Internationally renowned chip tune musician Pixelh8 makes his music from reprogramming vintage computer systems such as the ZX Spectrum, Commodore 64 and Game Boy. His unique blend of electronica has taken him across the globe, performing at Microdisco in Berlin, Apple iTunes in California, Assembly 2008 in Helsinki Finland, Game in The City Festival and most recently BBC Maida Vale Studios for Radio 1 in London.
Highly regarded in this emerging genre of music, he has been interviewed by CNN, BBC Radio and BBC Television, as well several magazines and websites all over the world.
In 2006 he won a MySpace competition to open for Grammy nominee Imogen Heap on her UK tour, and in March 2008 won Playback "Album of the Month" from Sound On Sound Magazine with his second album "The Boy With The Digital Heart". Pixelh8 has also created software like the Pixelh8 Music Tech Game Boy Synth and Pro Performer for other musicians such as Imogen Heap and Damon Albarn.
Parallel to his involvement in music performance, Matthew C. Applegate lectures and runs music and computer related workshops across the UK and is a mentor at the British Academy of New Music, London, patron of the Access To Music Centre, Norwich and is currently conducting research at The National Museum of Computing, Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes.
The project entitled Obsolete? is a piece of music composed from sounds from some of the rarest and earliest computers and computing devices in the world. The project, commissioned by The National Museum of Computing and funded by the PRS Foundation, will make use of machines such as Colossus Mark 2, the world's first programmable, digital, electronic, computing device used for code breaking in World War II and probably one of, if not the most significant computers in the world. Another computer to be used is Elliot 803 from 1960, a giant machine that has only 4k. You can read all about the project on Pixelh8's blog and listen to his music on myspace.
Obsolete? will be performed at the World War II code breaking centre Bletchley Park, Milton Keynes on March 20 and 21 2009. Find out more
Here's what Matthew has been recently inspired by...
Imogen Heap and Zoe Keating: vBlogs and Twitters
This is an amazing insight into the wonderful world of Imogen - all too often you get these glossy everything is wonderful "making of" documentaries after everything has taken place. These vblogs completely do away with all that nonsense, and it is a rollercoaster ride, with epiphanies, chops and changes. You can also follow her on Twitter, and it is very inspirational to see other musicians facing the same challenges and emotions. Zoe Keating a very talented cellist and mutual friend of Imogen and myself who is also in the studio at the moment. If you read through Imogen's, Zoe's and my Twitters you get to experience a vast array of the emotions of musicians working very hard to create wonderful things.
Alex Ross: The Rest is Noise
You probably wouldn't guess it by listening to my music, but I am a big fan of Shoenberg, Bartok, Ligeti and Penderecki and I found great inspiration in Alex Ross' book. Mainly as it served to make human the myth of Schoenberg and others. No longer were these great men on huge pedestals - these were musicians scraping by and playing in supermarkets. You might think it would detract from their music, but I love it. It is a wonderful book and gave me a lot of encouragement whilst working on Obsolete?
Encryption
Whilst working on Obsolete? I learnt a lot about the history of computing and encryption. One of my pieces in particular - Math - has a very specific rhythm and I haven't been able to get it out of my head. It uses a - - - - - rhythm. In morse code it would approximately be E S E. That doesn't stand for anything; its just a rhythm that was in my head. Anyway, to me it sounds like a typewriter slowly tapping out a message, which in turn made me think about the Colossus Typewriter, and then about the encryption or masking that the Lorenz used. If A is the plain text and C is the obscuring character then F is the cipher-text etc. So I overlayed the rhythm with itself, thus creating a different rhythm. Again, this is a practice used for ages by composers but it just makes me think about it differently when dealing with this subject matter as the rhythm could then be turned back into morse code with a different outcome. This doubled-up rhythm is then doubled again and makes an appearance in piece of music 20032009200 later on in Obsolete?