Sound Invader

“Back then, we kind of joked that it felt like we'd invented it,” Alex Yabsley (aka Dot.AY) laughs with a hint of longing, discussing his forays into chiptune music while studying at the Queensland Conservatorium in Brisbane. “In that kind of naïve sense that there wasn't really anyone else doing it, but it didn't take us long to discover there were others doing it but possibly not as publicly, like, live performance and things was something that we were really keen on from the start and that wasn't something that was happening so much. But still, the scene was really small and it was the type of thing that now, you can almost see the second generation of artists. There's a lot of people that came to those early shows that are making music now.”

The sound manipulator admits this fact still blows his mind completely – 16-year-old kids approaching him and his touring partner 10k (or Ten Thousand Free Men & Their Families, if you want to get nice and convoluted about it), saying that their music, created from the humble Game Boy console, helped bring them into the community. But that's no surprise really – it's doubtful anyone starts creating chiptune tracks with superstar status on their mind. However, if you peel off the layers and remove the novelty factor, there is plenty of legitimacy in this tech-savvy music.

“It actually became my total focus at university, like, in my honours year I did my thesis on chip music, which is kinda hilarious,” he chuckles. “But it was totally invaluable in the fact that as part of my research I interviewed a bunch of artists internationally, and even though we knew each other vaguely at that point, through those contacts now a large number of those people I interviewed have been to Australia and I've been to visit them.”

This has seen Yabsley take his console and laptop to New York and Tokyo to perform live, while an intriguing year-long project he's been heavily involved with throughout 2012, Weekly Beats, has meant the producer's created a new track every week this year, raw foundations that he's looking forward to collating into a fully-fledged EP in the near future.

“Obviously when I first started I was just in it for the novelty aspect of getting gamey sounds, then it wasn't long after I started doing it that my main focus became trying my hardest to make it not sound like a Game Boy,” Yabsley remarks, regarding his change in attitude towards his craft. “So even though everything I have done with Dot.AY, whenever I record stuff it's always just a Game Boy recorded in with a little bit of post-production, I guess the concept behind it that it's just sounds coming from [the machine].”

And just like the gaming world they are pillaging sounds from, there's a healthy level of competition pushing all parties involved. “The impressive thing is, and I guess where the community aspect comes back into it, is where you can watch an artist – like, I've been doing this for a few years – but to watch an artist play and see that all he has on stage is a Game Boy, and if you suddenly hear something that you've never heard before, that's [incredible]. You know that this person has done something with exactly the same tools that you have, but somehow they've done something different. So a big thing is really trying to one-up other people and do something that you wouldn't expect [the Game Boy] to do. But when you don't understand how it's done, that's when it's really exciting.”

 Dot.AY will be playing the following dates:

Saturday 15 December - Wasteland, Brisbane QLD
Friday 11 January - Gasometer, Melbourne VIC