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In August 1908, a white mob attacked Springfield, Illinois’s Black community, destroying homes and businesses and lynching two Black men. National outrage over the violence helped spur the movement that created the NAACP the following year.
MORE →Reflects the personal views, recollections, and perspective of the author, Mike Davis.
This is a personal recollection on the Move fire on May 13, 1985
| Bitpop | |
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| Stylistic origins | |
| Cultural origins | 1990s – 2000s (decade), United States, Australia, Japan, and Europe |
| Typical instruments |
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| Other topics | |
Bitpop, also known as Chiptune Fusion, is a type of electronic music and subgenre of chiptune music, where at least part of the music is made using the sound chips of 8-bit (or 16-bit) computers and video game consoles.
Among systems used include the Atari 8-bit computers, Commodore 64, Nintendo Entertainment System, and Amiga.[1] The sounds produced from these systems can be combined to any degree with traditional instruments, such as guitar and drums, modern synthesizers and drum machines, or vocals and sound effects.[2]
Bitpop uses a mixture of old and new equipment often resulting in a sound which is unlike chiptune although containing 8-bit sourced sounds. For example, a bitpop production may be composed almost entirely of 8-bit sounds but with a live vocal or overlaid live guitars. Conversely, a bitpop production may be composed almost entirely of live vocals and instruments but feature a bassline or lead melody provided by an 8-bit device.[3][4][5]
One of the pioneers of bitpop music were Welle:Erdball, with their heavy use of Commodore 64 for their first album in 1992. Being a German-speaking group not using the term bitpop and who don't travel by plane, they remained popular among people listening to industrial music or electroclash.
Bitpop music began gaining popularity towards the end of the 1990s. The first electroclash record, I-F's "Space Invaders Are Smoking Grass" (1997), has been described as "burbling electro in a vocodered homage to Atari-era hi-jinks,"[6] particularly Space Invaders.[7] The Beastie Boys outer-space sci-fi themed album Hello Nasty (1998), included, among other potentially influencing tracks, the distinctively video game sound themed original composition track UNITE; garnering mainstream recognition years ahead of the popular video game tune genre and movement. The trance song "Kernkraft 400" (1999), often played at sports events worldwide, was a remix of a chiptune song written by David Whittaker called "Stardust" for the 1984 Commodore 64 computer game Lazy Jones.
In 2003, Malcolm McLaren wrote an article on bitpop and chip music. It also noted a planned release in that style by McLaren.[8]
By the mid-2000s, 8-bit chip music began being incorporated in mainstream pop music, used by acts such as Beck (for example, the 2005 song "Girl"), The Killers (for example, the 2004 song "On Top"), and particularly The Postal Service in many of their songs. The MIDI-style and FM synthesis of early game music composers such as Hiroshi Kawaguchi also began gaining popularity.[9] In 2003, the J-pop girl group Perfume,[10][11] along with producer Yasutaka Nakata, began producing music combining chiptunes with synthpop and electro house;[11] their breakthrough came in 2007 with Game, which led to other Japanese female artists using a similar electronic style, including Aira Mitsuki, immi, Mizca, SAWA, Saori@destiny, and Sweet Vacation.[12]
Since the 2000s, 8-bit chiptune sounds, or "video game beats", have been used by a number of mainstream pop artists. Examples in the Western world include artists such as Toby Fox (in his games UNDERTALE and DELTARUNE), Kesha[13] (most notably in "Tik Tok",[10][14] the best-selling single of 2010[15]), Robyn, Snoop Dogg,[10][14] Eminem (for example, "Hellbound"), Nelly Furtado, and Timbaland (see Timbaland plagiarism controversy). The influence of video game sounds can also be heard in contemporary British electronica music by artists such as Dizzee Rascal and Kieran Hebden.[16] Grime music in particular samples sawtooth wave sounds from video games which were popular in East London.[17] Dubstep producers have also been influenced by video game chiptunes, particularly the work of Yuzo Koshiro.[18][19][20] In 2010, a BBC article stated that the "sights and sounds of old-school games" (naming Frogger and Donkey Kong as examples) are "now becoming a part of mainstream music and culture."[21]
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Source: Wikipedia. Article content is retrieved live through the MediaWiki API.
Bitpop, also known as Chiptune Fusion, is a type of electronic music and subgenre of chiptune music, where at least part of the music is made using the sound chips of 8-bit (or 16-bit) computers and video game consoles.
Trash80 is a micromusic/bitpop project from Timothy Robert Lamb (born on March 5, 1979), a pioneer of independent Game Boy music. He has published several songs online under a Creative Commons license (BY-NC-ND) under the Trash80 and Tresk banners. Whereas many Trash80 songs are ambient soundscapes featuring the use of Game Boy sounds, Tresk songs feature simple piano lines. Most prominently, Lamb's music has been featured on the soundtrack of the real-time strategy game Darwinia. The name "Trash80" is a reference to a slang term for the Tandy / Radio Shack computer model (now defunct) TRS-80 (model 1/2/3/4/4p). In 2003 the EP Hologram was released. and in May 2008 the EP Icarus was released. In the Fall of 2008, Trash80 unveiled the ArduinoBoy, a relatively cheap and easy-to-assemble device that allows MIDI synchronization with a Game Boy running the proper software. As the name implies, it is based on the Arduino open-source microcontroller.
Perfume (パフューム, Pafyūmu) is a Japanese girl group consisting of Nocchi, Kashiyuka, and A-chan. The group formed in 2000 in Hiroshima, Japan, then moved three years later to Tokyo, where they worked with producer Yasutaka Nakata, who created a technopop identity for the group. Their performances are noted for their choreography and incorporation of technology with futuristic imagery, and Perfume has emerged as one of the most successful Japanese girl groups. After a slew of indie singles, Perfume made their major label debut with "Linear Motor Girl" on Tokuma Japan in 2005. Their early releases, including Perfume: Complete Best (2006), were met with modest commercial reception, before a breakthrough in 2007 with the single "Polyrhythm". Their debut studio album, Game (2008), began a streak of nine consecutive number-one albums. Perfume's next album, Triangle (2009), produced the number-one singles "Love the World" and "One Room Disco". Perfume's early music was marked by a post-Shibuya-kei sound; the group later moved towards contemporary electronic dance music, incorporating elements of bitpop, techno, and house music. The group is known for heavily processed vocals with autotune and vocoders. Their best-known songs include "Electro World", "Chocolate Disco", "Dream Fighter", and "Laser Beam". In 2012, Perfume signed with Universal Music Group to expand their international reach, beginning with their fourth studio album, Level3 (2013). Later singles include "Flash" and "Tokyo Girl". The group released Nebula Romance: Part I in 2024 and Nebula Romance: Part II in 2025 as a two-part concept album in honor of their 25th anniversary. On September 21, 2025, the group announced that they would go on hiatus by the end of the year.
Anamanaguchi is an American chiptune-based pop and rock band from New York City. The band has four members: lead songwriters and guitarists Peter Berkman and Ary Warnaar, bassist James DeVito, and drummer Luke Silas. Anamanaguchi combines digital electronic sounds such as those seen in chiptune and bitpop with traditional band instrumentation. As with other chiptune artists, they have created music using video game hardware from the mid- to late 1980s: namely a NES and a Game Boy.
Before the 1921 destruction of Tulsa’s Greenwood District, Black residents had created a remarkable center of business and community life. The district included stores, professional offices, entertainment venues and homes owned by Black citizens. Understanding Greenwood means learning what was built—not only what was burned.
MORE →Joe Louis.
