8-bit Music is Not Chipmusic: Amiga Doomcore

I have written about Amiga music as chipmusic (or not) before. While it was on the Amiga that the term chipmusic was first used, the “soundchip” of the Amiga does not generate sounds but only copies (8-bit) data from RAM to audio out (although in a characteristic way, often lost in emulation).

From this post at chipmusic.org, I found a label that released Amiga music on vinyl 1995-2000. Fifth Era released ten 12″ vinyls with what they call doomcore – “slow, morbid hardcore techno with pounding drum patterns & heavy links to early nineties european techno sounds” [update: 4 of them were only dubplates]. Most of their releases were untitled and contained no more info than the release number. To get the general idea, check this youtube-clip (and the rest at their channel).

This means that my timeline of chipmusic has increased its gap of releases in the 1990s – most of it being gabber/noise/breakcore. Before 2000 it was uncommon to release records with what we call chipmusic today. The earliest one I’ve found is the SNES Mario Paint compilation from 1995, but it’s still more of a conceptual thing than what happened in 1999 with Bodenständig 2000, the Nanoloop compilation, Role Model, and perhaps Nintendo Teenage Robot. According to my timeline, it was not until 2001 that ‘chipmusic’ took over from ‘hardcore’ in 8bit music.

Still in the late 1990s an Amiga was a fast, cheap and convenient way of composing and performing electronic music. Amiga trackers played an important role in the early days of gabber, breakcore and jungle it seems. I have talked to composers and label owners that used the Amiga with various tracker software (usually either Protracker or OctaMED). While their music is hardly what we call chipmusic today, the hardware and software that they used is usually considered as ‘legit’ chipmusic tools. So from a strict technodeterminist perspective this would still be chipmusic.

I am aware that the timeline is missing releases from some of the most famous Amiga users: the Australian pioneers of gabba/core: Nasenbluten and their friends at Bloody Fist and Deadgirl, the German scene around Digital Hardcore Recordings with artists such as Patric Catani and Christoph de Babalon, and the British jungle scene with e.g. Aphrodite. It is difficult to find out which of their releases used the internal Amiga sound. It’s not like they thought it was important to always mention what technology they used, like many chipmusicians do. For good or worse. But I’ve received great help from e.g. Davros, Mulder, people at Low Res Records and Fifth Era, and from Team Doyobi and Osdorp Posse. More suggestions and information is very welcome.

While I think it could be relevant to include some PC-tracker music (like Bogdan Raczynski and Venetian Snares), the timeline excludes music made with FM-soundchips in synthesizers, keyboards and mobile phones. I consider chipmusic technology as an assemblage of (tracker) software and (soundchip) hardware.