I've featured some chiptune music on this blog before (and also on my Christmas music blog), but I don't think I've ever come across any that is as ambitious and utterly epic as Brad Smith's MOON8. Simply put, this is a cover version of Pink Floyd's The Dark Side of the Moon, done using the sounds of the original Nintendo Entertainment System. From "Speak to Me" all the way through "Eclipse", the entire album is rendered as if it were the soundtrack to some long-forgotten game from the 1980s. In fact, if I still had my old NES, I would totally be using this as a "Dark Side of the Rainbow"-like accompaniment to some epic game like The Legend of Zelda or Dragon Warrior.
I can't help but think that an album like this has a very limited target audience; anyone who's not really fond of chiptunes/video game music or Pink Floyd would likely find very little to enjoy here. However, it could be that there's a bigger overlap between Pink Floyd fans and old school gamers than I think. Anyone who decides to check it out is in for a real treat, as the songs are all very well done, and they lend themselves surprisingly well to the chiptune sound. Every little nuance of the album is here in 8-bit form; one of my favourite moments is the sound of the coins at the beginning of "Money", which sounds like it could have been in an old Mario game (hmm... Mario covering Pink Floyd - there's something I don't think has been done yet. "Money, it's-a gas!").
MOON8 comes in the form of two 192 kbps MP3s, representing sides one and two of the original album, and weighing in at about 57.5 MB. Check it out, and please leave a comment letting me know what you think of it. Happy listening!
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