Chiptune/Tracker/Demoscene Recommendations (Express)

(last edited 2021-09-05)

Bleeps. Bloops. Other. Let’s go!

This is the express (i.e short) version of this page. Have a bit more time and/or patience to hear me ramble on? Try the scenic route!

Order in each genre is alphabetical.

The actual recommendations

cTrix

Demoscene regular – releasing stuff since 2006. Main exports are tracker prog-jazz and retro-synthpop; see A For Amiga (YouTube, Bandcamp). Has specialised in complicated synth composition on small (32k) PC executables: see “0 bytes left”, Flashglide 32k. Here’s a news article featuring him.

(and yes, he invented the gAtari)

His work is scattered across his YouTube channel (mostly live stuff), his SoundCloud, scene.org and his WeeklyBeats. One of his live sets is on the Free Music Archive, he composed Track 11 “Bass Driven” on the third Ubiktune FM FUNK compilation and I might as well link to his website.

David Wise

David Wise most famously composed most of the songs for Donkey Kong Country and Donkey Kong Country 3, and all of the songs for Donkey Kong Country 2. Tracks I’d recommend include “Life in the Mines”, “Aquatic Ambience” (of course!) and “Stickerbrush Symphony” (obviously!). 2014’s Donkey Kong Country: Tropical Freeze “Aquatic Ambience” remix is advised as a chaser.

Mr Wise has done many interviews and inspired a bunch of analysis videos which you can find online if you want to learn more about him, his process and his career – GameXplain’s 25th Anniversary interview and The Sound Test’s interview are solid – and he’s still composing (mostly non-chiptune music now) to date.

Fearofdark

The chillest tracker music around. Try “This Room” for the prog, “Rolling Down the Street, In My Katamari” for the vibes and “Dreamscaping” for the vibes again. You can listen to their whole discography on Bandcamp.

flashygoodness

Flash may be gone, but the Tower of Heaven OST remains, and that’s half the battle. Flashygoodness composed that soundtrack, and basically everything else this person has composed is also great. The OverPowered OST is great (see track 2), and “Nihil Descent” off the Pause Ahead OST is insane. Check it out! :D

Goto80

Jake Kaufman

See virt.

MASTER BOOT RECORD

Synth metal!!!

Blah blah blah he’s pseudonymous.

Music: INTERNET PROTOCOL got recommended to a fair few people (myself included) on YouTube, and it’s packed with a range of tasty dark riffs, so may be a good place to start and get you hooked. FLOPPY DISK OVERDRIVE has some lovely floppy disk shredding solos that will melt your face off. You might find the old EPs worthwhile too.

Has a bunch of synth metal covers of classic video game tunes available on his YouTube and downloadable as a .zip from his website. He also has a sister project, KEYGEN CHURCH, which is pretty similar to his main stuff I guess, but check it out!

Manami Matsumae

Composed the soundtrack to the original Mega Man for the NES – it’s maybe not as polished as its successor, but definitely worthwhile for the fans! But she also collaborated with virt (recommended below) on the soundtrack to the original Shovel Knight, a game released over 25 years later. How sick is that?! Two songs on the main album are credited to her (“A Thousand Leagues Below” and “Flowers of Antimony”) and she arranged “Flying Machine” in the separate arrangements album. All worth a listen – chiptune virtuosity that takes the game’s atmosphere to that next level.

Maxo

An artist taking inspiration from the 16-bit sample era. His Bandcamp consists entirely of albums issued in “Level Music” packages – 5-track EPs that each evoke the background music for an imaginary video game level. Notable is Level Music Purchase, on which Maxo scored all the different locations of his university campus (SUNY Purchase) as if they were areas in a video game! “Social Science” is very fresh.

Maxo also has a healthy mix of electronic synth stuff free from the arbitrary constraints of 90s hardware on his SoundCloud and YouTube.

naruto a.k.a. naruto2413 (Kazuhiko Naruse)

If you know this guy, it’s because he wrote the excellent NES tune, “Artificial Intelligence Bomb” (now with a Bandcamp page). Its remixes/covers are in a whole extra world of fun (e.g. remix compilation on SoundCloud, AI Bomb on vocal), but it’s certainly not the only thing this guy has made, as a cursory glance at his Bandcamp and YouTube channel will reveal. naruto seems to have a particular fondness for the MSX sound system, e.g. he wrote the tranquil soundtrack to the 1995 MSX JRPG, Shining Crystal.

Several of his songs are accompanied by (or act as accompaniment to?) vocals by Aya Futatsuki (Aya Majiro), such as both tracks featured on Ubiktune’s FM FUNK compilations: “Machine Wave” (FM FUNK 2) and “Modulation to Move the Mind” (FM FUNK 3).

Regrettably, I do not speak Japanese, but I believe this ‘Personal Website’ showcases the majority of his work and has links to music sites on each post. It would appear he most recently composed a handful of tracks to a 2020/21 game for the MSX computer system called Caravan Boomer. SweepRecord published the soundtrack and the OST is available on Spotify (just search “caravan boomer” on there), YouTube and Amazon Music.

Nikku4211

Obscure artist, possibly still a high-schooler/recent graduate. His YouTube channel is filled with pretty random stuff, but I like his original tracks “Honour Roll”, “Neo NES Headquarters” (groovy techno bass!) and “Full Frontal”.

Also, he’s a Neocitizen!

Omodaka

Chiptune + Japanese folk music/vocals + Sugar/Spice/Everything nice = Omodaka

Omodaka is a project of Soichi Terada. Their first 2001 EP, Monkey Turn (title track), is best categorised as RnB with the interesting addition of Japanese folk-style vocals, but it’s not until the 2002 Fortunate 1 Mark (title track) that what could be called chiptune is introduced, taking the tracks somewhere more energetic with the introduction of a danceable arpeggiated electronic backing. The NESesque “Kokirikobushi”/”Kokiriko Bushi” is released along the way, and its video is something else entirely, even in 2007’s 360p. Their first full album, Cantata No. 14 (full playlist of songs on YouTube), collects previous tracks and adds new ones in their vein, e.g. “Cantata No. 14”.

The artist’s YouTube channel, fareastrecording, has tracks and live performances, and two notable live performances on YouTube are the Square Sounds Tokyo 2014 performance and the Boiler Room Tokyo Live Performance. From what I can tell, this artist is best experienced live. Their music is predominantly available on Apple Music and Spotify.

Takashi Tateishi

Takashi Tateishi composed the legendary Mega Man 2 soundtrack (with Yoshihiro Sakaguchi as sound programmer). He did work with Manami Matsumae (mentioned above) in doing so, too. His Video Game Music Preservation Foundation page has some interesting notes on his life and gameography.

(He apparently composed exactly one of the tracks on the Mighty No. 9 OST, but I have no way of figuring out which one it was…)

Tim Follin

Tim Follin is a chiptune legend, pulling sounds out of the NES and ZX that were way ahead of their time, although he never joined the demoscene.

He wrote the soundtrack for goddamn NES Pictionary, and it has to be one of the coolest-sounding NES OSTs ever written (despite not really being suitable for Pictionary at all). Same goes for the Silver Surfer (NES) soundtrack. For some lovely FM synthesis, there is his soundtrack for Time Trax for the Sega Genesis (YouTube, Internet Archive (50Hz), Internet Archive (60Hz)).

There’s a really well-done mix of his music and various interviews on YouTube that provides a fascinating look at his music composition career. As for his music, a large chunk of it can be found on the Internet Archive.

virt

Jake “virt” Kaufman has composed way too much computronic ear magic over the last 20-ish years, so since this is the express version of the page, we’ll do list form.

What everyone probably knows him for:

Early stuff for the Game Boy Colour:

The FX series (NES-styled concept albums):

Notable jazz-adjacent stuff:

Platforms:

Demoscene:

Additional personal favourites:

His professional website, Big Lion Music, has bitten the dust, as has its successor, virt.rocks, but both of them can still be viewed on the Internet Archive: archived Big Lion Music, archived virt.rocks.

Wally Beben

Wrote a 15-minute long cinematic title theme for Tetris for the Commodore 64, which takes zero inspiration from the classic “Tetris theme”. Download Wally Beben - “Title” from the VGMPF (.ogg file).

Yoshihiro Sakaguchi

See Takashi Tateishi.

Post-Scriptum

Again, this version is very lean, and I cut out some interesting tidbits about each artist for the sake of the word count. Final call for the scenic route!