Tiny Review: Blip Festival 2007
In a perfect world, we’d all get to attend Blip Festival, the annual chiptune music event gathering over 30 artists who perform with hacked Game Boys, C64s, and other video game consoles repurposed as music instruments.
In this fallen — some would even say doomed — world, though, most of our schedules and localities don’t match up with the four-day, New York City show. Thankfully, 2 Player Productions chronicled the festival with 2006 and 2007 DVDs designed to “[position viewers] directly between a surging crowd and a bracing wall of sound, one built upon familiar technology turned on its ear.”
True, this review covers a 2.5-year-old show, but 2PP is gearing up to release a Blip 08 live album soon, as well as its Reformat the Planet documentary, so watching this DVD is a good lead-up. Plus, the performances are as great now as they were the day these discs were pressed.
Three details that are fab:
- Provides a condensed experience. The 32 sets are collected into four chapters or days, each beginning with a montage of artists setting up their gear in the empty venue. Someone takes the stage, and a sampling of eight sets, one song from each act, stream onto your screen, like a short mixtape.
- Excellent way to discover new groups/songs. This mixtape format made it easy for me to hear (and love!) artists that I didn’t pay attention to previously, like Rugar and The Depreciation Guild.
- Always interesting cinematography. 2PP received “unrestricted camera access” throughout the festival, which the film crew combined with cuts of the audience, projected animations accompanying the sets, and special effects techniques that kept every performance visually exciting (see Loud Objects’ circuit-bending clip below).
- A second disc packed with features, including interviews with the artists, Reformat the Planet clips, Pulsewave videos and flyers, and more.
One detail that is butt:
- I wish the DVD extras included more non-show, jam session videos other than the bit with Graffiti Monsters. Speaking of jams, you should check out the Hello France/Farewell Swine Flu sessions, which 2PP recently posted with JDDJ3J, Larry, Glomag, Anamanaguchi, and Starstream.
Score:
Buy: Blip Festival 2007: The Videos DVD, Blip Festival 2006: The Videos DVD
See also: Tree Wave performing “May Banners” at Blip Festival 2007
