News

aivi & surasshu — The Black Box: Meet surasshu

Posted on March 6th, 2013

Meet Surasshu — he's a "fully functional prototype." What does that even mean?!

Don't forget! Aivi Tran & Surasshu: The Black Box, a piano-chiptune adventure to be released this Friday, March 8th! Noise Channel will be hosting a listening party on Arecibo Radio this Saturday, March 9th at 5 PM PST (or if you're not sure about time in your time zone, use this awesome converter). Surasshu and Aivi will both be there. Meanwhile, feel free to join the official event page at Facebook for more details!

aivi & surasshu — The Black Box to be released this Friday

Posted on March 5th, 2013

Today marks the reveal of the album surasshu and Aivi Tran have been working on for nearly a year! In this trailer we meet Aivi, an archaeologist with an adventurous heart. But what's that shadow to the left...?

"We really wanted to go all out on the art, using a Belgian comic aesthetic to tell a story related to the music. So we brought in Diana Jakobsson and she's been knocking it out of the park! She's going to post various updates throughout the week with art, and we'll be posting one more trailer before the release of the album on Ubiktune, this Friday" — Aivi Tran & surasshu.

Don't forget to tune in to Noise Channel on Arecibo Radio next Saturday for the listening party! Surasshu and Aivi will both be there!

UBI059 Ario — Vurgon

Posted on March 3rd, 2013

Ario's "Vurgon" to be released on March 3rd

Posted on March 2nd, 2013

We're happy to introduce to you — Ario, our new artist, whose debut album will be released here tomorrow, March 3rd.

Ario's background has a rather unusual beginning, which made it extra interesting for us. He was initially trained as a visual artist, and his awakening of love for creating music was late-borne. The music of videogames, specifically of the Super Nintendo, first got his interest. He owned very few games, and living in a pre-Internet world as a reticent kid meant a limited exposure to similar material. As Ario told us: "The Internet helped me discover and activate a dormant musical passion. In a way, my album is what I wish I could have heard when I was seven-years-old."

Ario's growth as an artist can be divided into a few phases. Starting to compose in early 2007, initially, progressive trance was the kind of music Ario was listening to, so his focus was on slowly layered songs and basic rhythms. Some time later, his music evolved to a slower, melancholic tone, echoing a newer interest in atmospheric and drone.

During this time, Ario was offered an opportunity to compose his first soundtrack for a game (unfortunately, a subsequent internal dispute led to it being canceled) in 2009. The project necessitated a diversity of sounds and styles, so having creative direction outside of his own guidelines pushed him to grow in ways he wouldn't have otherwise.

Despite the game's cancellation, Ario was given another chance to score a game in late 2009 for a dungeon crawler (the game is still in development) and a fast-paced puzzle game in 2010. Since that year, he has gravitated around a stricter diet of sounds — highly indebted to FM synthesis — while using those limits to help himself to focus on compositional techniques.

As a result, Ario has completed his debut album, titled "Vurgon", that we're proud to present for you as a part of our collection, and "Glaustarr" is the first song we would like to share with you now.

In Ario's own words, this is what lies behind the album:

"Vurgon is an assembling of songs I've written in the past year or so that I feel are tied together in apparent and not-so-apparent ways. This makes it something of a fragmented timeline for my own compositional development. It's my first completed album, too. Six years ago, I started making music on a computer as a naive hobby, alongside my education and career as a visual artist. Today, composition is just as personally vital as drawing or painting, if not moreso — although I've preferred to stay quiet about it.

Like any creative work, "Vurgon" is also an aesthetic statement; but it's a statement that folds back into itself and can't really be written out. It is, in part, this wordlessness — this sensuous "irrationality" — that draws me to pure, instrumental music. What is more mysterious in art than the emotions, narratives, scenes, and everything else these non-denotative tones can invoke? Along such lines, each track title on the album is nonsense that somehow, for me, correlates with the song's character."

"Vurgon" is dedicated to Rei Harakami, who died July 27, 2011. The album will be released tomorrow, on March 3rd as a "pay-what-you-want" digital download here, at Ubiktune. Do not miss it!

You can find more about Ario and his works via Soundcloud of diplocephalus and his YouTube channel.

Goodies: TDK — Reawakening

Posted on February 20th, 2013

Today at Ubiktune Goodies we would like to share the first chiptune album "Reawakening" by classic demoscene composer Mark Knight (aka TDK).

Mark started writing music back in 1984 on the Commodore 64, and then on the Commodore Amiga in the early 90's with the popular demoscene groups, such as Anthrox and Melon Dezign.

Since 1993 Mark started to focus on video games and built a successful career as a professional music composer and sound designer. He worked with a number of companies, such as Mindscape, Bullfrog Productions, Electronic Arts and Codemasters Software. Over the years he scored many famous titles as "Warhammer: Dark Omen", "Duke Nukem: Total Meltdown", "Populous: The Beginning" and "Dungeon Keeper 2".

Beside his videogame music passion, Mark plays an electric violin under the name of madfiddler, and back in 2003 he was working with Massive Attack, creating string parts and violin effect patches for their live tour.

In 2011 he decided to bring back the name TDK out of retirement to create his first chiptune album. "Reawakening" was released at 9th December 2012, and was written using 2 Commodore 64's with the MSSIAH cartridge, a Commodore Amiga 1200, Elektron SIDStation, ReFX QuadraSID and Plogue Chipsounds.

"Reawakening" is available for download from TDK's Bandcamp page — marktdkknight.bandcamp.com/album/reawakening-3.

Aivi Tran & surasshu, March 8

Posted on February 18th, 2013

Aivi Tran & surasshu. March 8.

We Played Nintendo - Read Only Memory Vol. 2

Posted on February 8th, 2013

We Played Nintendo is the compilation of the Read Only Memory Vol 2 series of videos presented by Shamoozal.com and GoNintendo.com. Included in this video are the shorts "Howard & Nester & Metroid", "Contra with 2 Players", "Link's Triumph" and 'Take a Key for Coming In".

The music is "Fluvial Beat Deposits" by Simon Stålenhag from our "SOUNDSHOCK 2: FM FUNK TERRROR!!" album.

coda: 2012 OHC demo reel

Posted on February 6th, 2013

Coda has released a compilation/demo reel of 68 clips from the songs he made in one-hour competitions (OHCs) during 2012. These were his favorite out of the 140+ songs, each created in around an hour during a competition with a pre-chosen selection of samples/instruments.

You can find the full versions at coda's blog: coda.s3m.us.

Chip Zenith shirt is available from Fangamer

Posted on February 5th, 2013

Chip Zenith, the official "Parallel Processing" shirt, designed by Jon Kay, is available from Fangamer.

SuperByte 2013 — chiptune & 8 bit arts weekend

Posted on February 4th, 2013

SuperByte Festival 2013 is a chiptune and 8 bit art festival, that will take place in Manchester, United Kingdom on the 13th & 14th of September. In September 2012 the first event of SuperByte took place. It was a musical and cultural event, held at Manchester in the form of an all day micromusic and retro gaming festival, the largest of its kind in the UK. It attracted visitors from all over the UK and Europe.

While the first SuperByte was organized by MegaByte, this year they team up with CalmDownKidder (promoters of Liverpool's successful Chipfest events) combining the two festivals to bring a bigger, bolder and bleepier event what may become a cornerstone in the international chipmusic scene.

The organizers promise two days of live chipmusic, micromusic and 8 bit inspired artists, an open stage segment, live visuals and glitch art throughout the day, retro gaming free play and big-screen tournaments, a retro-tech market area, film screenings, workshops and circuit bending demo's and much more.

Currently announced artists include such a big names as Sabrepulse Official, gwEm and video game/demoscene icon Mark 'TDK' Knight. Don't miss the show, especially if you live in or near the United Kingdom.

You can help and support the event by pledge via SuperByte's Kickstarter, which will be up to 25 days more. Incentives for people to donate include cheap pre-order tickets, t-shirts designed by top Finnish bloke KeFF, exclusive tracks by Superbyte Artists, as well as a LSDJ cart containing tracks by Superbyte Artists.

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We are Ubiktune and we release chiptune and videogame related music. Feel free to mail us by info@ubiktune.org with questions, feedbacks or your demo submissions. We speak English and Russian.

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