More Than A Game

27 March 2014 | 11:38 am | Benny Doyle

"It’s a way of giving something back to the community that I really give a shit about."

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Yorkshire electronic artist Ashley Charles has followed his love of chiptune sounds from his bedroom to clubs right around the world. Based out of London these days, the 27-year-old has been working and performing under the Sabrepulse banner for more than a decade, his mastery of the style coming from a tireless commitment to learn and improve skills first borne from software instruction manuals. But as far as the “chiptune royalty” tag he cops regularly, Charles isn't so convinced.

“I find it pretty funny,” he smiles. “For me, chiptune royalty is the people that first started doing this, the people who wrote the software, like Johan Kotlinski, the guy who made LSDJ. It's people that had a vision of letting [others] create something using limited hardware; I deem those people way higher than someone such as myself. And all the Japanese guys that did it before me, y'know, I'm standing on the shoulders of giants basically.”

Though he was a gamer growing up, first with an Amiga 500 and then a Super Nintendo, Charles' love for playing the games themselves tapered off once he began writing music. He does, however, admit to enjoying the indie gaming scene of today, one which is more and more commonly taking inspiration from chip music. “But I wouldn't say video games are the defining factor with me creating music with old video game hardware,” he adds, “I just like the sound and the aesthetic more than anything else. Being able to create huge sounds with little machines, as a musician, technically speaking, it's extremely creative.”

Charles is debuting in Australia as part of Square Sounds, a festival he admits is “very important as a yearly event” to showcase chip music, and will be exploring every area of his machines to give patient fans the full experience. “There will be some new material because I have been [recently] working on stuff, but I don't think it would be fair to fans that have wanted to see me over there for a very long time to just play that, so it will be a greatest hits set, or something like that,” he chuckles.

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Further backing up his commitment to the scene, as well as performing at Square Sounds, Charles will also be conducting a workshop on how to create chiptune, breaking down the basics of LSDJ and for the first time expanding on the beginner's tutorial he designed for the Game Boy hardware tool in front of an audience.

“It's a way of giving something back to the community that I really give a shit about,” he says. “Also, it's good because it brings fresh talent into the scene. Getting into chip music, the learning curve is quite steep – I found that originally – and I just wanted to make something that a layman could pick up and [use to] start making music with this software.”