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Sunday, February 10, 2008

Children of the CPU

Children of the CPU - Back to BASIC Hailing from Vancouver BC, Children of the CPU is the electro-pop duo of Cameron Shay and Veronica Rossos.

What is there not to love about this artist?

First of all, great name...but it gets better...

Their first album is called Back to BASIC, as in the programming language, of course.

And the album cover is awesome, featuring a drawing of 2 children playing Q*bert on an Atari 2600!

Their music is pretty cool too. It's kind of like funky game music combined with Poe.

And just when you think they couldn't get any better, I have saved the best part for last...

You can download the entire album for free, in (DRM free) VBR MP3 format!

All 12 tracks!

Why?

In Cameron Shay's own words:

"Some people have questioned the wisdom of giving away our entire album for free on our website, but don't worry Mom and Dad, we are still eating well and making rent every month! They got me wondering, though, where my desire to share our music comes from and I realised that it is a direct result of my parents having bought me my first computer, a VIC-20, and then later a Commodore 64 in the mid-80s. Having a C-64 in particular triggered a couple of things: it fostered a DIY attitude because I was able to teach myself how to program games (Lawnmower for the VIC-20 and Tricycle Derby for the C-64 ;) and make electronic music (albeit rudimentary), and it opened the door to a vast community of sharing and trading and making friends. In a way this website and album are simply the extension of those times and attitudes. I spent hundreds of hours on this album over the past couple of years learning how to program the synths and record the midi and live instruments and vocals and mix the tracks and improve the sound and master it all, and then I spent many more hours designing and building cover-art and the website, and it was just like all the hours I spent figuring out how to draw sprites and get them to move around in a game on the C-64 with music and sound effects, and now that it's done I just want to share it with people, just like we used to do back in the day through BBS networks and with our friends. So thanks Mom and Dad for starting me off with those computers, I know you were worried about all the time I spent in my room on those things and I guess that hasn't changed much, but it's all a learning process and that's fun and it makes me happy and now it is making a whole bunch of our new friends/fans happy too!"

Like I said before...what is there not to love?

http://www.childrenofthecpu.com

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