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The wild winter party that is MAGFest is only a few weeks away. There are a ton of great music acts lined up for this year, all with a unique approach to giving tribute to the world of videogames. This year has a few funk rock groups performing on the main stage of this year’s event, including the group Eight Bit Disaster. If you’ve never checked them out before, here’s your chance to fix that with today’s Know Your Mag.
Eight Bit Disaster hails from North Carolina and consists of members John Baxter on bass guitar, DeJuan Gailes on guitars, Gabe Mixon and Eric Krouse on drums, Elliot Wernlund on Saxophone, and Mateo John Marshall on keys. Together they create instrumental game covers that span the genres of funk, rock, jazz, and the blues. There first album Eight Bit Disaster was released back in January of 2013 and shows off their blending of these genres.
Part of their aim as a group is to cover and highlight the more obscure pieces of game music that don’t get enough attention from other artists. The Eight Bit Disaster album features music from Bad Dudes, Rygar, and Wizards & Warriors. Even if you’re not that familiar with the source material, the music covers themselves have a wild and energetic sound. The group’s blend of sax with electric guitar, bass guitar, and drums makes for some truly entertaining covers of these hidden game music gems.
Their upcoming album Eight Bit Disaster III: Covered In Ash is planned to release during MAGFest. The band has already released a preview track [3] for the album which covers the main theme from Morrowind.
Eight Bit Disaster is set to perform on the MAGFest main stage Friday afternoon at 1pm. You can find out more about this year’s MAGFest, including the schedule, hotel options, and ticket sales at the main website [4].