Kenn Hartwig of Berlin has made a chiptune cassette using an old broken Gameboy, plus effect pedals, and various bits of Gameboy software. Gameboys & Pedals (ANUNAKI TABLA AT-016) is the first solo release of this fellow, associated with C.A.R. and Das Ende de Liebe in Germany, the latter a four-piece group who have been making their own brand of improvised-ambient-jazz since 2018.
The chiptune genre is a little out of my line, although we kinda liked the LP Sid Chip Sounds: The Music of the Commodore 64 which we heard in 2013. I see that some of the plugins and devices used by Kartwig today date from around that period or a few years earlier, including the wonderfully named Pixelh8 Deathray designed by Matthew Applegate (himself a serious academic and chiptune musician), all of them allowing the enthused hacker to access the soundcard of their GameBoy and unleash merry havoc with their controllers. There was also the very talented DJ Scotch Egg, who despite his Caledonian-Ovoid name was a Japanese creator, active in the chiptune genre since 2003 and possibly heard by us on the Adaadat label, which (need I remind you) also brought us such unflagging buckets of energised filth as CDR and DJ Topgear.
Well, I wish I could find some of the same energy and havoc on today’s tape, especially as all that retro-gear and plugin hack action sounds like great fun, even to an old codger like myself. But Kenn Hartwig’s offering, after a brief flurry of colourful action near the start of the tape, is limp and boring, devoid of any fizz, anarchy, or excitement. For most of this music, it beats me why he bothered using GameBoy technology at all, as it sounds much the same as any other generic electronica produced by more expensive and complicated kit. The press statement is full of bounce and awkward humour, but the music is boneless and dull. (23/02/2024)