What do the BBC and Ball of Wax have in common?
Believe it or not, Chiptune. The US & Canada News section at the BBC took time to explain the method of music production ahead of this years SXSW Music festival, while Ball of Wax went the extra mile, posting a free chiptune album from Stenobot. I’ve decided to jump on the bandwagon and share Portland’s Operation Mission.
Operation Mission’s main man Ray Rude may be a name familiar to some of you Pacific Northwesters, as when he is not chiptuning he is drumming for the fantastic The Builders and the Butchers. Touring with Glocal Scene I had the privilege of catching an incredible live performance by TBATB at the Rendezvous Theater in 2007 (with Ball of Wax-ers Cock & Swan also on the same bill).
Operation Mission’s 2010 is available on Bandcamp and is a delight from start to finish. Rude fuses speech synthesizers , real drums and the odd flute to give such texture that 2010 plays like a robot-rock-opera on Mars. Below is my favourite track, “Dunes,” from his impressive and interesting debut.
In other Rude news, The Builders and the Butchers have begun a lengthy US tour in support of their third album, Dead Reckoning, with Ray supplying stories from the road in his ace travel blog.