Blip music – or bitpop or 8-bit or chiptune music – gets its own four-day US festival this weekend with the inaugural Blip Festival in New York. It’s not exactly new, nor a phenomenon, nor a craze sweeping any nation any time soon, but there are a lot of guys out there who enjoy making shrill, cheap-sounding electronic pop music on old Commodore 64s, Ataris and Game Boys, and now they can all get together and discuss the future of circuit-bending…

Listen: Bubblyfish – “Ah”

Musicians called Bitshifter, Bubblyfish and Cory Arcangel and a bunch of other dudes from Japan, the US and Holland we’ve never heard of are performing music and doing visuals at the events. If the festival is anything like the Lektrolab sessions in the UK then it’ll be pretty fun and you’ll learn a lot and get to meet legends like Bodenstandig 2000 before returning home brimming with knowledge about how to turn your toaster into a primitive synthesiser.

PIERS MARTIN