Great memories. "Keygen music" feels like a genre of electronic music... Are there people making electronic music that sounds like Keygen music but with modern instruments?
Great memories. "Keygen music" feels like a genre of electronic music... Are there people making electronic music that sounds like Keygen music but with modern instruments?
Tracker music? Pretty sure communities that develop those tools and use them to create music still exist.
Relevant link: Ahoy - Trackers: The Sound of 16-Bit - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=roBkg-iPrbw
Check out [MASTER BOOT RECORD](https://www.youtube.com/@MasterBootRecord) and [KEYGEN CHURCH](https://www.youtube.com/@KEYGEN_CHURCH).
Same guy is behind these both.
Official website with links to Bandcamp, live streams, IRC, tour schedule, etc.
https://mbrserver.com
Also, DRM-free music and streaming for KEYGEN CHURCH on Bandcamp:
https://keygenchurch.bandcamp.com
They performed live at Revision demoparty this year! Here's my recording of the ending to their incredible set: https://youtube.com/watch?v=D_60udyrK-I
Saw them live. Fantastic gig
Well, there's still people making still making chiptunes, and there's still interest in developing tracker technology both for chiptunes (i.e. OpenMPT) and for music composition in general (Renoise DAW).
<https://4mat.bandcamp.com/album/modern-closure> came out in 2019 and is one of my favorite albums of all time, but I'm not sure that it fits all of the elements of "keygen music" which are hard to pin down.
mind.in.a.box's album "R.E.T.R.O." (2010) has a few songs that sound keygen-esque (aka chiptune).
Not all their stuff sounds like that, but I've been a big fan since first discovering them via a sample included in the XMMS2 media player way back in the early 2000's.
It's a whole YouTube genre. Witness this chiptune version of Howard Carter's Stand-up Maths Theme:
* https://youtube.com/watch?v=PHiJpwrLCUA
While not strictly on-topic, this is another great re-arrangement of the Stand-up Maths Theme.
https://youtu.be/PtKhbbcc1Rc?t=50
Check out artists like Fearofdark, Zabutom, and labels like Bandcamp's "Future Funk" scene or Data Airlines for modern takes on the keygen/chiptune aesthetic.
Extension of the modtracker demoscene. I remember one of my friends from high school later won an international music contest and was included in some ftp mod collection.
PS: Not to be confused with British mods. ;)
The Glitch Mob?