£ 12.75 (Loyalty bonus: £ 0.19) Email To A Friend Add To Wish List More By This Artist

Review

Spring 1982. The American computer company Commodore releases the first really potent home computer, impressing the growing computer community with technical specifications like 64 Kilobytes RAM and an 8 bit processor with separate graphic andsound chip units: The Commodore 64. This device opened a whole new world for home computer users, it became the world's most popular and successful home computer of the 80s and still holds that title today. The reason was not only a separate cutting-edge graphic accelerator that enabled high resolution gaming and fluent scrolling, but also the unique SID sound chip which was equipped with modern sound effect generators and the capability of three-track polyphonic playback. The result was a new synthetic sound aesthetic which also made the C64 one of the first stand-alone synthetic music production devices.  This unique sound kept ringing in the memory of Austrian Stefan Poiss, founder and singer of MIND.IN.A.BOX. He was intrigued by the catchiness and the different sound-design of early computer game classics like "Lightforce" and "Last Ninja 3". By the age of 12 he took his first steps in composing music on the C64, and even wrote his own sequencer music software for the Commodore to put tracks together himself with more ease.

Fast forward to 2009: MIND.IN.A.BOX have just finished their successful album trilogy "Lost Alone", in which they redefined electronic music sound design. Their version of techno pop gains them sublicenses and successful releases in North America as well as in Russia and has already built them a considerable fan base. Now they move back to their own roots with "R.E.T.R.O.", an homage to the days when they sat in front of their C64s, baffled by the amazing sounds that came out of it. On "R.E.T.R.O." they cover computer game classics like "Lightforce" and "The Last V8" - the Mind.In.A.Box way - and mix them with their own songs: compositions like the incredibly catchy "8Bit" meet the symphonic "Whatever Mattered", and deliver an album that holds a neat balance between experimental and the much appreciated quality and identity that MIND.IN.A.BOX are known for so far. But most importantly, they manage to combine their own sound design with the fascination of the 80s videogame soundtrack era.

The CD's booklet also holds explanations from Stefan Poiss and sidekick Markus Hadwiger on what fascinated them about the Commodore 64 video game aesthetics, and how this transformed them into electronic music software creators themselves.  As such it also holds interesting insights into what makes MIND.IN.A.BOX special as an electronic band and why their sound developed the way it did. As an additional goodie, the booklet holds a code for additional bonus tracks to download from the band's website.

Format

CD

Tracklisting

01. Last Ninja 3 (click to listen)
02. Lightforce (click to listen)
03. The Last V8 (click to listen)
04. Supremacy (click to listen)
05. Shades (click to listen)
06. 8 Bits (click to listen)
07. Mindkiller (click to listen)
08. The Last Ninja (click to listen)
09. I Love 64 (click to listen)
10. We Cannot Go Back to the Past (click to listen)
11. Whatever Mattered (click to listen)

Record Label

Dependent

Release date

26th Feb 2010