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MAGFest has three days of chiptune performances lined up on the main stage this year. It all culminates with a CHIP RAVE that daringly, brazenly lasts “until we are done, baby!”. Amidst that chaos of square waves and laser lights will be Chipzel [2]. So let’s get to Know Your MAG.
Born in Northern Ireland, Niamh Houston discovered the chiptune scene around 2006 and quickly set out to explore the space in her own way with Game Boys in hand. In the following years she released several original albums and performed at Blip Festival 2011 before being contacted by Terry Cavanagh about a game jam project called Hexagon.
Later in 2012 Cavanagh would set out to recreate his game jam entry in a super way and once again contacted Chipzel about her music. Creating an original track for Super Hexagon [4] motivated her to get much more involved with game soundtracks. After nearly two years she released her first large scale project, the 55-track score to Interstellaria [5] which you can read much more about in our review [6]. It took so long that she released another soundtrack in between for the twitchy neon arcade racer, Spectra [7].
And now she’s traveling far overseas from her home in London to perform amongst the chiptune artists on Saturday night [9] at the MAGFest Chip Rave. Her portion of the show will be lit, animated and overscanned by the Visualist stylings of Pixelseed [10], aka Sean Smith from the local Baltimore area. Check her out!