Bloglander

I've spoken of chiptune music before (translation: I'm no longer trying to hide the über-extent of my nerdiness), but Portland-based Arman Bohn (who used to play in Eureka Farm with three-quarters of Death Cab for Cutie) is taking it one step further — both toward the increasing popularity of chiptune music and the unseemly spectre of robots dominating humans.

His new EP, Synthlove, splatted* Tuesday, featuring covers of six songs from the '80s played on a synthesizer cart manufactured for the Nintendo DS. It's described as a "companion piece" to his 2009 album, Bits, which itself was an homage to the Atari 2600.

Rather than creating original music (like he and other musicians before him), he's choosing to turn over the music to the machines. Though whether he's doing it to allow them to enjoy the music or simply to give them one more avenue of human life to dominate is unclear at this point. 

If you think about it, using an 8-bit sound sequencer might be the most authentic way to cover music made in the 1980s short of giving yourself plastic surgery to plastinate your skin and just generally devolve into insanity (too soon?). I mean, what could make synthpop music more listenable than the goosebump-raising shrill beeps of the original Nintendo? Flock of Seagulls, y'all!

The EP is on sale at Distropolis or iTunes (if you actually feel a physical pain when you don't buy something from Apple) right now for $5. Go grab it and party like it's 1985!