Search options (Page 2 of 16)

A visit to Cafe La Siesta - May 2015:-

I thought I'd share this experience with everyone, this is a personal account of my own visit to Cafe La Siesta, it doesn’t represent or reflect a voice as a whole of the UK chip scene itself.

Amongst sight-seeing and gaining experience for my own personal development I travelled to Japan in pursue to see and experience what the chip scene in Japan was like. I had heard before about this particular cafe called ‘Cafe La Siesta’ based in Kyoto, Japan which is known to of hosted numerous of domestic and international music acts throughout its time.

Cafe La Siesta is a video game cafe and music venue which lets you play a range of retro video games for mostly free of charge and also hosts regular bi-weekly chip music and electronic DJ’s events. The cafe itself has existed for 12 years founded by artist Master Khosta which seems to of been a base and forefront for  Japanese and international chip music scene ever since.

Master Khosta:- https://soundcloud.com/djmasterkohta

The cafe itself is a small but packed cafe snuck away down from the waterfront of Sanjo station or a walk eastwards from Shijo station which eventually after walking down a narrow alley you’ll eventually reach Cafe La Siesta. Walking from Shijo station took a while to find the cafe though it was worth it, the utmost excitement and joy having travelled so far by myself literally the other side of the planet to finally reach this destination was rewarding itself. I had two hours to wait till it opened though didn’t mind, peering through the glass window itself like a child looking through a window of a candy shop.

The bar is full of video game memorabilia, consoles to play on, cds, stickers and merchandise for purchase and even vegan food; which if you’ve ever visited Japan you’ll find that the amount of  food options even for vegetarians is limited to null.

Also worth a brief mention was spotting a DJ mix CD by DJTEN, a Japanese DJ and chip music artist in Japan who passed away last year. I personally had never met him in person and only talked to him briefly online though was truly shocked and saddened to hear when he passed away at the time.

Both the people who run it and people who come here are really friendly, warm and welcoming. They’ll usually be chilling out playing some video games, even ask you if you’d like to join in a game or will be dancing to some stellar chip music or dj mixes that’s being played there.

In addition to this there’s neither quite a place like Cafe la Siesta outside Kyoto or on this planet. Even if you’re not a fan towards this kind of music music I think people can at least appreciate the Cafe’s concept and platform of a space which plays underground and independent electronic music. There’s numerous of games to play on too (Famicomi, Sega, Snes, Gamecube and Gameboy’s to name some) with more videos games to play on than you can mash your thumbs with.

In comparison to England, particularly the North such a foundation or place has never existed in the same way or form. From what I experienced there were specific music events, known acts such as Syphus along with small venues such as The Cooperage and independent music groups such as ‘Rollies 4 Mice’ which put on local Gabber and Breakcore events (I was only 15/16 at the the time) though never really a concentrated base for chip music itself. Personally for this reason and  my own background it was simply grateful and an appreciation itself just to have been able to reached this far and be able to visit the cafe itself.

Present on the night was an artist known as Yushix who was really nice and played a canny set of dance music before tuning towards more upbeat melodic music. Briefly chatting to Master Kohta the future of Japanese chip music if not already seems to be branching out towards a wider spectrum of electronic music using computers and sequences to make music with while a core following may still use consoles to produce music with.

Yushix:- https://soundcloud.com/xyu-shix

Overall Cafe la Siesta was an uplifting and inspiring experience itself making further connections and networks with people here. In future it would be nice one day to look at recreating and starting something similar within the UK. It's going to be a hard one saying goodbye this canny place in just a day or so coming up.

For more info visit:- http://cafelasiesta.com/

So, there's a program which runs on Windows to back up a 64mb usb EMS cart:- http://store.kitsch-bent.com/product/usb-64m-smart-card

There's even now a program which runs on Android to back up a 64mb usb EMS cart:- http://chipmusic.org/forums/topic/15904 … 64m-carts/

Just curious when will a standalone program be made to back up a 64 EMS usb cart on a MAC/OSX OS? Surely it can't be that hard to create if it exists for the programs above?

Thoughts.etc?