to aesthetic advantage. Backwardness becomes a better, more progressive avant-garde. "In those distant times of our youth, technology was not as advanced as it is today. It couldn't offer the smooth, fluid motion of today's graphics and - obviously! - there wasn't any hi-fi stereo sound, either."
In those distant times of our youth, technology was not as advanced as it is today. It couldn't offer the smooth, fluid motion of today's graphics and - obviously! - there wasn't any hi-fi stereo sound, either.
So much the better.
The Dendy consoles in Russia of the 1980s could only handle a small range of colors: sixteen, to be precise. To boot, they could only produce a maximum of five synchronized sounds. "You couldn't even dream of polished audio! All you got were clean-cut squares made of [big] pixels and clunky-sounding audio loops."
This techno-offspring was so ugly that only its parents could love it. And indeed they do.
These amateur celebrations of bygone technology can wax lyrical: "Who needs piles and piles of super-modern synthesizers? Who needs a ton of special effects? Why indeed, if you can express your feelings in much simpler forms than you'd normally expect, eh? Go on; give it a go! Open the world of 8-bit feelings and spontaneous emotions. A wave of enjoyment and easy-going, childhood happiness will wash over you in a split second!"
(We hope this picture was not taken at a tattoo parlor.)
One of the best places to investigate Russian 8-bit and chiptune output is arguably the netlabel Children of Dos. Both the label and its artists are extraordinarily tight-lipped about their work, though; their fans do the talking. None of their MySpace pages house any adult comments or observations; you have to look elsewhere for text. Everything remains maximally simple and childlike, including the retro-artwork that so often harks back to blurred screenshots from the earliest games.
Some of the names worth following in this sub-genre of Russian electronica would be Kola Kid, 777minus111, Snork25, and Uoki-Toki; all the hyperlinks here offer access to free, downloadable mp3s. Of this representative quartet, Kola Kid operates at the greatest geographic disadvantage, being from the southern river-port of Volgograd.
With his briefly-stated intent to sound like "a broken video-game console," he pins the babyish melodies of Dendy and Sega boxes to some pretty severe D&B or drumcore beats. Going even further, into the realm of happy hardcore, this is his recent recording, "Cash Machine Go!"
777minus111 is/are from Moscow and give voice to a much more introspective strain of 8-bit, with the percussion pushed back in the mix, a long way from Kola Kid's ear-pounding "8core." As the picture below shows, 777minus111 is not prone to noisy collectives, even if he has been performing since 2004 and has gigs under his belt across Russia, Ukraine, and even in New York.
It's hard to know whether the splt image here was staged or not. Nonetheless, 777 (as he may be known to family members) is not averse to a little social interaction. It would appear that alcohol is required to effect this behavioral change, since the one track by 777 that does match the dancefloor madness of Kola Kid is called "Happy New Year." A related, brief - and silly - video to accompany this composition is housed here.
Snork25 describes himself as a "one-man Gameboy music project." Exactly what that means can be seen from the video clip below, capturing him on stage in April, 2008. Listing his influences as techno and IDM, he's evidently keen to get people out on the dancefloor; judging by this same segued footage, it's evidently working. Wobbling back and forth also seems to help. Should the result strike you as appealing, more downloaded either from the Children of Dos site, or here.
Uoki-Toki has gone to the trouble of creating a separate host, where extra material can be downloaded in addition to the work on his LastFM page. That additional host is laid out very much in an 8bit/Dendy style, though it's possible that Uoki-Toki is simply an awful web designer.
Simplicity and hopelessness can easily be confused.
Much to our surprise, a minimal biography is available, because - lo and behold - somebody has added a few sentences to the LastFM link: "Pasha Shiian, founder of the Uoki-Toki project, writes and performs music with the help of a Nintendo Gameboy console. His music uses a combination of drum&bass, breakcore, big-beat, speedcore, and even reggae! It's all there in different proportions. Pasha himself likes to call his style 'power-8bit' or 'tetriscore'!"
Pasha Shiian, founder of the Uoki-Toki project, writes and performs music with the help of a Nintendo Gameboy console. His music uses a combination of drum&bass, breakcore, big-beat, speedcore, and even reggae! It's all there in different proportions. Pasha himself likes to call his style 'power-8bit' or 'tetriscore'!
Here is the most complex track on offer, a 2008 release, "My Freedom."
All these artists, together with the other collected musicians at Children of Dos, are unified by a striving backwards. This common purpose can surround 8bit as a whole in an air of slight melancholy. Celebratory tunes such as "My Freedom" willingly limit their playing field to a small number of colors and sounds, across which they then express their "liberties." That's like making a film called "The Joy of Sailing" and shooting it in the bathroom.
If metaphors of "complete" self-realization are best suited to one's preschool years, that implies a pretty grim view of expressive potential later on. The most typical obstacles facing adult performers are, of course, avarice, corrupt managerial practices, and other market forces. Bribing greedy promoters with candy is going to be a tough call.
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