Gamer

Smoke
Signals EP

Gamer,
hailing from New Zealand (the country that has royally bought us
Lorde) have released their second EP “Smoke Signals”.

Stylistically,
as their name implies, Gamer sits at the 8-bit, retro video game end
of the musical spectrum. Drums are suitably simple and rigidly
programmed and the songs are economically constructed. Tracks have
names like ‘Quest’, ‘Turbo’ and ‘Maximum Pursuit’ – these guys like
their video games and the music that goes with it!

The
“Smoke Signals” EP features four tracks. Opening with the
title track, a slow-paced, synth-washed affair that could easily
close-out the end credits of a movie.

‘Winners
Take All’ is high-energy game music that implies you are about to
play a level that involves some quick thinking and sharp skills. Are
you ready to do battle on this special stage, race the track and take
down the opponents in the process? Here we go! The track also
features what sounds like a retro motocross commentary in part.

Next
up is ‘Zeros and Ones’. This is a more conventional sounding ‘song’
with a nice big polysynth sound (presumably a Roland Juno). Adding a
vocal to this song could work well and would turn it into an catchy
pop track.

Closing
the EP is ‘Maximum Pursuit’ which ramps things up. Your challenge is
to catch the offenders (or be caught as the case may be). The music
sets up the scene and even if you crash and burn at least the music
will soften the humiliation of defeat!

One
thing to mention about Gamer is that they also create retro ‘pixel
art’. This results in some excellent visuals to accompany several
of their tracks in the form of animated music videos. The animation
is excellently done in a retro, 8bit video game style. These videos
have an underlying twisted sense of humour with a bizarre range of
ideas and characters – aliens, the Pope, fast cars, guns, medical
experiments…It’s freak out time! The clips are well worth checking
out as they show what Gamer is really about – music and visuals.

Overall
a “Smoke Signals” is a solid follow-up EP to their
self-titled debut. Geographically it is an important release from a
country which is not known for producing a lot of electronic music.
Maybe a Gamer remix of a Lorde track is in order then, or one of
their pixel art music videos – Lorde being dissected by crazy aliens
would really be something!

Gamer
on Bandcamp: http://gamer.bandcamp.com/

Check
them out as “SpaceFader’ on YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/user/SpaceFader?feature=watch

Written by

Andrew B White

www.andrewbwhite.com

http://soundcloud.com/lucadiscs