As technology gets more advanced and pop music relies more heavily on Auto-Tune, there is, as always, a counter-culture movement that looks to previous decades for its answers. As the 8-bit genre—music written with synthesizers emulating old-school video-game-system sounds—becomes increasingly prevalent, it also gets flooded with countless me-too bands. New York chiptune punk act Anamanaguchi isn't the first and certainly won't be the last band to crank out original songs that could easily double as the soundtrack to a series of boss battles in Mega Man, but the difference is that video games aren't its sole influence. 2006's free-download EP Power Supply is a whimsical collection of instrumental hard-rocking 8-bit songs produced entirely from a hacked 1985 Nintendo Entertainment System; 2009's Dawn Metropolis finds the band getting even more majestic and ambitious with its self-imposed limitations. Prior to their March 8 performance at The Black Cat, the members of Anamanaguchi talked to The A.V. Club about those limitations, 8-bit cover bands, and how sitcoms inform their songwriting.
The A.V. Club: Other than video games, what drives your songwriting?
Peter Berkman: Simple pop stuff, like Weezer and the Beach Boys. But conceptually, where I’m coming from with this project and the whole 8-bit movement I guess, a lot of influences come from stranger stuff. For me, the kind of comedy you guys do, and Tim and Eric do, and stuff like TV Carnage, just absurd stuff. The concept of using a Game Boy or Nintendo onstage is inherently absurd. We’re trying to put that weird juxtaposition of a Nintendo in a rock band and try to make it work. We aren’t trying to be like, “Haha, look at this! We’re doing Nintendo shit onstage!” A lot of artists in the 8-bit scene don’t really take themselves super-seriously. When you see someone holding a Game Boy onstage and treating it like this rock instrument—even though it is—to an outsider, they see that as something that is laughable almost.
AVC: The notion of the 8-bit scene itself is a bit absurd in that it's so broad. The only criterion is that its members use a certain kind of instrument.
PB: Exactly. It’s like calling Christian music a genre when you have Christian metal and Christian rock. Yeah, it is an instrument. There are a million different ways to use it. You can make pop music with it. You can make rock music with it. You can make hip-hop with it, and people do. And that’s why it’s interesting. There’s so much variety in such a limited palette. When you’re using something like a Game Boy or Nintendo, you’re using a very, very limited sound set and the sheer variety that comes out of a bunch of different artists has always impressed me. Which is why I want to associate with the kind of other people that do this kind of thing, but also realizing that we play a different style of music than a lot of them. So we can kind of branch out and play rock party music, like Andrew W.K.
AVC: But at the same time there's this schism where some 8-bit bands look down on bands like Minibosses if all they do is play songs from Mario—they sneer and call them cover bands.
PB: Absolutely. We tend to think of ourselves as doing exactly opposite of what the Minibosses do. We’re not a cover band. But we definitely pride ourselves on writing our own music. If you’re not writing your own music, what are you doing? What annoys us is when somebody doesn’t understand the distinction and lumps us into the same group when it couldn’t be further apart.
AVC: What's the 8-bit equivalent of "Stairway To Heaven" in terms of requests?
PB: [Laughs.] Someone will always just shout out, “Play Mario Bros.!” or something and think they’re really awesome.