retro electro

Robot Goes Here is an electropunk project of Dave Rand. After eight years playing in punk bands, Rand switched to laptop retro-chip sounds and a DIY approach.

There’s a lot of interesting 8-bit style synth work on Robot Goes Here’s The Byte Is In My Blood, including chip-noise drums and arpeggios. It sounds like Rand is trying to bring the attitude of punk to retro-electro.

The Achilles’ heel of the CD, though, is the songs, which fail to deliver the hooks and impact of great punk songs. The highlight of the CD is a cover of AC/DC’s Back In Black, which is “sung” by a voice synthesizer. The result is a bit like Stephen Hawking trying to rock out.

There’s a lot of unrealized potential on The Byte is in My Blood. We liked the chip sound synthwork and punk vocal approach. Rand’s talent might be better served, though, if he had bandmates to bounce his songs of.

Puremagnetik has released Eight Bit, a selection of 1980’s SID chip samples.

Recorded directly from an original 6581 SID chip (as manufactured in the Commodore 64 home computer), the Eight Bit library includes a unique palette of basses, leads and pads. Puremagnetik has captured the sonic qualities of the SID and reprogrammed them into the Ableton Live and EXS environments.

Features:

• Comprehensive Library of 6581 SID Sounds for Ableton & EXS
• Expressive Macro Control Mapping for Ableton Live 6
• Standalone “Pure SID” Waveforms
• Extensive Voice Layering and EFX
• Over 260MB of Sounds

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