And Now For Your 6.1 Hours Of Zen...

bitrated

check out 8bitpeoples. it's a record label that promotes musicians that either program or emulate 8-bit chiptunes. (plus they have free downloads.) i don't know if any of you are at all interested in the 8-bit music style, but if not, now's the time to start. i've already mentioned the high voltage sid collection; that's a collection of emulated c64 music - some of it from c64 games, some of it original work by the composers for those games. regardless of the application, most of it's great. the composers (at least the bigger names) were/are a group of very talented guys. same is true of the artists on 8bitpeoples, although they draw additional inspiration from, and directly utilize, the sound chips of the nes, atari 2600, and game boy.

oh, and in other news: i'm in a show next weekend at the cpop gallery in detroit. road trip!

nerdesizer

remaining within the nerdlinger vein of earlier today: in my search for c64 and amiga synth covers, i found that vangelis papathanassiou has a website. i guess that's not surprising, or maybe only as surprising as the fact that "vangelis" is one dude who has a last name; still, holy crap! the website looks like it was designed in about 1995 by someone with limited access to microsoft paint, but is updated and maintained.
the internet's a strange place.
tangentially, most of the other heavy-hitter sid composers have websites, too. check out the high voltage sid collection links page for those.
and if you have no idea what i'm talking about, the sidplayer download is worthwhile (and available through the links page linked above). a lot of this music was composed for computer games, which makes it much cooler or lamer, depending on your perspective; however, most of it's legitimately good music. plus, these dudes coded it all up from scratch. take that, house djs.