Here’s some spazzoid computer music this week from Stockholm producer Covox, in fervid anticipation of his set at Dada this Saturday night. He’s back in town for the ten-year anniversary of Shanshui Records, local producer Sulumi’s platform for bananascore electronica music of local, international, and galactic origins.
The Feola already wrote a primer-type thing on Shanshui if you’re not already familiar with the Beijing-based label, so we’ll just use this space to give you a little taste of the featured guest of the night, Covox. That one’s one of his more bad-ass chiptune/8bit tunes, “Summer Fruit Dance Party” from his album Delete the Elite, which Sanshui released in 2005.
It’s fucking awesome, eh. Huge, cathartic, fist-pumping sweeps and swells. Machine gun rapid-fire arpeggios. Mind-blowing freakout happy, happy, happy emulator music. My god, 0:44! Blaaaarrrgg! Sounds like a Nintendo winning the lottery.
Covox has made the trip over from Sweden a bunch of times over the years, and as one of the key figures in chiptune music in the mid ’00s, he was a big influence on the stuff Sulumi was doing those days — remember Sulumi’s GameBoy abuse phase? — as well as impacting on a few other Beijing producers of the time (i.e. Baifan).
Both Sulumi and Covox (and I guess everyone else) has sort of moved on from the straight-ahead chiptune sound since those days, incorporating other elements into their more recent stuff — big-tent electro and glitch most obviously. Sulumi, in particular, bashes on electro via Ableton these days. Meanwhile, over at Baifan’s SoundCloud, it looks like he’s lately into tech house. Alas…
Here’s a more recent set from Covox — maybe Saturday night will be more like this.
And here’s a video of that first linked song with some gal shaking her ass all over it. Just because.
Shanshui’s ten-year anniversary is this Saturday at Dada bar. Big line-up. NO COVER, YO. That’s pretty right-on.
Morgan is the editor of Smart Beijing and fake DJs around town. Suggestions for Friday Music Send Outs and feedback to editor@smartbeijing.com.
Pretty hard to outsource this sort of musical (sic) swill.