Sid Sings

It’s 1987 and you’re settled down in your room playing California Games on your Commodore 64. Between rounds of computer hacky sack and surfing, you absentmindedly think, This music is totally cool. I wish I could have it on a record. Flash forward to 2002. You’re at a bar, drunk, wondering what became of that little kid inside you, the one who had hope up the ass crack (you wanted to be an astronaut, remember?).

Suddenly, the DJ drops a strangely familiar tune. You’re caught off guard until you suddenly realize—it’s the song from California Games! And wait, there’s the song from your other favorite game, Indian Attack. Except they’re different—the melodies are the same, but everything is a little harder and cooler, like an instant replay of your childhood dreams after a bump of coke.

The next day, you enroll in Spaceship Architect College.

You can thank the Commodore 64 music fetishist underground. Predominantly Northern European, this cabal of fanatics is devoted to the compositions and possibilities of that dinosauric home computer and, more specifically, the SID sound chip that lived inside it. At the vanguard of SID fever is the musician who launched a thousand laptops, J. Lesser. Along with a cohort known only as Brotha P Touch, he’s just released a house-party mix of SID-made tracks on the Tigerbeat 6 label.

This hour-long CD, featuring artists with names like Cock Norris and Fantastic Zool, is the sound of an acid house rave on the motherboard of a Commodore—cute and familiar video-game sounds matched with punishing techno sensibilities. The overall effect is images of a shirtless Super Mario waving glowsticks while Pac Man, rolling his ass off on E, discovers his bisexuality in a bathroom stall. Now how’s that for hope up the ass crack?