Old Skool Hardcore like Happy Hardcore is seeing a resurgence of late and one of the main champions of the Old Skool sound is none other than Pete Canon with his new 8Bit Trip EP out now on N4 Records.
Who’s Pete Canon?
Normally you’ll see him showing his latest Old Skool breakbeat creations across social media and YouTube like any good music producer would do the difference is he makes it all with the original hardware and at its core is the trusty old Amiga running software called Octamed.
It makes for some interesting and awe inspiring watching as he loads up samples into his old Akai samplers and shows how he gets around the limitations of the hardware to create authentic sounding Rave music. Its an interesting journey to watch from start to finish.
On top of this he has a collection of hardware from synths to mixing desks that would make any music producer go giddy with nostalgic excitement and it evokes a different era in music production which you probably thought was lost to the past.
Well think again!
Pete Canon has a new EP out that will really make old Amiga owners and music producers drop everything and take a journey back to ’92 where you were either spending most of your weekends in a chemical induced strobe and lazer induced daze or like me, were too young to go to them but managed to get a copy of a copy of a copy of the latest Fantazia or Dreamcape tape and couldn’t wait to finally be able to hit the raves big time like everyone older was doing at the time.
8Bit Trip
The new release called the ‘8Bit Trip EP’ is a full on Old Skool Hardcore and Jungle and none of it is emulated on new hardware and VST’s but made and run on the original hardware, with all its limitations to give it a level of authenticity that well, hasn’t been seen since the early 90’s heyday.
There’s 4 tracks each run across 4 channels with 8 Bit samples running at a maximum of three seconds each throughout and is impressive in its delivery of full on tracks that will take you back to that era.
Additionally and from a nostalgia point of view the artwork is literally a mocked up CU Amiga Magazine cover (with an actual sample pack cover disk!) and makes the whole package complete.
Where Can I Buy 8Bit Trip?
Now before you get all excited and run off to go buy it on Vinyl you might find that a little hard as there’s only 50 (or less if you’re reading this weeks, months or years after we published it), luckily it is available digitally on BandCamp, however if you want the whole package (and a very good one it is) then you better hurry before they are all gone and end up going for silly money on Discogs although you also get the digital versions for free if you buy the vinyl.
Either way its good to see that there’s life in the old Amiga still and we can’t wait to hear the next EP of ‘Bangers’ as the main man himself describes it and frankly we agree too.