Anamanaguchi

Chip Music, Game Music, Indie Music

PAX East 2014 Music Guests Announced

February 15, 2014 | Michael Hoffmann | 1 Comment Share this PAX East 2014 Music Guests Announced

This week Penny Arcade announced its concert line-up for the upcoming PAX East 2014 convention. The event, as usual, will take place at the Boston Covention & Exhibit Center from April 11-13. Each of the concerts, the first on Friday and the other on Saturday, will feature performances by three different groups. A number of previous music guests will be returning to perform this year, including Metroid Metal, The Video Game Orchestra, and Anamanaguchi.

The PAX East 2014 concert roster is as follows:

Friday Night

-Bit Brigade
-Metroid Metal
-Anamanaguchi

Saturday

-MC Frontalot
-The Doubleclicks
-The Video Game Orchestra

It looks like it will be two nights of great music for PAX East attendees this year. A few of us from Original Sound Version will be checking out the concerts as well. Information on events, guests, and hotels can be found at the PAX East website. For those of you who were not able to grab tickets for the event, the concerts will be streamed live on the PAX Twitch stream. The event is less than two months away. Which bands are you looking forward to hearing?
Chip Music

Anamanaguchi, G&J, And More Play A Sweaty Show At Silent Barn

February 8, 2011 | Joshua Kopstein | Comments Off on Anamanaguchi, G&J, And More Play A Sweaty Show At Silent Barn Share this

Photos by Emi Spicer & Marjorie Becker

Layers of rock-hard ice continued to freeze over the cold pavement of Wyckoff Avenue in New York City’s northeastern borough of Queens last Saturday night. But unbeknownst to many of the sleepy street’s residents, an environment entirely opposite had briefly come into being at Silent Barn, the area’s premiere DIY music hideaway. The air was visibly thick as a rowdy all-ages crowd piled into the graffiti-filled concert/living space which also serves as the permanent home of NYC indie arcade Babycastles.

Glasses fogged up, a window shattered and a giant cyborg teddy bear crowd-surfed as local chiptune rockers Anamanaguchi, along with an unprecedented lineup that included Nullsleep, Starscream, George & Jonathan and the J. Arthur Keenes Band turned the Ridgewood venue into a sweat-slicked bedlam of unrestrained, microprocessor-powered hysteria.

See the full write-up, plus a boat load of photos on Motherboard.
Chip Music

Pull George & Jonathan’s Finger Cause It Will Make THE BEST MUSIC

September 8, 2010 | Audun Sorlie | 5 Comments Share this

These 2 guys came out of nowhere for me. During my time in Los Angeles and hanging with the little chip scene there, the name George & Jonathan seemed to have acquired quite strong word-to-mouth value. When I heard the track “Out With My Girlfriends” through 8BitCollective it all became clear to me why. These guys are absolutely amazing. This shouldn’t come as a surprise looking at the fact that one of the dudes used to be in Anamanaguchi. Their new album is called THE BEST MUSIC and rarely has an album lived up to its name like this one. If you don’t start dancing while listening to this release, then you deserve to have blood in your urine for the next year and a half.

THE BEST MUSIC contains 13 tracks and is made with Pixel’s (Cave Story) Piston Collage tracker. From the irresistible Woody Woodpecker beats of “No Ya Not & No Ya Didn’t” to the emotional fishy lovemaking of “Whale”, this is one of the best releases of 2010 and it’s free.

Available at: George & Jonathan
Game Music, Indie Music, Reviews

Live From The Arcade: The PAX 2009 DVD (Review)

August 20, 2010 | Joshua Kopstein | 2 Comments Share this

From webcomic to charity to convention, Jerry Holkins & Mike Krahulik’s Penny Arcade empire has quickly become one of the most successful properties in the videogaming world. So when the duo approached NYC filmmaking troupe 2 Player Productions (creators of the soon-to-be-released chiptune documentary, Reformat The Planet) and asked them to shoot a web series and document PA’s yearly gaming mega-event, the Penny Arcade Expo in Seattle, they jumped on a plane, moved to Portland and haven’t looked back. With PAX 2010 just weeks away from arriving at the Washington State Convention Center in Seattle, the PAX 2009 DVD offers a fond look back at last year’s Expo, ensuring that we’re all sufficiently pumped when PAX’s euphoric typhoon of live music, games and events hits Seattle once more in September.

Read on to see how the 2 Player crew captured one of the most exciting videogaming events on Earth.

(more…)
Game Music, Indie Music

PAX PRIME 2010 Concert Lineup Announced

July 2, 2010 | Gideon Dabi | 4 Comments Share this PAX PRIME 2010 Concert Lineup Announced

The Penny Arcade Expo, taking place in Seattle from September 3rd – September 5th, 2010 – now referred to as PAX PRIME – has just announced its concert lineup. A lot of your favorites are back as well as a few new faces.

The lineup is as follows:

Anamanaguchi

Jonathan Coulton

MC Frontalot

Metroid Metal

The Minibosses

Paul and Storm

The Protomen

Anyone missing that should be there? Frankly, I would’ve loved to have seen the One-Ups, but what do I know. Your thoughts welcome!
Chip Music

PAX East 2010: Anamanaguchi (Photo Gallery)

April 6, 2010 | Joshua Kopstein | Comments Off on PAX East 2010: Anamanaguchi (Photo Gallery) Share this

PAX East was tons of fun. Getting coverage of the main concerts, however, proved more difficult than I anticipated. Fortunately, despite the enormous mob of PAX attendees that lined up hours before me, I managed to get close enough to the stage to get some choice shots of Anamanaguchi’s performance on Friday night. Joined on stage by two of New York City’s finest visualists, Paris and Outpt, the chiptune/punk supergroup rocked the halls of the Hynes Convention Center just days after completing their tour of the U.S. with Starscream, Sabrepulse and Henry Homesweet. After seeing them countless times inside small or mid-sized venues in New York City, it was definitely refreshing to see the ‘Gooch-bros perform on a huge stage in front of thousands of people.

Click through for a gallery of snapshots I took during the performance. Thanks to Heyricochet for letting me borrow his trusty Nikon D40! (more…)
Chip Music, Game Music

PAX East 2010: Anamanaguchi writing soundtrack for Scott Pilgrim Game

March 27, 2010 | Joshua Kopstein | 1 Comment Share this

It seemed to fall into place all too well: Just one day after the release of the official trailer for Edgar Wright’s film adaptation of the popular comic series, Scott Pilgrim, New York chiptune supergroup Anamanaguchi dropped a bombshell on stage last night during their set at PAX East — The group will be writing and performing the soundtrack for the Scott Pilgrim videogame being published by Ubisoft. For those not familiar, Scott Pilgrim is a comic series by independent Canadian comic artist Bryan Lee O’Malley. Debuting in 2006, the comic quickly gained an enormous following and became a cult hit amongst comic fans for its rapid-fire videogame references, off-the-wall story and loveable characters.

PAX Attendees watched as graphics from the game — which are being done by incomparable Australian sprite animator Paul Robertson, creator of King of Powers 4 Billion % and Pirate Baby’s Cabana Battle Street Fight 2006 — exploded onto the screen following the announcement as the band performed the game’s theme song for the very first time live on stage. If you’re not familiar with the series, please trust me when I say that Anamanaguchi’s exuberant 8bit-style punk rock is the perfect fit for the Scott Pilgrim franchise. Everyone I spoke to afterward had pretty much the same reaction: They could not wait to get their hands on this game, or its soundtrack. This was just one of the many amazing moments I’ve experienced this weekend at PAX East, and we’ll have more to share in the next few days. Stay tuned!

[image courtesy of Attract Mode; check out their post for more images from the game]