1

(5 replies, posted in Releases)

Also: here is a video we shot for the lead track.

2

(5 replies, posted in Releases)

http://bearandwalrus.bandcamp.com/album … m-the-city

We just released our 5th full length. It was made mostly with a Sega Nomad using littlescale's GenMDM, a homemade SID box, lots of outboard effects and a good selection of traditional instruments (piano, drums, glockenspiel). Stylistically it's somewhere between jazz and post-rock with some electro influences. I've seen reviewers label that "baroquetronica" in the past and I think that's fitting.

Disclaimer: This is not tracker music. It probably doesn't sound like what you would expect a chiptune album to sound like. I think that's a good thing.

You can stream it for free on Bandcamp, and also buy it from iTunes, Amazon, Google Play and a bunch of other online stores.

3

(22 replies, posted in Sega)

I've spent the past few hours playing with the VST. I'm really impressed! This thing is insane. The custom timer stuff is just mind blowing. It uses chip emulation as a baseline, gets that perfect, and then adds things that wouldn't be possible without a DAW. It's a big contrast to the Plogue Chipsounds "jack of all trades, master of none" approach.

Aly James wrote:

1 MIDI TRACK  >> (NOTES DATA) SEND to CH1 >> GENMDM
1 VST TRACK (With FMDrive) CC AUTOMATION SEND to CH1 >> GENMDM
and so on...

Yep, that's exactly how my setup is! I'm a big fan of keeping note data and automation data in separate channels. It's just easier to troubleshoot potential hardware issues when your CC controls aren't baked into the main MIDI tracks (I use Ableton).

So for the past two weeks straight I've been doing nothing but play with this plugin. It's amazing! There's so much going on. It's also sort of a lifesaver, because I can use use it as a placeholder for my GenMDM when I'm working on a track and only bust out the hardware when I'm ready to record.

6

(2 replies, posted in Releases)


TRACK 1 - 4d 55 53 48 05:09
TRACK 2 - 46 4c 4f 57 05:12
TRACK 3 - 53 54 41 52 06:08
TRACK 4 - 53 50 45 43 06:38
TRACK 5 - 53 48 45 4c 05:30
TRACK 6 - 42 41 4e 41 04:21
TRACK 7 - 4c 45 41 46 06:30
TRACK 8 - 4c 69 67 68 06:04

Download here: http://undyingbloop.bandcamp.com/album/book-of-cups

Last year I released a tape under the name Church of the Undying Bloop to try out some new ideas. People seemed to like it, and I liked making it, so here's a full length. I wanted to make songs that were reminiscent of 16-bit soundfonts, a sort of digital warmth, something comforting in it's artificiality. Most of the sounds on this album were produced using a custom SID box I built with two 6581 chips, a DMG running mGB, and an Akai MPC 1000 to sample the various woodwinds, vibraphones, guitars, etc. There's a lot of beautiful little hissy artifacts that came from using the MPC at a lower sampling rate. Everything was recorded and mixed in Ableton Live 8.

This is free for the first 500 downloads, $7 after that. Enjoy!

7

(8 replies, posted in Releases)

ant1 wrote:

well i didn't hear a single chip element or any kind of tracker/digital/lowres aesthetics on there at all

but cool i guess??

Honestly, I'm kind of struggling with this. When we play live, it's just NES/piano/bass. It's awesome and intense. But when we start recording the songs everything sort of mutates. I start running things through delay pedals, distortion pedals, using all sorts of weird mic placements... things go off in a different direction. It doesn't resemble a traditional chip release at all. Which is fine, but I hit a wall where I think "Should I even try to label this as chip music?" And I honestly have no idea.

Pretty much every sound on this album (other than the piano and percussion) was produced by either a MIDInes or a custom SID box I built. But it doesn't sound like the sort of traditional LSDJ stuff people may be used to.  I don't know if that's good or bad.

8

(8 replies, posted in Releases)

An album about our youth and influences. Piano, NES, beats, etc. Somewhere between psychedelic rock and ambient jazz.
$5 download on Bandcamp or stream the entire album from YouTube below.










9

(50 replies, posted in General Discussion)

This account started following me on Twitter a few days ago and I was really confused.  Actually: I am still really confused.

10

(2 replies, posted in Motion Graphics)


After a year of touring I'm finishing up the eighth Bear & Walrus album. It exists in a very different space than what I'm used to, and might push the boundaries of what one defines as "chip," with DMGs recorded through rotary speakers and C64 drums run through the same Marshall cabs as my bass. This video served as an aesthetic proof of concept for the feeling I wanted to convey with all the songs from the album.  Overall: once, as a child, in rural Pennsylvania, stumbling through the woods and realizing just how beautiful nature can be as the sun broke through the leaves.

11

(33 replies, posted in General Discussion)

Playing a show with Trey Frey ages ago, my bandmate tapped me on the shoulder and said "His slowest song is twice the speed of our fastest song."

I just got a Nomad off of Ebay for this. I am incredibly excited. The 1/8th inch out on the Nomad actually sounds pretty good without any tweaking.

Pre-ordered!  I'm another +1 for a 5-pin MIDI version.
One thing I'm not sure of after reading through the thread... will this function as a class-compliant MIDI device, or will it need additional software?

14

(92 replies, posted in Releases)

Whoa, this is on the Bandcamp front page. Currently the #4 top seller.

15

(5 replies, posted in Releases)

iNFOTOXIN wrote:

Great work.

Tape: ordered.

You are awesome!  Thanks so much, it's been shipped.
Sorry about the excessive shipping charges, Bandcamp only lets me have one shipping rate for anywhere outside of the US/Canada... despite the very large price difference in shipping costs between, say, the UK and China.

16

(5 replies, posted in Releases)

Free Download: http://undyingbloop.bandcamp.com/album/run-jump

Two mostly improvised fifteen minute tracks, with C64, DMG, nylon guitar, slap bass and mandolin. Sprawling tunes that lie somewhere between ambient folk and instrumental hip-hop. Available as a free download or as a cassette tape, in all its low fidelity glory

Nerd Talk: The drum samples came mostly from a friend's MIDIbox SID, sampled and layered into Ableton drum racks, then controlled through an Alesis SR-16.  Most of the "real" instruments (guitar, bass, piano) are running through a hardware rack into individual instances of Ableton's Looper.  There's a DMG with Nanoloop 2.5 running into a Roland RC-30 for looping, then into a massive AUX chain that most of the other instruments dip into on occasion. I'm also using a MIDInes and an mGB doubling each other for a cool out-of-phase effect, with the MGB in polyphonic mode.  The tape sample sounds (oboe and horn) are coming from a Super Genie organ fed into an Ableton Looper.  Each track was close to two hours at first, then I went back and cut down each section to the "meat" of it, losing the sloppy parts before and after transitions.