Techno music producer Remute is releasing a new physical album, but instead of CD or vinyl, it’s for the Game Boy.
The Hamburg-based musician has experimented with releasing music on retro gaming hardware before. This is actually his second album in 2021 following ‘Electronic Lifestyle’ released earlier this year for the PC Engine.
The new album ‘Living Electronics’ will be released exclusively as a Game Boy cartridge containing 15 songs, created with the LSDj engine used by other chiptune artists.
To create the album, Remute has also collaborated with Game Boy developer nitro2k01 and demoscene pixel-artist Alien. The region-free cartridges have been custom-made by PCB-engineer MrTentacle.
The producer’s interest in making cartridge albums is because, unlike recorded music, the sound is generated in real-time by the console’s sound chip.
In a press statement announcing the album, he said, “This album literally consists of living electronics and catchy electronic pop songs celebrating a technoptimistic symbiosis between man and machine. Surf’s up, we’re so lucky!”
Remute’s first cartridge album was ‘Technoptimistic’ in 2019 for the Mega Drive, followed by ‘The Cult Of Remute’ in 2020 for the SNES.
While these were novel, the Game Boy sound is one of the most well-known of chiptune, used by artists like Chipzel and Anamanaguchi, while other Game Boy music albums also exist.
“As with all systems I’ve done albums on before, it was quite challenging to compress my vision down to its pure essence,” Remute told NME.
“The technical restrictions when making Game Boy music are very very tough, but my approach for ‘Living Electronics’ was to treat the Game Boy like a sort of quirky analog synth / lo-fi sampler hybrid wrenching rough square wave sound and short but effective samples.”
“The result sounds more like New Wave, Italo Disco and early Detroit Techno and features even some songs with vocals. In the end I think it is probably the most un-chiptune-y sounding Game Boy album ever made.”
Remute – Living Electronics. Credit: Remute
‘Living Electronics’ is a region-free cartridges that will be able to run on any model of the popular handheld. Remute also expects it will run on the upcoming FPGA-based Analogue Pocket.
The album can be pre-ordered for €29.99 from Remute’s Bandcamp page, and will release on September 17.
Elsewhere, Sonic Mania and Horizon Chase Turbo are free to download from the Epic Games Store.
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