Making music with Gameboys
Musicians are using handheld games consoles to make music, says Ed Chamberlin
Moral guardians often express concern that video game content can effect kids’ behaviour. What nonsense! If Pacman had influenced kids they’d have spent their teens in darkened rooms, munching pills and listening to repetitive electronic music. Oh. right. Anyway, here’s a potentially Satanic development in modern music: artists using Game-boys as a musical instrument. If you have ever sat next to a kid wrestling with a handheld console, you’d be forgiven for thinking you were eavesdropping on R2D2 in flagrante delicto with a car alarm. But three European bands have turned to this unconventional instrument with some success.
MIKRO ORCHESTRA PROJECT
Definitely the most ambitious of the Gameboy musicians, the Mikro Orchestra (pictured below) is a six-piece from Wroclaw, formed in 2001 when Jaroslaw Kujda managed to turn his Gameboy into a drum machine. Drafting in his two sisters and three friends completed the line-up and now their heavily modified video games noises are a fixture at alternative European music festivals. www.mikroorchestra.com
DJ SCOTCH EGG
Shigeru Ishihara, a.k.a. DJ Scotch Egg, describes himself as not a DJ, definitely not Scottish, and probably not an egg. Well, he plays a mean Gameboy, but apparently has the constitution of a hyperactive child: he recorded his debut album, KFC Core, on his Gameboy during a 30-day period where he ate nothing but, well, KFC. His music would be an appropriate sound track to a documentary conveying the experience of ADD (attention deficit disorder)-sufferers, if you like that sort of thing. www.djscotchegg.com
KLANGSTABIL
German duo Klangstabil, made up of Maurizio Blanco and Boris May, formed in 1994 and released a series of everso-serious albums that you were forbidden from buying if you didn’t have a goatee and horn-rimmed specs. But in 1999, they lightened up a little and turned to the Gameboy for their album Gioco Bambino, recorded live with only the help of their trusty handheld console and the camera cartridge (sold separately). www.klangstabil.com
M?odzi ludzie u?ywaj? teraz konsoli do gier jako instrument
