Compo info: CSDb
Listening: YouTube
Info
The 2020 compo featured five of the musicians from 2019’s event, including two of the composers of my favorite entries, as well as a bunch of first-time participants for a fresh batch of tracks. The rules were exactly the same as 2019’s, with no sudden imposition of theming or anything, so the result is again “a variety pack of music by modern C64 sound programmers.”
This one was more polarized for me, in that it has more stereotypical C64 compositions in terms of melodies and styles that I don’t particularly enjoy, but it also has a lot more minimalism-influenced compositions that I do enjoy. It’s not just the one entry with the alternate title of “American Minimalism or GTFO!,” there were like three other tracks that also at least in part built up some stacked repeating figure interaction for at least a little bit. There’s also more intentionally crusty sound programming this time around, with several tracks having some weird, distorted sounds in them, and obviously I appreciate this a lot too.
So it’s less consistent for me as a whole (which is funny given the title of my favorite entry), but that’s balanced out by having more tracks that are more directly to my personal tastes, so it’s hard to say which one I liked more. I’d definitely recommend it more if you’re interested in a taste of what more experimental C64 music can sound like.
Recommended tracks:
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“Der Umweg” (Spider Jerusalem) turns up the distortion dial all the way at 2:21 for no reason
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“Timequake” (Mibri) collapses into polymetric randomness around 2:38
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“Organisms Structures Equations” (Jammer) is that entry with the alternate title of “American Minimalism or GTFO!”
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“Consistent” (deetsay) was the track I mentioned that was so good it made me listen to the 2019 and 2020 compos in full, it’s a glitchy disaster with some really cool SID manipulation if you focus on the individual sounds
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