Something happened when you were born

Since music is becoming a larger part of my life now, I decided to share something that I find frankly breathtaking, and it’s this:

Something Happened When You Were Born(I promise this isn’t a rickroll)

Just go and listen and let the sound wash over you, then come back.  Done? Cool.

So what’s that? That, my friend, is Minusbaby. So you are probably wanting to know what Minusbaby is, and I’ll tell you.

Minusbaby is an experimental chip music producer/artist, who is actually called Richard Alexander Caraballo. That song is off of the 2009 album Left.

In fact, if you’re interested, the whole album can be listened to and downloaded for free, as well a buttload of incredible other chip music albums from other artists such as ANAMANAGUCHI, trash80, and Bit Shifter, not to mention Caraballo’s excellent sophomore production Derecha,  at 8bitpeoples.com.

For the uninitiated, chiptune(also called chip music, 8bit music, or video game music) is in general, although the genre has really evolved over the years, music made by utilizing outmoded devices – the Game Boy is a very common one, although numerous other things are used – and hacking the sound chip inside it to make (amazing) music.

This can be done a lot of ways and can range from very simple   to very complex, and there is a vibrant and creative scene associated  with this, but I won’t go into that right now. I might in a later post  though. If you’re still confused/want to know more, you can check  out this wikipedia article here.

But back to Minusbaby!

Left, and Derecha I believe, are designed to play together as one song. Upon discovering Left, I hit play(Something Happened When You Were Born) being the first song, and let it play. By the end it was a cathartic, climactic, sound. Eyes closed, the music literally took me somewhere else. I recommend doing this.

Most chiptune artists use just their hardware, ex, Game Boys, but Minusbaby routinely performs using things like flutes and tubas and stuff on stage. He doesn’t let the “chip” aspect of chiptune be a limiting factor. His music is sweeping, engrossing, and sometimes beautiful.  It’s great listening music, something nice to have as the background. It’s bleepybloopy but without being too much so, it’s almost a soundscape-a twisting ride, accompanied by that beat.

The whole aesthetic of Minusbaby is just cool. The music is more than dancy, poppy, headbang/fistpump ravey stuff. Not to say that dancy, poppy, headbang/fistpump ravey stuff is bad(I can’t really get enough of it), but this is something else entirely. Slower, yet at its culmination exhilarating. It’s a more… literary listening experience. The last track on the album, Left, was for me a cathartic experience. It was like the breathtaking climax of a movie-I wanted it to end, but I never wanted it to be over. The music took colors in my head, swirling and crashing and reaching the end, finally, and I took off my headphones and returned to reality a different person.

Anyways, Give it a listen! You won’t regret it.

All minusbaby tracks on 8bitpeoples here: http://www.8bitpeoples.com/discography/by/minusbaby

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