MPR's Chris Roberts has a report on the one-man electronic band, Unicorn Dream Attack. The Chanhassen musician has found a way to inject warmth into the genre by emphasizing some of its more robotic qualities.
Segment includes music elements.
MPR's Chris Roberts has a report on the one-man electronic band, Unicorn Dream Attack. The Chanhassen musician has found a way to inject warmth into the genre by emphasizing some of its more robotic qualities.
Segment includes music elements.
CHRIS ROBERTS: For the people whose thumbs hardly ever strayed from their Game Boys or Ataris when they were growing up, the sounds of Unicorn Dream Attack will probably envelop you like a musical security blanket. And if Game Boys could sing, they might sound like these.
[ELECTRONIC MUSIC] Those visions push tiny buttons
They push them all for you
They push--
In a way, Unicorn Dream Attack is musician Stefen Keen taking the synthesized soundtrack of his youth and turning it into his own pop orchestra. He's assisted by what's called midi software. It allows Keen to connect the computer chip that generates those very Game Boy-specific tones with his keyboard. He won't deny the music may sound harsh to the untrained ear.
[ELECTRONIC MUSIC]
STEFEN KEEN: If you play some of the higher-pitched versions of those sounds, they can really knock you out, actually. They're just really piercing. But as they get deeper, they kind of warm, and they just have a really grating sound to them that I'm really attracted to.
[ELECTRONIC MUSIC] Today I saw a ghost of you
It sings a quiet
Song of love I searched
CHRIS ROBERTS: As for Unicorn Dream Attack's robotic-sounding singer, it's Keen using what's called a vocoder. It lets him blend his voice with whatever audio is being fed to it, in this case, a Casio keyboard. Ironically, Keen uses all this technology not to become some Android performer, but to lend some humanity to the machine.
STEFEN KEEN: I guess it's a challenge to me to somehow bring a human side to something synthetic, to breathe life into something cold in a way.
[UNICORN DREAM ATTACK, "LITTLE ONES"]
The softest fuzzy on the road
You couldn't be that old
CHRIS ROBERTS: Unicorn Dream Attack works within a subgenre of electronica called chip music, or 8-bit. 8-bit refers to the low fidelity of the audio. As Keen said earlier, it's a grimier sound. Keen's instrument of choice, a 1980's era Game Boy, produces 4-bit audio. But it wasn't the primitive technology that first attracted Nathan Tensen Woolery to Unicorn Dream Attack. Tensen Woolery, who's in the Minneapolis electronic band Ghost in the Water, says, the music is really well crafted.
NATHAN TENSEN WOOLERY: Just really great, delicate electronic pop songs, and really sweet and really well written, with really great hooks. And then the execution with the technology that he's using, it all just blended together so perfectly. I think that's what turned me on.
[ELECTRONIC MUSIC] Hello. Let's play some music
CHRIS ROBERTS: Tensen Woolery's wife, Mandy, the other half of Ghost in the Water, says Stefen Keen stands out in the 8-bit world because his music transcends the machinery.
MANDY TENSEN WOOLERY: I like a lot of 8-bit music. But a lot of times, you can see the video game or hear the video game in it. And with him, you don't so much. He's really good at putting together the song in a way that it's still human.
CHRIS ROBERTS: Some of the songs on Unicorn Dream Attack's latest CD Love Bits, either hearken back to Keen's childhood or long for that time when life was less complicated and more innocent. In the tune "Pillow Fort," the singer is back in the bedroom of his youth, playing with toy soldiers. In "Alone," he wishes he could go back in time.
[UNICORN DREAM ATTACK, "ALONE"] Alone
Days pass
I want to go back there
When dreams were so simple
We'd stare at the moonlight
It seems like this music is sad. Even though you're 33 years old, it's about how difficult it is to grow up.
STEFEN KEEN: Yeah, in a way, definitely. I'm sure everyone clings to something in their life that is a piece of their youth that's probably considered their fun side or something like that, or their goofy side. I'm pretty much that way all the time.
CHRIS ROBERTS: Apparently, there are many others like him. Keen says, through Myspace, he has thousands of fans all over the world, including Italy, France, the UK, where 8-bit music is gaining in popularity, and throughout the US. Chris Roberts, Minnesota Public Radio News, Chanhassen.
[UNICORN DREAM ATTACK, "PILLOW FORT"] What can reach this caged heart
Of couch pillows and blanket roofs
Inside, I've built an army
Transforming mechs and GI Joes
One light shines through these pillow cracks
To pierce the darkness of my tiny room
One by one, my soldiers take their place
Before they wander out
Beyond the safety of these walls
Please don't make us leave your master
What we have is nothing defenseless
All good we've done was given to us by you
Touch down beyond this caged heart
On the synthetic grass
Of the carpet on my floor
Out here revealed on long shadowed walls
Attackers closing in
Surround this glowing heart of mine
In tears, my army runs away
My open arms receive these soldiers
As they come to me
Run now before they reach us all
So many lost
As we close ourselves inside again
Please don't make us leave you, Master
What we have is nothing defenseless
All good we've done was given to us by you
by you
We've traveled distance to serve in this army
Only to find that we need you greatly
We love you forever
Even if we failed, we've failed
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