Computer L.O.V.E. pt.2

Oh My! Has it really been 6 months since the first Computer L.O.V.E. post?

Last time we geeked out to Devo’s –link- remix of Datarock’s ‘Computer Camp Love’, there’s more Datarock fun to be had by downloading their computer game.

Let’s make up for lost time with some more ZX Spectrum madness. Again, this was on a CD gifted to me by our good friend Feline1. He set his old Sinclair Spectrum up and ran it into his soundcard and recorded the in-game soundtrack as he played. This one is locked in on a gritty Moroder-style arpeggiator, and you can almost hear the 8-bit chips melting!

When we were driving across Germany it made for very effective Autobahn music, though we also had to suffer a terrible remix that was completely over-egged with 80’s hair-metal guitar licks every second bar. Nicht Gut!

David Whittaker - Theme from The Tube (ZX Spectrum 128K)


I once excitedly sent a link to Feline1 for the ‘C64: Back In Time’ series – it had tracks by Rob Hubbard (another Spectrum soundtracker) on it, so I thought he might be interested. A reply came back:
“/Splutters/
Dom, that's a COMMODORE 64 album!!”

Oops, I s’pose I was always more of a Commodore kid myself, the Spectrum merely evoked memories of sitting for hours in I.T. lessons, typing up line after line of script, only to be rewarded by a tiny pixel-y spider descending the screen on a dotted-line web. Heady days...

The year is 1989, I had my first ‘proper’ computer (not counting the Atari 2600 gathering dust in the loft) – The Amiga 500 - and I was into Bomb The Bass big time. It didn’t take long for me to get addicted to the Bitmap Brothers' subterranean shoot ‘em up Xenon 2: Megablast. It had it all: You captained a heavily augmentable submarine-craft and shot giant crustaceans and sea-beasties, then collected the bubbles they left in their wake. Bubbles = money credits, which you spent at the end of each level in a shop run by an ugly crab-faced bloke called Crispin. Did I sell it to you? Here’s the intro sequence:

Xenon 2: Megablast – intro (Commodore Amiga 500)

And someone has gone to the trouble of filming themselves completing level 1 (albeit, not in a spectacularly accomplished way!)
Xenon 2: Megablast – level 1 (Commodore Amiga 500)

Bomb The Bass – Megablast
[buy Bomb The Bass: Amazon]


And finally, Ladytron’s ode to the Commodore PET…

…latterday analogue synthcore at its finest, with a Bulgarian spoken-word vocal which apparently evokes images of the topography of Bulgaria.

Ladytron – Commodore Rock
[buy Ladytron: iTunes | Amazon]