Sabrepulse, Neon Asylum, Figure 09, Chromatouch. Live at The Flapper review (15/2/19)

Before coming to this show I knew very little about the musical genre known as 'Chiptune' or It's biggest name Sabrepulse. For the uninitiated Chiptune is an underground subgenre of dance music that comprises of producers remixing the theme tunes and noises of early arcade games into fun yet complex noise. The opener for this show at the Flapper was Chromatouch, A Birmingham based artist who like Sabrepulse has been bubbling away in the underground for a long time. his abstract glitchy electronic noise went perfectly with the 8- bit graphics supplied by a kid at the side of the stage making backdrops under the name 'technolgy is evil'. In keeping with the throwback theme, Jason Tyler, aka Pink Violence brought back his old 'Neon Asylum' persona for a set full of mashed up electronica and house tunes unearthed from his Myspace and Soundcloud pages.

Figure 0.9

Neon Asylum also provided the backing for an incendiary set from his old 'Crime and Punishment 2011' bandmate Figure 0.9. Who poured his heart out in an emotional set of songs from his extremely underrated Debut album 'casket' and its upcoming follow up 'Yellow'. The title track of which is a disturbingly bleak look at the suicide of a friend. His lyrics differ from quotable one liners on hype tracks such as Charizard on which he aims to please "the Grime dons and the pokemon fans", and the bleak analysis of mental health on his 'cry for help 'Ghost'. Dan tackles such issues in a frank and unique manner. later on he was joined by some other former Crime and Punishmemt band mates who lent screaming vocals to 'Hellbound 2'.
Sabrepulse is far from your usual joyless dance producer as was apparent from his request to have as many peopled upfront dancing to his tunes as possible and his habit of bouncing around the stage cracking self deprecating jokes. What followed was an hour of joyful noise, created with an arsenal of mp3's, keyboards and a gameboy. Sabrepulse entertained an a small yet ecstatic crowd of dedicated fans with a barrage of remixed video game themes and tunes going back over a decade. Sabrepulse's music seems to incorporate many elements of dance music subgenres such as Drum & Bass, Hardcore and even dubstep. With only a few minutes to go he asked if anyone wanted to hear a track by his favourite drum n bass producer Dimension. Nobody really cared that it was just an MP3 of someone elses track, Sabrepulse had already delivered more than enough with his own material.


links
http://www.chromatouch.net
https://figure09.bandcamp.com/
https://soundcloud.com/neonasylum
https://sabrepulse.bandcamp.com/