What was your first experience with chip-music?
Video game music, a long time a go. Demo-scene type-music in the early 90s. I started seriously composing around the same time. I always wrote little tunes, but just piano music- stuff on my keyboards. Casio.
Are there any early electronic composers you admire?
Oskar Sala. What I appreciate about him is he did all this new and different stuff with sound synthesis. People were going in a different direction. He just took his own idea because that’s what he liked. He was a performer, a very passionate performer.
What about Japanese music?
Certainly YMO. They had a big influence on video game composers. Hosono Haruomi made a whole record from arcade sounds. [The early video game composers] wrote their own music software, or programmed in machine language. Tim Follin did that and Hip Tanaka who wrote NES music.
Can you talk about your experience with synaesthesia?
I’m not really sure how it works, but I can see the form of a sound. It has texture and it changes over time. It’s like a form that if was real, I could hold it. It’s a reflection of the sounds that i’m hearing that’s translated into a concrete object that I’m aware of.
The drum parts you write are super technical which is something atypical in the genre of chip-music.
The whole point of music is to write something new and to go for something that hasn’t been done yet. I try to avoid things that I’ve already heard, even though that’s impossible.
Do you listen to chip-music commonly?
I don’t listen to it any more or less than other forms of electronic music. It’s the type of electronic music that I really like. Just the sounds alone are really great- but I get similiar good feelings from hearing analog synthesizers. It does mean something different for me than most music- I will say that.
Cheap Dinosaurs covering Italian Prog group Goblin
Your collaborator Joey Mariano (Animal Style) proclaims that “Chip music isn’t a genre, it’s a medium”. Do you agree?
Yeah. It’s a technique for writing music. Not just because it’s limited – but it’s the limitations that define chip music. The fact that you have a limited sound palette and only certain things play in tandem at one time. The point of chip music is that you’re doing everything in one small box so you have to do a lot of tricks to make it sound as big as it can.
What are the differences between your earlier project Chromolodeon and Cheap Dinosaurs?
Sound-wise, I guess it’s less post rock. I feel more focused in my songwriting now. I’m experimenting but in a more focused way. I guess now I write the songs on the gameboy. I track them out first from an original idea to get something workable before the band gets into it. [The gameboy] ends up being part of the mix and either they replace the sounds on there and I replace those sounds on the gameboy with something else.
Where do you want to take your music in the future?
I want to increase the visual content of the band. With songwriting, I guess I just want to see how out there I can get without alienating people [laughs].
Hyperlinks
Cheap Dinosaurs Album at the Data Garden Store
Cheap Dinosaurs on Facebook
Audio Interview with Dino on WHYY: Chip off the Old Game Boy.
Filed under interviews on 17-11-11 by alex
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This is a talented, genius concept developed with cutting edge tenacity by a talented, genius guy. He never gave up, even when he had no following. long live cheap dinosaurs!!
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