Blip Festival 2012 preview: Interview with Omodaka

Pixelitis: At Blip Festival, 8-bit and chiptune artists can vary from being an homage to Metroid to simply being a proponent for original funky tunes and dance beats. Blip is bringing everyone worth hearing in the chiptune and 8-bit world under one roof for fans to enjoy - including the festival's artist for Saturday hailing from the islands of Japan, Omodaka.

Terada Soichi, better known as Omodaka, has certainly had his fair share of success composing 8-bit and chiptune music, in addition to being a traditional composer for convenience stores in Japan. This wacky chiptune artist combines his sounds using everything from a laptop and a DS Lite to an old school GameBoy, with his own spin on Japanese culture thrown in. Dressing up as a masked Miko has allowed him to venture into some offbeat territory, bringing some fans in like Danimal Cannon.

His sets at Blip Fest Tokyo have garnered a following, but this is his first venture as a chiptune artist to Blip Festival 2012 in New York City. While chiptune and 8-bit sounds harken back to the days of the NES and the first Super Mario Bros., Soichi notes that while 8-bit can be limiting, it has "many possibilities to be combined with other kind of musics (sic). That is why I love that."

The 47-year-old Tokyo native granted Pixelitis a short e-mail interview in which he talks briefly about his influences, varying from the underground chiptune Japanese band YMCK to older '80s arcade sounds.