Boston Bitdown boots up for three days of chiptune – The Boston Globe

For this reason, Carballo and Battlemode multi-instrumentalist David “Biff” Jubinsky are feeling optimistic about the festival they’ve spent the last year organizing. This weekend’s Boston Bitdown includes over 50 musical and visual artists across five venues in Arlington and Somerville.

Most of the musical acts fit somewhere into the niche electronic genre of chiptune, which uses synthesized sounds created with the sound chips found in vintage gaming consoles. Some of the musicians work exclusively with console-based synthesizers and sequencer programs, while others mix the sounds with performance on live instruments or incorporate them into beats made with other audio software.

In the early days of the genre, “people would be like ‘oh, you can’t call yourself chiptune if you’re not actually using a Game Boy on stage,” said Mel Carubia, keytarist of Boston-based band Minusworld, which performs on Saturday. “But the umbrella has widened, and the Bitdown lineup itself is evidence of the expansiveness of the genre now.”

Carubia doesn’t describe Minusworld as chiptune, but their lyrics are often inspired by cultural icons of their youth in the ’80s and ’90s — “just a lot of things from the zeitgeist of when chiptune music was born” — and “the keytar replicates a lot of sounds you’d also find in an eight-bit emulator.” On top of that, Koji Kondo’s catchy looping themes for Mario and Zelda on the Super Nintendo Entertainment System were a major inspiration for them to learn piano as a child, they said.

“None of these songs are very long, but they grab into your consciousness, and you can’t shake them,” said Carubia, who holds a master‘s degree in music composition from Longy School of Music. “The thing I like about chiptune music is that it’s not just pure electronic music. It’s tied to an aesthetic that comes from a multi-sensory experience.”

Bronx-based chiptune artist Tyrese Hart performs as AmateurLSDJ. He was still a toddler when Nintendo released the Game Boy Advance SP, and his own device was a hand-me-down from his sister. However, after hearing Northern Irish artist Chipzel’s chiptune soundtrack to the game “Super Hexagon,” which was created with a Game Boy and the sequencer software Little Sound DJ, Hart, then a high school student, started exploring the musical possibilities of the handheld console.

Hart, who performs Saturday, is more accustomed to sharing his music on the internet than with live audiences. “I feel like I’m not as advanced in certain tech things,” he said. All the same, Jubinsky was floored when Battlemode shared a bill with AmateurLSDJ in Brooklyn.

”When he gets onstage, there’s no dancing or heavy movement … but his virtuosic chiptune is sonically insane! The music takes full control of audiences,” Jubinsky raved.

The organizers didn’t initially intend for the festival to be so big — “maybe half that,” Carballo said. Jubinsky’s work as the head of private events at Somerville’s Crystal Ballroom gave him inroads there, and the original plan was just for one day at that venue. But then, Carballo said, “it just kept going, and the response was so solid.”

Because of Carballo’s work with online radio station geekbeatradio as well as his stints booking music at Boston’s PAX East and Maryland’s MAGFest, the organizers were already in contact with chiptune artists around the world. Through Jubinsky’s Battlemode bandmate Kris Uzzell, who performs under the name Astro, they had a connection at Union Square’s The Jungle and nearby Warehouse XI. “All these opportunities were kind of there for us to take, and it seemed silly not to,” Carballo said.

Chiptune artists are “considered freaks in the electronic music scene, because we’re trying, almost deliberately in a way, to not do pop songs and stuff like that,” said Montreal-based musician Adélaïde Le Roux, who performs music with a SEGA Genesis console under the name Game Genie Sokolov. “People are kind of punk-ish.”

That hackerish DIY ethos allows for a “very good entry to music,” especially for those without formal musical training, said Le Roux, who performs Thursday. It also sets up a welcoming space for many flavors of queer and/or neurodivergent people, she continued. Le Roux, who came out as transgender in 2020, said she isn’t alone in having transitioned after entering the chiptune scene, and in the past two years, she has organized two charity compilations of chiptune music with proceeds going to organizations that support trans rights.

It’s a far cry from the years when it was “just a white boy scene,” said Carballo, who said chiptune played “one of the biggest parts” of his education on issues related to racial and gender diversity. “I had a lot to learn, growing up in Milton and Quincy. Chiptune really educated me on this, and took away any sort of confusion or doubts that I had about what all this meant. Now, these are just my friends.”

They “didn’t have to try very hard to book a diverse festival,” said Carballo. “That’s just the community reflecting who they are.”

Carballo “really cares for the artists, really tries to organize things for a genre of music that deserves some love and contains a lot of beautiful people,” said Le Roux. “It’s all thanks to Rob and the Boston chiptune community that we’ve managed to gather round, come together, celebrate one another.”

BOSTON BITDOWN

March 6-8. Various venues, Somerville and Arlington. www.bostonbitdown.com

A.Z. Madonna can be reached at az.madonna@globe.com. Follow her @knitandlisten.